As a result of a 2009 EU directive, the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (“PECR”) have been amended such that visitors to web sites must now give their prior consent to the placing of cookies.  The way in which this is to be done is not specified by the regulations; the ICO’s guidance is simply that it should take into account the intrusiveness of the cookie into the user’s privacy. Enforcement by the ICO of this requirement is expected to begin in May of this year.

We have created a web page with information as to what is required and links to useful additional sites.  This will be updated as we learn more.  Comments and suggested additions to this site are welcome.

The University’s web team will be dealing with centrally-served pages.  Updating the content of Informatics-served pages will fall on the site managers, as usual, though the CO/CSO team will be able to advise.  Users with sites on self-managed machines or hosted on external providers will be responsible for updating those sites as necessary.

We expect the University to issue guidelines for site-managers around the beginning of March.  We’ll link this from our web page and let you know.

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