A new Cookie Monster

A new law has come in for 2011 and it’s all about web cookies.

Cookies – the Basics

If a website designer has incorporated cookies into a site, this site will be able to store information about the user when they visit the site – passwords or items in a shopping cart for example. Very sophisticated websites, such as Amazon.co.uk can go one step further – they can read the cookies in the visitor’s browser and use this for targeted advertising – such as similar products to those the visitor has recently been looking at and therefore promote their own relevant services.

Cookies – the Law

Regulations on cookies have slowly but surely been getting stricter. Now it is no longer acceptable for websites to just provide you with an option to ‘opt out’ – a new law, introduced this year, means that from May 2012 websites can only use cookies if the visitor ‘opts in’.

Why?

Cookies pose a fairly serious threat when it comes to personal details and security. Although rare, if an unauthorised person manages to get at the cookie when data is transmitted between the website and the browser or vice versa, this personal information can be accessed.

Owing to the information a cookie stores, they can also be used as a form of spyware, which is not ideal. But it’s usual for these to be flagged up in your computer’s scans and obviously privacy settings can limit the length of time a cookie is stored on your browser anyway.

Hindrance or Help?

The vast majority of people aren’t opposed to cookies and in general they are used to enhance the user experience of a website. These laws will affect mainstream websites such as Google and Yahoo just as much as sites less frequently visited. Therefore in general terms this new law seems to be more of a hindrance than a help.

What you should do

Penalties are thought to be pretty drastic when the compliance deadline hits in May 2012, so our advice is – get compliant. If you need help, we can either set your website up with a permission page so you can use cookies with the visitors permission, or we can alter your site so it doesn’t use cookies at all, but works just as beautifully. If your website doesn’t use cookies but you’d like it to, or you’d like it to use them in a more sophisticated way, just Contact us for more information.