Comments on: UK startups say they’re ignoring EU cookie laws

By: david

david — Thu, 31 May 2012 20:53:31 +0000

feel*

By: david

david — Thu, 31 May 2012 20:52:34 +0000

Someone TELL me the true point of this law, if you don’t fell safe online DON’T use the internet!

By: Aaron Weissman

Aaron Weissman — Fri, 25 May 2012 21:39:00 +0000

Some startups may be ignoring the law, but that’s certainly not the case for everyone.

We (Team Skimlinks) have met with top commissioner’s from the ICO and found that essentially the law is all about disclosure and education. And companies should be doing this anyways. You do NOT need to get an explicit opt-in for every single person visiting your site, but rather be open and honest about how you track, and inform folks when they visit.

We’ve put together a blog post answering the FAQs on the EU privacy directive and laid out how companies can be compliant here: http://blog.skimlinks.com/2012/05/03/its-all-about-the-cookies-an-important-update-from-skimlinks/

Best,
-Aaron, Marketing Director, Skimlinks

By: NileHQ

NileHQ — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:17:34 +0000

I find two things fascinating about this legislation and the subsequent ICO interpretation. Firstly, I am not clear why the legislation required changing in the first place. The original 2003 act included a stipulation that users were ‘given the opportunity to refuse the storage of or access to that information’. This was replaced with a slightly vaguer stipulation that the user ‘has given his or her consent’. What’s the difference? Was this a grand old waste of parliamentary and ICO thinking time?

Secondly, is a subtler issue regarding the interpretation of the idea of consent. It seems that consent means ‘agree to our cookies, or you don’t get access to our content’. Is that really consent? Is that really in the spirit of the original EU declaration? Or does this just introduce a usability pain in the neck for users without giving them the ability to chose to opt out of tracking cookies.