NewswireToday - /newswire/ - Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom, 2012/08/23 - Following on from the ICO's change in commerce law, Legalcentre urges web masters to ensure they are compliant with the new laws - LegalCentre.co.uk.

The law changes in order to accommodate any new technology, thoughts, and requirements. Often, law amendments are made when there is a new case won to set a precedent or there is enough confusion or misunderstanding to warrant a change to laws for more clarity. Computers and the internet have sparked a great deal of changes in the last 30 years. Law makers had to come up with ideas in how to cover businesses and the public as the internet evolved. The internet is still changing in terms of how people are using it and what privacy they may have to maintain. In a world where information is at our fingertips, it makes it doubly important to have clear laws.

Legal Centre has advised that Ecommerce Sites update their private policies. By law you are required to have a privacy policy on your website stating how information can be stored, used, and shared. For those who already work in Ecommerce and website design you are probably familiar with what cookies are.
For those who are less certain,“cookies” is a term referring to information website stores when a visitor arrives at the site. Tracking cookies is important to businesses to figure out what customers they are reaching, where these customers are, and how to better serve these customers. The information stored can be as simple as the auto fill username and password the site requires or what ads you might have clicked on which help design better marketing campaigns.

In the past, companies have been able to monitor information on the site without obtaining any consent from the consumer to do so. To be specific, if you visited this site in the past we could take your log in to store the information, use it for marketing, or find out how frequently you used our site. The privacy policy covered us legally in regards to that information we obtained from a visit.

Here at Legal Centre we want you to have the most up to date information that may affect you legally, which is why we have announced the need for you to examine your privacy policy and update it based on the changes that occurred in May. A proposal was made to change the laws in how we can access and store information. The law proposal was going to require a visitor to click a box that agrees to cookies being allowed to track their use of the site. The Information Commissioner’s Office has since changed this proposal to say “implied consent is satisfactory.”

Given the level of confusion this new cookie law can create it is very important that you understand it fully, especially if you are an ecommerce business which is also running an affiliate scheme. Affiliate schemes require customer tracking which comes from the website the visitor was at and then is sent on to the retailer site in order for proper commission to be paid. Following the cookies rule is important to avoid any legal issue.

To obtain implied consent you need to change how your website depicts the cookie information. The ICO is requiring that notification about cookies has to be properly and prominently displayed on the website. A pop up on the privacy policy page is not going to cut it. Rather, you must have a pop up on any page that stated what your cookies are for and that you do in fact use cookies. You need to state how the visitor can find more information about the cookies too should they not agree with the little pop up on the landing page.

Legal Centre (legalcentre.co.uk) wishes for you to be in full compliance with the new law regarding cookies. In order to avoid any legal issues it is important to be in compliance. We advise you to examine your ecommerce website to make certain you have a privacy policy in place along with the new pop up on each potential landing page outline that you use cookies and how you might use them. It is a simple enough adjustment to help save you from any legal proceedings in the future by any visitor.

Written by / Agency / Source: Legal Centre

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