keep track

Hi

I get asked this question from time to time.

This plugin doesn’t keep track of who accepts or not. It uses implied consent to notify users that your website uses cookies. The EU ePrivacy directive is not just about cookies it’s about privacy, in particular it’s about notifying users of how you might be tracking them.

The reason it doesn’t keep track is two fold:

What exactly will you do with the information once you store it? Let’s say a visitor ‘accepts’ – you could track their IP address, but you’re not going to ask their name, address, etc and you’re clearly never ever going to insist they tell you that information before they are allowed to use your website. So perhaps you could record that on a specific date+time, IP address x.x.x.x clicked accept. Do you also store the IP of those who don’t do anything? If they don’t do anything what does that mean? If a visitor tells you some time later that they didn’t accept, how do you prove that they did/didn’t? You can’t do that from their IP address unless you know what it was- there is no reliable/verifiable way of knowing (think e.g. mobile access, office access, home access, etc- all different IP addresses).

In any event, you are simply telling the visitor that your site uses cookies, the ‘accept’ button dismisses the banner, they continue to use the site.

The UK implemented this law over 3 years ago and many raised these issues about the stupidity of the law. In practice implied consent is widely used including by large businesses, advisory consultancies, law firms, government agencies, and so on. A similar approach is used by many other EU member states. I’m not a lawyer so I can’t give you legal advice but this is the solution I believe to be the best and is a widely adopted approach.

I hope that clarifies!

All the best

Hi please see the user guide which answers those questions:

http://cookielawinfo.com/user-guide/