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The Eu Cookie Law & Web Development
Let me answer some of those burning questions for you… What is a Cookie? Cookies are text files that browser places on your computer’s hard drive on behalf of the website being served. The Cookie usually contains information, such as a user or session ID. They might record how long you spend on each page on a site, what links you click, even your preferences for page layouts and colour schemes. They can also be used to store data on what is in your ‘shopping cart’ for example. There is nothing especially secret or exceptional about the information gathered by cookies, but you may just dislike the idea of your name being added to marketing lists, or your information being used to target you for special offers. This is a major privacy concern that prompted European and US law makers to take action. What do you need to know? On May 26th 2011 a new EU originated law came into effect that requires website owners to make significant changes to their sites and may fundamentally change the whole web browsing and shopping experience for everybody. The UK government has updated the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations in response to the EU Directive, and has given websites until May 25th 2012 to comply. The EU Cookie Law This change to the law will potentially affect any business that uses electronic communications (i.e. websites, online advertising). It will now require websites to obtain informed consent from visitors before they can store or retrieve any information on a computer or any other web connected device – so when you go onto a website, a message should pop up about the website’s cookies and you will either have to allow it, or deny it. This message only needs to be shown once, not on every page. This could prove problematic for websites and as many have a distorted view of what a cookie is, you could see a lot of people hitting that deny button. The Main Issues The first issue is getting your head round the legislation and then putting it into action. The second is - how is this going to affect my website and the user experience? Generally, the role of cookies is beneficial for users, making their interaction with frequently-visited sites smoother - for no extra effort on their part. Without cookies, online shopping would be much harder. The problem is, most everyday users might not know what a ‘Cookie’ is and view it as invading their privacy. Unfortunately, the law puts EU based sites at a disadvantage compared with the rest of the world. Exceptions The only exception to the rule is if you're using cookies because it's ‘strictly necessary' to deliver a service requested by the user. For example, they would be allowed to ensure that when a visitor puts something in their shopping basket your website ‘remembers' it until they have checked out. What do I do next? Firstly, you need to find out what type of cookies your site is using: If you don’t know then you can conduct a cookie audit, some providers do this for free but others may charge. When you know what type of cookies you are using and what they do, you can then figure out how intrusive they are and from this decide how to obtain consent from your visitors. Obtaining consent from users –ensure you make this as user friendly as possible. The best people to ask will be your web designer or developer for information and input. In the future, websites may be able to rely on the user's browser settings to indicate consent, but this is not currently possible. So, what if you ignore the legislation? The ICO are not expecting 'perfect compliance' but they expect people to be working towards it, and demonstrating that they are doing so. However, any website found guilty of using technologies to track a user's browsing behaviour without their consent could face a fine of up to £500,000, a huge increase on the previous £5,000 fine. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com If you need help on this then contact your web development agency for detailed advice. |
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