New law on website cookies

On 26 May 2011, new rules about the use of cookies on websites came into force.

What changed?

The rules previously required websites to tell you about cookies they used and give you information about how to ‘opt out’. Most organisations did this by putting information in their privacy policy.

The new rules require in most cases that websites wanting to use cookies get consent.

The Information Commissioner’s website has a page of guidance about cookies.

This website uses the open source tool WordPress, which uses cookies to remember certain of your preferences.

This is purely for your convenience,  and we make no other use of cookies.

For more about cookies, see www.allaboutcookies.org/ , which will also tell you how to disable cookies if you don’t want this site (or other sites you visit) to use them.

If you want to read more about  The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011,  the ICO has a page of useful information about PECR.

Catch-22

Suppose you decided you didn’t want this site to place cookies on your machine.

To save asking you every time you visit the site, the obvious approach would be to remember your preference using a cookie.

But that would now be illegal.