Don’t do a Hoover!
In May 2011, amendments to the 2003 EU e-privacy directive were introduced. These changes meant websites had to gain consent from the user for the use of tracking technologies, commonly known as ‘cookies’. The UK had a 12 month grace period for the implementation of this period, until the end of May 2012.
Many websites use cookies to save users’ data, such as in the use of shopping carts, logins and user preferences, but companies were finding that implementing the EU directive by making users agree to each cookie created a myriad of decisions about acceptance or refusal. This strict ruling was proving extremely challenging to enforce, with 95% of companies ignoring the law altogether.
48 hours before the UK deadline, a last minute policy change was introduced, allowing ‘inferred or implied’ consent to be acceptable. This gives the user the ability to acknowledge the site’s usage of cookies in one click, and continue their online activity without having to click again each time a cookie is used.
To us, this seems a more sensible attitude to the legislation. It’s important to make users aware of the information that is being captured by a website, but it is also extremely logical to assume that if a user has visited a website and clicked ‘yes’ to the use of cookies once, that they are happy to for this site to continue to do its job.
What do you think?
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