With little over a month for compliance of the EU legislation are you on schedule?
On 26th May 2012 owners of EU websites that have cookies are expected to provide the visitors an opportunity to authorise the use of cookies*. The user must have a right and the opportunity to change their mind at a later date. There is however an alternative. Remove the cookies altogether!
All bar a very few cookies that are deemed essential are affected – the vast majority of cookies do not fall under “essential” and must therefore be dealt with. Unfortunately, the law doesn’t specifically differentiate between those that are more intrusive than others however, unofficially those that don’t deliver information around sensitive data are not deemed high priority issues.
Ironically, in order to remember if a user doesn’t want you to store cookies on their device you would need to store a cookie – which is contradicting the law.
If a user clicks ‘No’ to cookies there goes your tracking and insight out of the window and potentially, functionality for the user will be impeded.
The method of authorisation is up to the website owner – this can be in the form of a pop-up, an information bar or any other ideas you can think of – so there is some creativity around the solution.
The issue is that huge players such as Google & YouTube don’t seem to be joining in on this. This is giving other organisations false confidence in avoiding the law too.
If they aren’t complying you don’t need to right?
Wrong!
Think of it like speeding in your car.
Your mates (Google & co) are saying “It’s fine – you can break the law a bit, we are doing 90mph in a 70mph limit and are getting away with it.”
But for you surely just a bit over the limit is OK, we all know that 75mph is not as bad as 90mph right?
‘Slightly’ non-compliant is better than “totally” non-compliant, but we should remember in the eyes of the law, both are non-compliant. It only takes a police officer to be having a bad day to be punished for 75mph, yet an officer on a good day may waive you.
Breaking the law is breaking the law, no matter how close to the law you are. If you do break it, you risk ending up at the ICO’s ‘speed awareness course’.
Yes, I think we all agree it’s an obscure law, penalising those that use cookies effectively & harmlessly – enhancing the user’s experience, as well as gathering information to further improve customer understanding. It is law, so we can moan about it all we like but it’s inevitable and best to just get on with it.
Those trying to avoid this law may likely go through a lengthy legal battle with the varying data protection authorities in the EU.
Volume is providing solutions for our clients, and can help with yours too. If you have concerns over your compliance get in touch to discuss how we can help.
For a review of the ICO’s guidelines click below:
*some cookies are exempt from the law however, these really are few and far between.