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EU Directive on cookies

26TH May 2012 was a real deadline day for website owners in the EU. The Information Commission Office had declared that by that date all website owners within the European Union will have to give viewers of their site a choice of whether they want to continue viewing the site with cookies or not. It was given a years extension from May 26th in 2011 but now it is enforceable by the ICO.

In some cases each single page and post will come up with a pop up to say ‘Cookies or no cookies’ and if you choose no Cookies it may change the viewing experience completely, making some site hardly worth looking at. Cookies are also used for payment gateways so people can sell the products and services online.

Not only that, some website owners will be faced with stiff monetary penalties for not warning people about Cookies placed on websites.

Most website owners use analytics as they need to see how many viewers they have visiting their site and other useful information like: Time spent on the site, what pages they spend most time on, what keywords brought them to the site and what search engines. The most popular of all is Google analytic s, Google have offered this service for years, and cookies are a main ingredient that makes the service work.

I met up with a leading software developer and self confessed geek James Brooksbank of Antikythera systems, and he told me in his interview on NWTV.BIZ this week:

“Cookies are a small text files that follow your computers viewing habits, they have nothing to do with the person, and the vast majority of these cookies are harmless, and they actually make the whole Internet experience work better, but people are frightened by what they don’t know about. It all comes down to education, and people should be told about the role of cookies as an essential part of many sites functionality but most of us are unaware of cookies till our spyware says there is a threat on our computer.

I think in the main the larger blog type platforms like Word Press and Joomla will be working on a remedy for this already, but it’s the smaller web developers who will rely on analytic s will just have to stop using it or place a really annoying pop up on every page of the site asking you to confirm you are OK with Cookies, and most visitors will say no and then they won’t be able to upload most of the site.”

This is why Antikythera have developed a free analytic package that has all the functionality of the more popular programs out there but with no cookies whatsoever, and we think it will bridge that gap for many website owners who need analytic s but just don’t have the time to develop a whole new program for it.”