We have come across a great deal of people asking for help and guidance concerning the EU Cookie Law, so we thought the time had come to write a blog about it. Keep reading to find out all you need to know about the EU Cookie Law…

In May 2011, the EU Cookie Law was introduced throughout the entirety of the EU. It works through requiring any website that utilises cookies to ask the visitor’s permission prior to using the cookies. Many people have deemed the EU Cookie Law as a poor regulation due to addressing a problem that many people are unaware of. Due to this, the law has not been enforced as heavily as originally intended, and did not come into effect in the UK until May 2012.

What Is A Cookie?

A Cookie was primarily designed to protect the privacy of online users and work to promote an uninterrupted browsing experience for a wide variety of websites. The majority of websites accessible on the World Wide Web use cookies. Designed to remember data in order to save you time while surfing the net, Cookies also track visitors by remembering logins and site preferences as well as assisting in analytics.

In the UK, if you are not already compliant with the EU Cookie Law or working towards it, you could risk being fined up to £500,000. Yet recent research suggests that 79% of UK consumers believe that changes are required in order to educate the public further regarding cookies.

So, if you haven’t yet made a start to ensure your site complies with the EU Cookie Law, try implementing our simple tips below:

• Aim to establish each of the cookies featured on your website via the help of tools such as the Firecookie extension (on Firefox browsers) allowing your audience to see your cookies listed page by page.
• For those who already have a privacy policy in place, ensure that your audience can view your policy with ease by displaying your policy link prominently for all to see. In addition, you could choose to amend the title of your policy link to something like ‘Privacy & Cookies’.
• State the cookies on your website within your Privacy Policy; include what they are and what they do. It’s recommended that you differentiate between 1st and 3rd party cookies too.
• If you feature social sharing buttons on your website, such as the ‘Like’ button for Facebook, try to specify these in your policy too.

We are not trying to scare your web audience off, but instead to promote the awareness of your acceptance to the EU Cookie Law. There are still so many people that do not understand this law and therefore it would be beneficial to educate the UK on Cookies and the EU Cookie Law, in order for more website owners to comply with it.

www.SEOEssex.co.uk complies with this law and you will have noticed when you first arrived here, a message at the top of the site giving you a choice to accept or not.

If your website is breaking the EU Cookie Law, get in touch with us today and we can get this corrected for you very quickly.