Tracking coming to an 'end' in the EU?

[James_WV]

(Mods, apologies if this should be in another forum - it's a pretty general topic but does pertain to Adwords)

Hi all,

Just saw this today: [out-law.com...] - this seems to have slipped under the radar a bit with the new EU law designed to hit file sharers.

Basically, user consent is going to be required to send cookies to a user - except in the case where "strictly necessary for the provision of a service explicitly requested by the user – so cookies can take a user from a product page to a checkout without the need for consent".

so Adwords conversion tracking, Analytics conversion tracking etc is going to get a whole lot more difficult as this isn't requested by the user...

[piatkow]

It will affect the earning of affiliate commissions too.

[bryson]

That is ridiculous. Those EU lawmakers should just call it quits and go home. The world has passed them by.

[mustan9]

People have been able to disable cookies in their browser for years. Most anti-virus software kill cookies that are in a black list, and you loose cookies every time someone clears their cache.

Cookies are also destroyed if a person has privacy enabled in their browsers. Most newer browsers offer this feature.

Any good web developer knows that storing important information in a cookie isn't an effective way to track that information.

Visitors can also disable javascript which renders all browser-based analytic tools completely useless. So I'd worry more about javascript then cookies.