- Messages
- 5,508
- Reaction score
- 35
- Points
- 48
July 1 this year a new EU directive is forced upon the member nations, much like the Data Retention Directive was. It says that each site need to get permissions from the users to use cookies, a fundamental function of the Internet.
As many of you know, one use of cookies is to gather site statistics (Awstat, google analytics). This sort of stats is very useful and important to many. Say you are running a business, without cookies you would never be able to tell accurately how many visitors/customers are visiting your site, and what pages they look at, which is good to know when doing planning and product placement etc.
But one of the more important functions of the cookies is session identification, such as pretty much every site that has a login system. Without cookies you wont be able to have a "remember me" setting. Settings at sites will never be able to be saved without cookies.
Sure, getting permission from the user may be easy for the developer who knows what he does and has the money for it. But my concern is, why get permissions from EU users when it is much cheaper to block all EU traffic than develop the site for two regions, pay eventual legal fees and the risk of going to court and be punished for doing it wrong? If this directive gets enforced, the developers will have to code 2 different sets of sites, one that requires permission and checks for it for EU users, and another for the rest. Also, if the developer ignores this out of laziness, ignorance or to save money on the development cost, they may face charges in court.
Also, the suggested way to get this permission is to use popups for each cookie used on the page. The largest Swedish newspaper has 35 different cookies. That means there would be 35 popups you have to accept before being able to see the page.
What would you as a developer do, save money and block all EU users, save money and ignore the directive and face charges or spend money on getting it implemented and possible legal fees?
As many of you know, one use of cookies is to gather site statistics (Awstat, google analytics). This sort of stats is very useful and important to many. Say you are running a business, without cookies you would never be able to tell accurately how many visitors/customers are visiting your site, and what pages they look at, which is good to know when doing planning and product placement etc.
But one of the more important functions of the cookies is session identification, such as pretty much every site that has a login system. Without cookies you wont be able to have a "remember me" setting. Settings at sites will never be able to be saved without cookies.
Sure, getting permission from the user may be easy for the developer who knows what he does and has the money for it. But my concern is, why get permissions from EU users when it is much cheaper to block all EU traffic than develop the site for two regions, pay eventual legal fees and the risk of going to court and be punished for doing it wrong? If this directive gets enforced, the developers will have to code 2 different sets of sites, one that requires permission and checks for it for EU users, and another for the rest. Also, if the developer ignores this out of laziness, ignorance or to save money on the development cost, they may face charges in court.
Also, the suggested way to get this permission is to use popups for each cookie used on the page. The largest Swedish newspaper has 35 different cookies. That means there would be 35 popups you have to accept before being able to see the page.
What would you as a developer do, save money and block all EU users, save money and ignore the directive and face charges or spend money on getting it implemented and possible legal fees?
