Sharing Cookies & Saving Time
Not heard about the EU Cookie Regulations – or you have, but need more info and not looked for, not found, a solution to help you comply with the law?
Got £500k to spare? No? … then please continue….
What’s All This ‘Cookie Monster’ Stuff?
If you operate in the UK or EU …you may be asked ‘by the powers that be’ what steps you are taking to comply with the new laws on website cookies!
Answer ‘nothing’ or ‘I don’t know’ and there is a potential large fine, which although unlikely to be imposed on you, ‘could’ be!
Cookie Sharing for Small Business Websites – What Do I Need to Know About Cookies?
The new Cookies Regulations officially came into force on 26 May 2011. However, there’s been a one year period of grace, which means that the law actually came into effect as from 26th May 2012.
Although it’s accepted that small business website owners may take some time to achieve compliance, ignorance is not bliss, when there’s potentially an ‘enforcement notice’ or even £500,000 of your hard earned cash at stake!
So, if you are doing one or more of these things on your website:
- Analysis of visitor behaviour (known as ‘analytics’)
- personalising pages and remembering visitor preferences
- managing shopping carts in online stores
- tracking people across websites (think Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc)
- delivering targeted advertising
Then you need to learn more…
How to Gain Cookie Consent from Your Website Visitors
One of the main requirements of the regulations is that :
You MUST obtain the consent of your website or blog visitors – BEFORE your website cookies can be served! UPDATE: Read : COOKIES IMPLIED CONTENT
The last year has brought about the coding (or writing) of a variety of ‘potential solutions’, by individual programmers & companies, to help webmasters, like you and I, comply with this element of the regulations.
Most have been neither elegant or practical solutions, with some options being outright inconvenient for website owner and website visitor alike.
Thankfully, the clever people at Civic UK have released WordPress Cookie Control (see resources below for non-wordPress options), a much more elegant solution for obtaining a user’s explicit consent for the use of cookies on their computer.
Resources :
Cookie Regulations & Consent! (article and info link for the general public)
Visit Civic UK – Cookie Control (various platform solutions – not just WP!)
How To Undertake a Quick Cookie Audit on Your Own Website or Blog
Before you can ask people for their consent, you need to advise them of the types of cookies you, or third parties, will be placing on their computer. To do that, you’ll want to undertake your own Cookie Audit.
There are several browser add-ons or extensions that will help you do your own audit, search your browser add-ons/extensions for a suitable tool. Or simply view cookie information via your browser cookie manager – this video shows more…
Resources:
Firefox Add-On : View Cookies Tool The View Cookies extension only show cookies belonging to the current web page being viewed.
After undertaking your own cookie audit, you can add the relevant information to your privacy and/or cookie policy for your site visitors.
I hope the above information gives you a helpful start with your research into compliance with these new regulations.
Client questions : please submit via the contact form or send me a direct email (you have my email address).
Disclaimer – Due Diligence!
As with all things, please do your own research and due diligence – I am not a Lawyer/Solicitor. The above content aims to help you with your research and is for information purposes only and not meant as, or to be interpreted as, legal advice!