Over the past few weeks I have had the opportunity to study the guidelines for the European Cookie Laws on the Information Commissioners Office ICO web site and I have also been in touch with the staff at the ICO via email for some guidance due to the fact that the wording of the guidelines is rather ambiguous regarding web sites that do not place cookies in visitors browser cache for any purpose.
The wording of the information on the ICO web site regarding the new and impending European Cookie Law was also ambiguous and stated that the new law affects “all” web sites and web site operators, plus the guidance documents only discuss sites that do use cookies, but the guidance document does not state clearly and unequivovcally that the law does not apply to web sites that do not use cookies.
Unfortunately this leaves the guidelines open to interpretation and the creation of grey areas with respect to sites that do not use cookies, so in order to gain some clarity and guidance regarding web sites that do not use cookies I emailed the ICO and the good news is that the new European Cookie Law does not apply to web sites that do not place cookies in their visitors browser cache for any purpose, which applies to all of my web design clients and their web sites.
Although my clients web sites don’t place a cookie in a visitors browser cache it is still a good idea to actually let visitors know that this not happening and what the web site owner/operator does with any information submitted via the web site, in order to build trust with visitors and as a best practice for greater transparency and to allow visitors to make more informed choices about which web sites they use and trust as they browse the web.
This is easily implemented by adding a Privacy Policy or updating the existing policy to include detailed information to let visitors know if the site uses cookies or not and what information the site does collect, such as the data in the server logs like the users IP address or the referrer along with information about what the site owner/operator does with this data/information.
In the future all new web sites will contain a link on every page in a prominent position at the top of the page in the header area of the page within the main navigation panel marked Cookies & Privacy that leads to the Privacy Policy page for the web site, in the case of a single page web site the link will lead to a section of the web site at the bottom of the page containing the Privacy Policy information, in order to ensure that it is easy for visitors to find and access this information.
Over ther next few weeks I will create some “Boiler Plate” Privacy Policy text in order to provide an affordable and simple solution for existing web sites to either upgrade an existing or add a new Privacy Policy to the web site whether it is a single page or a pages web site. Check back for further updates.
You can see an example by clicking on the link in the news item below ↓
