Europe Approves A Cookie Law – User Consent Will Be Required
Cookies are a part of the Internet and have been the ire of many consumers who believe that cookies violate their privacy. Website owners claim that cookies help to increase the user experience and helps them to gather valuable information about who visits their site. The argument has been going back and forth for years but nothing much has been done to fix the problem. Europe has approved a cookie law that will require that the user will need to approve any and all cookies being placed on a system. This new law will go into effect on April 26, 2011.
What is going to be confusing is how sites that carry advertisements will handle consent. It seems likely that once a user consents to ads on a specific web site, that consent will remain in full force until rescinded by the user.
Where I believe the problem is going to show up, is how other countries will handle the new European law. Will a site in America need to comply when the law goes into effect for European visitors?
What do you think? Is this new law going to work? How harmful will this law be for online advertising?
Comments welcome.
.pdf version of European proposal
3 Comments
Nick
November 12th, 2009
at 9:59am
Its totally idiotic. As a web developer I use cookies all the time on websites. 90% of cookies used on the web don’t store any kind of personal information.
For example one of my sites its a simple online store, it keeps a cookie of a user’s basket while they add stuff then purges it at the end… how does this possibly violate their privacy.
If it is enforced then its gonna be scary how many sites will need to change, especially legacy sites that just ‘work’ and no one has touched the code for in 5-10 years.
Also factor in the session technology, that is the storing data server side instead of client side on the fly does infact still rely on reference cookies on the user’s machine.
Where will it stop? As part of a basic HTTP request a user provides a website with all manner of information, ip address, OS, screen res etc…. Will the storing of that in log files be banned?
Its all very silly.
Ron Schenone
November 12th, 2009
at 10:09am
Hi Nick,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Also some great points!
Regards, Ron
mhz
November 12th, 2009
at 4:26pm
Note to conspiracy guys: Its too late. They already have the complete file on you. The law would have been helpful about 15 years ago. Oh well!