So what are people doing about the ePrivacy Directive?

Directive 2002/58 on Privacy and Electronic Communications (otherwise known as the e-Privacy Directive) is an EU directive dealing with data protection and privacy in the digital age. In 2009, seven years after the first Directive, a revised version was announced that would be translated into law for each of the EU's member states.

The revised Directive is part of a broader piece of European legislation - the EU Electronic Communications Framework - that comprises a total of five Directives and was required to be implemented into national laws by 26th May 2011. The Directive passed into UK law by this date, but the Government announced a one year grace period in order for industry to develop its own self regulatory framework. The reasons behind the perceived need for the revised Directive are numerous but primarily focus on empowering consumers to make the right choices about the information they share about themselves with companies online. In particular, the subject of the Directive is the "right to privacy in the electronic communication sector". This therefore covers cookies and how they are used with the exception of those that are ‘strictly necessary'. Strictly necessary is not defined explicitly but the UK regulator, the ICO, has suggested this refers to those cookies that a website needs to use in order to work properly (formatting of the web page, remembering what is in the basket if you run a transactional website). A logical conclusion is to say affiliate cookies are strictly necessary in order for advertisers and affiliates to run affiliate campaigns.
Whilst this is true, they are not strictly necessary for the consumer to navigate the site and it is the consumer that the legislation is focused on, not business: as such, we should logically conclude that affiliate cookies (like web analytics) are not strictly necessary.

Remember, the remit for strictly necessary has been defined in the UK as being narrow, rather than all encompassing.
According to the latest ICO guidance, the strictly necessary exception: " is likely to apply, for example, to a cookie used to ensure that when a user of a site has chosen the goods they wish to buy and clicks the ‘add to basket' or ‘proceed to checkout' button, the site ‘remembers' what they chose on a previous page.

This cookie is strictly necessary to provide the service the user requests (taking the purchase they want to make to the checkout) and so the exception would apply and no consent would be required".

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Cdman said:

I only have a couple of sites targeted towards the UK and so on, but I'm not going to bother with this.

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bouquet said:

Its not just the UK its Europe as a whole, the bright sparks in Brussels have made another quality decision paid for by my hard earned tax money....!!!

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