Whatever you may think of onerous EU directives or the people who issue them, as a website owner you do need to be aware of the impending legislation enforcement of the EU e-privacy directive that comes into effect after 26th May 2012.
It is difficult for us to give ‘best advice’ as the advice we are getting is at best ambiguous, as summed up in an interview with Dave Evans, Group Manager for business & industry at the ICO (information Commissioner’s Office) http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/9610-q-a-the-ico-s-dave-evans-on-eu-cookie-law-compliance, the guys responsible for policing this stuff.
“Yes your site’s technically breaking EU Law, but it’s probably OK because they’re not yet entirely sure what constitutes acceptable compliance”.
It’s not really very helpful and it is far from clear and until there has been a legal precedent case then we really don’t know what the consequences will be. However in essence the changes are designed to protect user privacy and as we move headlong towards a more personalised internet experience perhaps it is not a bad thing to have a few checks and balances.
What to do? If your website uses cookies and nearly every website will for things like tracking analytics, storing shopping basket info and storing user preferences to name a few, then we would recommend that you do at least the following:
- Tell your visitors that your website uses cookies
- Explain what these cookies are doing
- Obtain the users consent to store cookies on their device
Many of you receiving this newsletter or reading this blog will have your website hosted by us and as such we will be supporting you on many other things. Our suggestion is to design a simple pop up notice that users will see when entering your website. This will politely tell them that your website uses cookies for ‘xyz’ and if they have no issue with this click to proceed as normal. We will also have to give them an option to decline the use of cookies and explain that this will have an impact on how the website might work.
The amount of work that this involves depends on the individual website as some use many more cookies than others. We estimate that for an average site not using e-commerce but using CMS, analytics and contact forms etc will take 3-4 hours. e-commerce sites that obviously use shopping carts, cross selling options etc will take approximately 5-6 hours to sort out.
Ultimately it is your decision as it is your website and your responsibility to ensure that you comply with this EU Directive. Please do get in contact with us if you would like to discuss how we might help you.
