New European Cookie Laws

cookie_jar_news_2012

Many of my web design clients are probably wondering if the new European laws that define what details web sites can record in plain text files called cookies that recently came into force on the 26 May 2012 applies to their business web site, the answer in most cases is yes, but please don’t worry you are not going to get into trouble.

Although the sites in most cases don’t place a cookie in a visitors browser cache it is still a good idea to actually let them know this not happening, in order to build trust with visitors and comply with the new laws, during the next few weeks I will study the guidelines on the Information Commissioners Office ICO web site and create a simple affordable solution that I can easily roll out across all of my clients web sites in order to comply with the new laws and provide visitors with clear information that the web site does not place any type of cookie in the browsers cache.

At the moment most of the governments web sites are not compliant with the new European cookie laws, so the ICO are not going to take legal action against none compliant web sites they are going to monitor the situation and offer help instead, which is not surprising really considering that very few web sites are already compliant, so it would be a nightmare if not impossible to force millions of web site owners to comply, it is better to point out the positives and encourage people to become compliant as a best practice for greater transparency and improved security for visitors to their site.

Informing visitors whether the web site they are visiting is placing cookies in their browsers cache or not is definitely going to allow visitors to make more informed choices as they browse the web in the future, as more web sites become compliant which in turn will make it harder for those who do abuse cookies to operate making the web safer.

Check back for any further news and updates.

Posted in Web Design Services.