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EU privacy/cookie law and analytics tracking – what do you need to do?

Image: scubadive67 (Flickr)

Some new advice from the ICO on the EU privacy law landed yesterday so after some discussion on Twitter and Google Help, I thought I would collect the current advice on getting your site ready for the new laws that come into affect on 26 May 2011.

For analytics tracking using cookies (Google Analytics, for example) there is key advice outlined on page 8 of the document. The most important bits are:

• "An analytic cookie might not appear to be as intrusive as others that might track a user across multiple sites but you still need consent"
• "You should consider how you currently explain your policies to users and make that information more prominent"
• "If the information collected about website use is passed to a third party you should make this absolutely clear"

Asking for consent before you start tracking people is absolutely fraught with difficulty at the moment and, as far as I'm aware, not possible with Google Analytics without a user controlling their opting in/out with browser settings.

However, over at the RK Talks blog, it seems that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has indicated that they won’t be expecting compliance from companies for at least a year after the regulations are adopted.  In this time hopefully we'll see more clarification and, most likely, an official Google tool to help users to opt in and out of tracking although what that will mean for the interpretation of your website data is a whole other, bigger issue.

One to keep an eye on for now then but the current advice seems to be to make sure your privacy policy is up to date and visible.

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