EU laws governing possible changes to your website

The EU has recently introduced new laws on how data is collected and used through the use of cookies on websites. It’s extremely important that you take action on this as failure to comply may result in hefty fines.

The BBC link here explains the impact of the new regulation. Roeville has audited its own stock WebRes system and found that the only cookies we use are ones that are essential for the correct use of the site and not for 3rd party marketing\data collection methods.

This is the official ICO guideline document which attempts to interoperate the new EU law.

As you can see in one of the statements which we've included below, the inbuilt cookies WebRes uses should be ok.

Does this consent rule apply to every type of cookie?
The only exception to this rule is if what you are doing is 'strictly necessary' for a service requested by the user. This exception is a narrow one but might apply, for example, to a cookie you use to ensure that when a user of your site has chosen the goods they wish to buy and clicks the ‘add to basket’ or ‘proceed to checkout’ button, your site ‘remembers’ what they chose on a previous page. You would not need to get consent for this type of activity.

The new law is mainly aimed at data collection cookies which are then used\abused for marketing purposes without user consent. By default we don’t use this type of cookie in a stock WebRes system although lots of our customers do use Google Analytics and other 3rd party ‘hook-ins’ which do violate this law.

Here is an example of how the ICO website itself deals with its own use of Google Analytics.

If you require any further help on this matter then please contact the WebRes team.