UK Cookie Compliance Deferred For One Year

[engine]

UK Cookie Compliance Deferred For One Year
[bbc.co.uk]

UK websites are being given one year to comply with EU cookie laws, the Information Commissioner's Office has said.

The UK government also sought to reassure the industry that there would be "no overnight changes".

The EU's Privacy and Communications Directive comes into force on 26 May.

It requires user's consent before using cookies - the text files that help organise and store browsing information.

They've seen sense.

Earlier story
UK: Your Cookies Must Comply With The Law, Says the UK ICO [webmasterworld.com]

[dstiles]

What do they propose doing about session cookies? Web servers, especially IIS ones, have no proper control over those: they are even issued as you ask if they are acceptable.

Users cannot, by and large, distinguish between "real" cookies (which MAY involve privacy issues but likely do not - third party cookies excepted) and session cookies, which are essential to keep some sites working.

Cookies have always been a user-acceptance thing, a fact that Firefox has long offered management for. Previous proposals by UK, going back several years, had no idea about what cookies were nor how they were handled.

As to google's involvement - RUN AWAY!

I supose they will go after javascript too? Far more dangerous than cookies! And the BBC site says it needs javascript in order to feed you moving pictures! Good old NoScript!

[Leosghost]

Wait 'til they decide to go after activeX ..or xml ..or html ..or whatever else they really have no idea what it does and how it works..( acronyms that they didn't invent are spooooooky and can hack things )..it says so in the daily fail...and on the BBC.

These are laws made by people who call sysads to say their wireless mouse has stopped working ..and don't know which end of batteries is positive without the diagram anyway.

[g1smd]

This should not be an issue for hundreds of thousands to millions of websites to comply with.

This should be an issue for a dozen browser makers to be told to beef up the cookie control interface, warning messages, and ease of reviewing stored cookies and cookie permissions per site.

[robzilla]

Same nonsense here in The Netherlands:

The Lower House of Dutch Parliament has postponed voting on the Telecommunications Law by one week to 21 June [i.e. tomorrow], because the Socialist Party wants more time to study the amendment over cookies. Labour Party PvdA and Freedom Party PVV submitted amendments, requiring permission only for third party cookies.

Source: [telecompaper.com...]

[engine]

g1smd makes a good point. It's a shame it can't be added to a friendlier browser cookie control.

And, yes, it's correct to be deferred while they sort out how best to implement it.

[pageoneresults]

There was a link to a graph posted on Twitter yesterday (2011-06-22) showing what happened to one site after implementing explicit cookie opt-in...

ICO website traffic impact of cookie opt in
[flickr.com...]

This information provided by the Information Commissioner's Office under a FOI request I made, shows how traffic measured in the web analytics tool (GA) has fallen by 90% since their explicit cookie opt in request.

[engine]

Very interesting P1, thanks for sharing that.

I can quite well believe it will have an impact. If some adopt it an others don't, who do you think is going to win out.