Cookie Consent for Dawdling Developers

• 28th May 2012 at 20:06

I have written a JavaScript thing which will make it nice and easy for you to comply with the new EU/UK cookie law. It's called cookieuse, it's small and customisable, and unlike most of the other cookie consent scripts that I've found, it was written after the ICO backtracked on implied consent.

If you're a web developer who hasn't quite got around to doing anything about the new law yet because it was going to ruin your analytics and social media buttons, and you were hoping the ICO would come to their senses in time, cookieuse should help you dull the pain of compliance.

Out of the box it will give you a little popup bar (or box depending on your CSS) to get implicit consent - you may have noticed it on this site, otherwise you can take a look at the example page. You should be able to make it do whatever you want though - there's support for different levels of consent, and for taking actions based on whether consent was given or refused.

If you haven't heard about the new EU/UK cookie law, it's pretty stupid: scared of the sort of information that Facebook et al have been collecting about us for years, the EU jumped to the rescue by passing legislation that says every website which wants to set cookies for visitors in the EU must get permission first. Not that big third parties like Facebook (the only ones in a position to actually do something nefarious) need to do anything, nor that websites should honour Do Not Track, either of which would have been rather fair, sensible and practical options. No, the tens of millions of websites which use cookies each need to interrupt their visitor asking them the same question: "Can we give you cookies?" - each in a slightly different and more confusing way than the last.

The law was supposed to come in a year ago, but nobody did anything because we hoped the ICO would come to their senses. They didn't, but they did say they'd delay it for a year, and have spent that year saying it's very important to get explicit consent by popping up a large box and making people opt in to cookies. We can't just use the standard "By using this website you agree to whatever we say", because that would be implicit consent, and that would be terrible.

That was until about 12 hours before the law came into effect, when the ICO said "Actually, you know what? Implicit consent is fine." Nice one ICO, you screwed over the law-abiding internet, who had collectively spent a great deal of time figuring out the best way to get their users to say yes.

Fortunately for the rest of us who were "working on our cookie policies", (aka waiting to see what everyone else did), it seems that a nice simple "If you don't like cookies, go away" will suffice. If you're in that position, hopefully cookieuse will help.

Any feedback will be gratefully received, and let me know if you decide to use it on your site.

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