10 resources for the UK Cookie Law
A new law surrounding digital privacy came into effect on May 26th regarding the placement of cookies (small pieces of data) being stored on your computer when you visit websites. Here’s a short list of 10 resources that may help you get your head around the law, some useful tools and articles on the subject.
1. What are cookies – If you are unsure
Just in case you think this post is about baking and you have no idea what all this other stuff is.
http://www.whatarecookies.com/
2. EU cookie law (e-Privacy Directive) from the ICO
Read through the guides and the e-Piracy directive below. The UK law officially came into effect on May 26th 2012.
The PDF guide can be downloaded here.
http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/cookies.aspx
3. Attacat Cookie Report Plugin for Google Chrome
This is my favourite cookie report plugin. It only works on Google Chrome but that’s fine with me. You can enable it on any site you want to run a report on and the results have a handy “naughtiness” rating to help you understand how serious they might be and what you should do with the cookies.
http://www.attacat.co.uk/resources/cookies
4. View Cookies Mozilla Firefox Plugin
An alternative cookie plugin for Firefox. It’s pretty good but doesn’t give you the reporting stuff that Attacat does. You just get a list of cookies and then you’ll need to do some investigation to find out what cookies do which function.
http://www.bitstorm.org/extensions/view-cookies/
5. Implied consent is ok in UK?
This is a link to a story from the Guardian UK website written by Charles Arthur. The talking point here is that the guidance from the ICO was changed 48 hours before the law came into effect. This change essentially allows for ‘implied consent’. Yeah, what?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/26/cookies-law-changed-implied-consent
6. Civic Cookie Law Solution
An excellent solution put together by CIVIC. The configuration and helpful resources on this site make implementing a solid cookie notification / control panel really simple. There are also some plugins and modules for WordPress, Drupal and Magento e-commerce.
http://www.civicuk.com/cookie-law/index
7. Cookie Cuttr
Another elegant JQuery solution that I think is pretty good.
8. Jquery cookie solution from Wolf Software
This is one of the first solutions I came across. The message bar looks a little like a Microsoft IE browser message. One downside is that it is branded by Wolf Software. You can pay £25 to have the branding removed but I think there are better solutions above that are free. I’d be interested to know how many people have paid the £25…
http://cookies.dev.wolf-software.com/
9. Cookie Guard EU
Easy to configure solution that allows you to customise your cookie information that is displayed if the visitors chooses to find out more about your cookies. Its free but you can donate if you like it.
10. No Cookie Law
Silktide made this little microsite to demonstrate how ridiculous the cookie law is and explain it in simple terms. Thanks Oliver!
That’s all folks. As you might have noticed I haven’t added any cookie control or notification on my site yet. I am going to review all the options and implement something very soon.
If you have any other tools or resources related to the cookie law please comment below or find me on Twitter @iamtotallyrich.
Richard Johnson
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