Explicit permission to be required for cookie usage

[Duncan Rounding]

I doubt ecommerce sites will have an issue with cookies - so long as they say so, but it's a whole different thing when it comes to Google tracking and similar analytical and marketing tools.

[Steve G Griggs]

Morning all.
There is an article on this in the latest .NET nagazine, which states that the legislation does not apply to first party cookies used for tracking items ordered in an e-commerce website to the checkout.
It seem to be third party cookies that are the target (for advertising and behavioural tracking).
However: owners of e-commerce websites are being advised to say in our T&C pages that "first party cookies are used for tracking your cart contents..." etc. This is something we have been stating on our website for some time anyway, but not in any great detail though. I would imagine this will be a requirement in due course (but a sensible one I think).
What we will be required to mention is the use of cookies for Google analytics. How this will affect GA remains to be seen, I would hope that allowance will be made for what is an essential part of SEO.

[Chunkford]

How this will affect GA remains to be seen, I would hope that allowance will be made for what is an essential part of SEO.

This is why I'm so miffed.
I spend a lot of time in GA or other such analytics, and having that vital information taken away will mean going back to the dark ages making guesses and wasting hard earned money.
I would be a lot happier if analytics was exempt from this.

[Duncan Rounding]

Google Analytics (or similar) and re-marketing is an essential part of an online business and frankly if you lost a few customers that didn't want to store cookies then this would still be better than loosing the functionality altogether as the gains in having it would more than likely outweigh the loss.

Personally I think GA will completely ignore the issue and make no comment. Amazon who are probably one of the biggest re-marketers will, I (cynically) think, ignore the requirement until (if ever) they are forced to legally comply through the courts.

The ability of Amazon to be able to get an email out to visitors about products related to those you viewed on the site less than 24 hours ago has got to be worth it's weight in gold (and some lawyers fees I suspect).

[leehack]

storm, teacup, change, will, nothing

Rearrange into what will happen in reality.

[DannyBoy]

@MeFormLondon
On the contrary I think you are absolutely correct, I also don't see that it will effect us/actinic at all, we all use the normal utma/utmz tracking cookies so we can analyze the performance of our sites and to find ways to improve it. Actinic uses the normal cart cookies that every ecommerce site does, it wouldn't function correctly without them.
Adfarms, and yieldmanagers and ad tracking and management companies may be the target here to try and police a situation that has been apparent for quite sometime and for alot of websites this is how they make their bread & butter. This is whom it may effect more than likely but be able to police it will be a definate task. With inprivate browsing added to most of the major browsers nowadays the client always has the ability to control how and if they are tracked or not anyway...!

storm, teacup, change, will, nothing

Exactly!

[mash]

Sadly I have nothing to add but I wanted to follow this thread, I could not see another way to do that. Hence my reply.

Thanks

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

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