The European Union Cookie Regulations

Never mind all the fuss about Google algorithm changes, what about the new European Union cookie regulations and the impact that it is going to have on webmasters worldwide.

The regulations state that websites have to get permission before placing cookies on a visitors computer. Sound innocuous enough but the impact is very far reaching, mainly because of the fact that there are a huge number of players that rely on cookies to operate. Google analytics for example, ShareThis even the little outfits that create widgets which they offer for free but then pop a little cookie into the code so they can collect information and store it.

There is hardly a website on the Internet that does not use a cookie, which incidentally is a small text file that gets popped onto a visitors computer when they connect to your URL. Some are 1st party i.e. they are generated by your site, these you should know about, but others are 3rd party in that they are generated by someone else’s domain but are resident on your site.  The latter are a bit trickier to sort out because you don’t always know they are there. You may innocently use a widget or some other 3rd party device on your website only to find out later that it uses cookies, that is when you can work out where it is coming from.

I got this information from one of my domain registrars, 123-Reg, and you can find out in more detail what they are talking about via this link to the European Union Cookie Regulations

There is a detailed explanation of the regs when they came into effect and links to various sites that can help you take appropriate action, well as far as they can ascertain it’s appropriate. The truth is even though the regulations have been in effect for nearly a year, not too many people actually know how to comply or what it will take to comply. This is mostly because of the technical difficulties of firstly letting visitors know there are cookies and secondly providing some means of opting in.

With a fine up to a maximum of £500,000 for failing to comply and a deadline rapidly approaching – 26th May 2012 it might be worth at least finding out what it’s all about.