Cookie law compliance services

Did you meet the deadline?

On 26 May 2012, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) officially began their UK enforcement of Regulation 6 under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (otherwise known as 'Cookie Law') which requires that all EU websites obtain their visitors’ consent before using cookies.

If you didn't meet the deadline, don't worry, as long as you have a formal plan of action in place with a fixed date for compliance (in a reasonable length of time), the ICO is unlikely to issue you with a monetary penalty. This doesn't mean the law won't be enforced in other ways, however and it certainly isn't advisable to ignore it completely - especially with the ICO's introduction of a tool for reporting cookie concerns.

Don't have a plan? Don't panic, we can help

Free initial assessment

An initial assessment of your site would allow us to identify whether or not cookies were being used and, if so, to what extent. This, in turn, would enable us to provide you with an accurate personal quotation for a full cookie audit and compliance solution.

Cookie audit

Assuming our initial assessment identified the existence of cookies on your site, a full cookie audit would then need to be performed in order to ascertain the following:

• Exactly what cookies are used on your site and for what purpose
• How intrusive (or not) your cookies are
• Whether or not any of your cookies are 'strictly necessary' and thus exempt from the prior consent rule

With the information above, the most appropriate compliance solution for your site could then be identified.

Compliance solution

Since all sites are not created equal, the exact nature of your compliance solution would depend on the exact nature of the cookies present on your site. It would, however, be likely to include some or all of the following elements:

• Production of cookie policy text (for your privacy statement) including a complete list of your cookies and their functions
• Prior consent message on every page (with removal upon acceptance - either explicit or implied)
• Disabling / removal of any particularly intrusive cookies where prior consent is required (until such consent is granted)

Looking for more?

For more information on the new privacy legislation, see our 'cookie law' blog article or call us direct on 01865 361696 to discuss how you might be affected.