Back in 2011 a new law was announced that in a nutshell meant that all websites that utilise cookies had to obtain the explicit consent of the viewer. Seeing as Google Analytics requires the use of cookies, that law pretty much hit every single website worth its salt. Cue mild hysteria within the web developing community, and for good reason. The law seemed to be ill thought out and with little consideration as to how it would effectively be policed. A years grace was given so that web peeps had some time to implement solutions which would result their websites complying with the law.

So in 2012, the law becomes, well law, and the grace period has expired. In theory and in practice, any site that makes use of cookies must now explicitly obtain the viewers permission to allow the use of cookies. The law continues to have a number of grey areas and the manner in which the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) will police the new law is vague to say the least.

Personally, if i’m surfing respectable websites, i don’t really mind cookies. Its all part of the digital world we live in. Advertising drives the free services we come to take for granted. One use for cookies is to more effectively deliver targeted content. Were you searching for a new washing machine on-line last week? Have you noticed adverts for Washing Machines popping up in your Google searches, or on Facebook, or within some of your favorite sites? Well if you have, that’s because of the cookies stored on your machine. Its just the web being clever, kind of.

A number of solutions have already been created in order to do at least something to effectively comply with the new cookie laws. The ICO have not published any clear guidelines as exactly how to comply, so its open to interpretation. However, the community at large has generally dictated that a simple popup/notice to notify the viewer that the site being viewed uses cookies will be sufficient and will more than likely be enough to keep the ICO of your back.

Within the WordPress plugin developer community, a number of plugins have already been created to address this. ProactiveWeb have a preferred plugin that is installed and activated as standard. Therefore, all ProactiveWeb sites comply with the cookie law, i think! Lets see what Google, Facebook, Amazon an the usual suspects do as i very much doubt the ICO is going to come gunning for small local business websites any time soon, especially if they have proactively made an effort to interpret and comply with the law.