UK/EU Cookie Law: Sites Must Now Seek Consent

[engine]

Time's up for the procrastinators over this EU and UK cookie law.
UK/EU Cookie Law: Sites Must Now Seek Consent [bbc.co.uk]

Friday marks the last working day for UK businesses to prepare their websites for a new law governing the use of cookies.

From Sunday, sites must obtain "informed consent" from visitors before saving cookies on a machine.

Here's our cookie law compliance thread. [webmasterworld.com]

[Wlauzon]

I have been cruising some UK/EU sites today, and most do not seem to have complied at all, but a few have a note up similar to this, which basically says, if you don't accept the cookies, the site will not work:

If you'd like to disable cookies on this device, please view our information pages on 'How to manage cookies'. Please be aware that parts of the site will not function correctly if you disable cookies.

BTW, the UK law was changed at the last minute to an "implied consent" - which basically means if you click on any link, you accept.

[jinxed]

I have been cruising some UK/EU sites today, and most do not seem to have complied at all, but a few have a note up similar to this, which basically says, if you don't accept the cookies, the site will not work

Yes, I am seeing this. I must admit I was surprised to being seeing any sort of response to these requirements.

[Wlauzon]

As I noted, the majority do not seem to be in compliance. Been looking over some of the EU newspapers online, and 2nd day reaction seems to have the users in near revolt already for having to constantly click popups.

[engine]

It's some of the bigger sites i'm surprised don't have any apparent compliance. I can accept that a smaller site might not have anything.

[jonathanbishop]

Hi, I haven't posted for some time, but I thought I'd join this thread as both a serial webmaster and EU law scholar.

markd is right as from the latest ICO guidance the UK probably won't try to enforce it. I have put a revised terms and conditions on my selivcel.co.uk website which complies with this and the EU law. I use one of the WordPress plugins which won't go away unless someone agrees to the cookies!

My main concern with this law is how difficult it will be to collect stats. As it stands, unless one scrapes the serverlog to find someone with the same data accessing the site now as before, it will be problematic - from the non-UK EU user side of things. But equally, it could be a good thing, as cookies are tied to browsers and not users, who have many different devices and browsers making them somewhat redundant for marketing anyway. I have several browsers running at a time as we all probably do - all with Facebook logged in!

What would people think, if as nonstop alludes to, companies like Amazon and Facebook were to start offing webmasters the chance to piggy-back on their cookies? Facebook Stats, Amazon Stats, etc?

At the HCI2010 conference a licence payer funded researcher at the BBC laughed at me when I said his BBC log-in system would be pointless because many websites would be using Facebook as a log-in - I was proved right.

So could this be the next step, I ask as a wannabe scroll troller!