This Saturday, on the 26th of May the 12-month grace period ends for all European website owners to be compliant with the “EU cookie law” – as it’s known. For those in the dark, this is a directive handed down by bureaucrats in Europe who decided that website cookies were dangerous and users should be asked to opt into them before they can be served.
The law was sparked by the distaste for tracking cookies, or super cookies, that follow users from site to site, building profiles on them for advertisers. Understandably, the idea of big companies being able to build lots of profiling data without users’ knowledge sets privacy campaigners’ teeth on edge.
The problem is, we now have a law whereby every website must now invite users to opt in to cookies being used before they can be used. In principle, not a bad thing, but in practice it’s proving to be unworkable, as the blind leads the blind in trying to explain what exactly it is, how to technically code for it and how to implement compliant warnings. Continue reading
