website cookies

From May  26nd 2012 a new privacy law came into effect across the EU. The law requires that websites ask visitors for consent to use most web cookies.

Nearly all websites use cookies, which are an extremely common technology for remembering anything about a visitor between webpages. Cookies are commonly used for login, remembering preferences, tracking visitors and more.

The new law is intended to help protect people’s privacy. For example, if you search for “cars” in Google, they use cookies to remember this. Later in the day, on another website, Google may target car ads at you because they remember who you are. This might not sound too scary until you think how many thousands of searches you do on Google, and how much they probably know about you as a result.

The vast majority of small websites don’t do this of course, but they do track visitors to their website, e.g. via a tool like Google Analytics, and they use social media plugins like Facebook Like buttons. As we will see, this law appears to outlaw all of this entirely.

Most EU websites will need to change, or break the law.

Over 92% of websites use cookies at the moment. They’ll either have to stop using cookies, or start asking for permission.

The location of your hosting is irrelevant, but the location of your organisation is not. Your organisation must fall within the legal jurisdiction of the EU. Each member state has their own laws, which are based on the same EU directive, but may differ slightly.

For most small/medium organisations, being located in the EU will mean you must comply.

For small businesses and web site owners who use cookies this new law can cause a problem. All visitors to there site must be asked if they wish to accept cookies.

An example is shown on the Anglesey Computer Solutions site.

This site uses a script to ask people about using cookies. If you have a  small business website on Anglesey and need advice about cookies contact us.

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