The EU Cookie Law – An overview

Are you a website owner?  Read all about the new cookie regulations and what they mean to you and your organisation.

What are Cookies?

Cookies are small text files that a website stores on a visitor’s computer and are widely used in order to help both visitors and website owners.  A good example is keeping track of items placed in a ‘shopping basket’.

What is the EU Cookie Law?

Essentially, it is a piece of EU e-privacy legislation that means organisations must satisfy themselves that visitors to their website understand that their actions will result in cookies being saved on their computer.  Without this understanding you do not have their ‘informed consent’.

How could this affect me as a website owner?

Organisations who fail to clearly inform visitors to their website about any cookies it is using may not be said to have obtained ‘implied consent’ from visitors and, as a result, risk being fined up to £500,000 by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) for not complying with the law (see the ICO guidelines here). 

Put simply, if you own even a basic website the chances are you are using cookies to help measure how visitors are interacting with your website.  If you are not informing your visitors about the cookies you are using, get in touch with us and we can help you put that right.

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