Website Cookies and what you need to do

No doubt you will have heard about the Cookie law or you may well have seen appearances of it on various UK websites. Basically a cookie is a file that is ‘dropped’ into your browser, this allows that website to collect certain information about you. It could be as simple as some analytics code collecting information about the number of visitors to a site or it could be to help you remember your login details.

In the majority of cases, cookies actually improves the user experience and the new legislation has really come in just to make you aware that websites collect this kind of data. There are some that use it to re-market to you so that as you browse the internet they can almost follow you around with their advertising message but  in almost all cases it is to try and help improve your time online.

We’ve all been in that position where we can’t remember our login details or wish that when we made a purchase all of our information was stored in the website and that’s what cookies can do. So they are actually a good thing for most of us. So why the change?

Well, the idea is not to stop cookies from being used, but to get the consent of the user so that they are basically agreeing to certain information being stored about them. Most good websites should have a privacy policy in place and most will already have cookies included as an item within these policies.

If someone complains that your website doesn’t comply with these regulations then you could face a fine. Most likely you will be asked what steps you have taken to make the changes, you will need to reply and show evidence that you have done what you think is necessary.

If you are unsure about exactly how to tackle this on your own website then please contact us and we can talk you through it all in more detail.