Do you remember how a year ago we were discussing the new EU cookie law (also known as directive 2009/136/EC)?  And how having realised that although the direction was now integrated into UK law, it was pretty impractical to implement?

Well then you may also remember that the Information Commissioner’s Office gave businesses a year to get their sites in order, before they started issuing fines.

That year runs out this month!

Just to re-cap: you need permission from your visitors to store a cookie on their computer unless it is absolutely necessary for the site to work.  So you might need to store a cookie to operate a shopping basket when someone buys something, but you don’t have to store a cookie to remember the name of your visitor just to make things more convenient for them.  You must ask first.

And tracking cookies are a big problem!

Yet although businesses in the UK have had all that time to sort out the problem, I sometimes get the impression that very little has been done and it is going to be a mad dash to get everything fixed on time.  Maybe I’m wrong and everyone has a solution that they are going to activate on 26th May? [Read more…]