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Does your cookie crumble?

Quite a while ago, the EU Cookie Law was passed. I'm not talking about a law concerning how much milk you should drink with your cookies, or the size and shape of cookies. No, this law was passed to protect the interest of web users in the EU. That was the intention, anyway. The EU Cookie Law, or the EU e-Privacy Directive, was set to come into action on 26th May 2012. This directive forces web site owners to get explicit concent to store cookies containing information about visitors to their web site. In short, the legislators want every single user of a web site to click "Accept" on the site to say they actively and conciously accept that third-party cookies will be stored.

This is particularly bad news to sites running anything other than basic HTML. As soon as you install anything that needs to store information about the user, you're in trouble. For instance, if you install Google Analytics, you need to get user consent. If your site is built with Joomla, or most other CMS out there, you need to get the user to actively accept the cookies as well.

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a technology for storing information between webpages. Cookies allow your web browser to remember you are logged in, or have visited a site before, or what your personal preferences are. Cookies are used all the time, every day, on almost every web site out there.

Basically, a cookie is a small text file which is stored by the user's browser. The cookie contains data only. It can't contain any code, so it can't be a virus or spyware. This doesn't mean that all cookies are harmless, but they can't store anything else than information.

What is the cookie law?

Take a look at the following video to learn more about the EU cookie law:

How to cope with the cookie law?

As far as I know, most web site owners are unaware of the law. And they are uncertain how to cope with it.

Nocookielaw.com is a site made by people protesting the law and they have created a list of reasons why the cookie law is bad:

It will annoy and confuse users.
It makes innocent website owners law breakers.
The law is different in every EU state.
It puts EU businesses at a disadvantage.
It won't actually help privacy much.

This video, called "The stupid EU cookie law in 2½ minutes" is a useful walk-through of the law and consequenses of it:

Read more about these points: http://nocookielaw.com/why-is-it-bad

Bad examples

There are plenty of site owners trying to comply with the law. In some countries, companies have been threatened with prison if they don't comply. This has resulted in some really bad implementations for getting users to accept the cookies. Here is one example: http://www.kwik-fit.com/tyre-search.asp

The law is different in every EU country

Although this all started from a single EU Directive, each EU state has to implement this law in their own way. So the laws are different from country to country, and some are more vague than others (about half haven’t even written down their laws yet).

This means a user accessing a website on their mobile phone in France, who crosses the border to Belgium, is invoking two sets of laws for one website visit. It’s the website owner’s job to comply with the location of the person accessing the website.

Because it’s not practical to make websites adapt to any subtle changes in law, the safest option is just to comply with the strictest laws, and hope you understood them all.

Cookie solutions for Joomla

Pixpro cookie plugin

PixCookiesRestrict module and system plugin will prevent the placing of cookies on a web device until the user has actively agreed to accept them.

After making just a few settings, publish the PixCookiesRestrict module on every page. Once the visitor has agreed to accept cookies from your website they will no longer see this module and the site will function as intended. If they do not agree to accept cookies the the site will not be able to set standard Joomla! cookies on their device. Not accepting cookies may hinder for the site from functioning properly.

What does PixCookiesRestrict do?

It will stop the standard Joomla installation cookies from being placed on the visitors device until the visitor has actively agreed to accept cookies by clicking the module button. It will also look for cookies placed there by JavaScript and remove them.

We do not guarantee the prevention and/or removal of all third party cookies, for example cookies placed there by Facebook. However, in the case of Google Analytics, we have developed the plugin.

Important: After installation, enable the System PixCookiesRestrict plugin AND set it to the last position in the ordering.