eu cookie compliance

Question

With the new EU cookie compliance law coming into force Friday (26/05/12), does anyone have any suitable advice for those of us who not only develop in Drupal and other frameworks? I myself have a degree in Business (and use to teach Business at FE level and had numerous limited companies), the ICO website is not helpful for those who developing, but those who have 'netpreneur' aspirations, may have second thoughts now the full weight of the ICO is behind the EU law. Personally, I would be quite happy to see the cookies option removed from all visitors on my future portal developments.

Would anyone care to shed some light on this in how we can ensure end users perceptions of 'privacy' theft are reduced to the lowest possible point. I don't believe the answer is merely to 'seek professional advice' as some Drupal developers simply cannot when starting out, even though I would argue that that should always be the case from a organsizational legal standpoint.

What would be the simplest answer to ensure compliance across Drupal?

Answer 1

The simplest way to ensure compliance for Drupal is to install the Cookie Control module, which has been created for exactly this purpose:

On May 26th 2011 a new EU originated law came into effect that requires website owners to make significant changes to their sites and may fundamentally change the whole web browsing and shopping experience for everybody.This Cookie Law is amended privacy legislation that requires websites to obtain informed consent from visitors before they can store or retrieve any information on a computer or any other web connected device.

Cookie Control does just that, presenting users with clear information on whether cookies are present, linking to your privacy policy (where you should have specific information about what cookies are in use), and advising users on how to adjust browser settings and what cookies mean for them.

There's also the EU Cookie Compliance module:

This module intends to deal with the EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications that comes into effect in the UK on 26th May 2012.

This second one does a better job in my opinion.

Answer 2

It depends on which country in the EU you are in, as countries are interpreting it differently. Some are ignoring it. Some are enforcing it. The UK, for example, is enforcing it and website owners were supposed to ask for consent, or at least let users know that cookie will be stored and that the user can change the settings if they want. See http://www.bbc.co.uk for an example of this.

However, at the 11th hour, the Information Commissioner changed the law to implied consent. So website owners can assume that users have consented to cookies being stored on their machines.