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startup_tutorial_and_checklist:usability_configuration:cookie_use

Cookie Use

The European Union has created the cookie directive that has recently become law. The cookie law essentially states that you must ask consent of the person browsing your site before can save cookies on their browser. There are exceptions to this law and we'll cover them below. But first…what is a cookie? It's essentially a bit of information saved to the browser to "save the state" of the clients interaction with your site. This cookie allows the software to know if the client browsing the site is logged in and who the client is within the site if logged in. Within those cookies there is no personal information about the client and is not used to "track the user" through your site. It's basically to keep track of those that have logged in and haven't so the client does not need to login from page to page as they browse the site or do things about your site.

Types of Cookies Covered By the New EU Cookie Law

The EU Cookie Law essentially divides cookies into two types: Essential and Intrusive

  • The intrusive type of cookie is used by sites to track people about the site possibly having personal information about them within the cookie itself. The intrusive cookie can contain personal information about the user, what they have done about the site and other personal information about the client and what they have done.
  • The essential type of cookie is simply a way to know if someone is logged in as they travel about the site. The cookies the Geo software sets are considered essential to the operation of the site. There is no personal information saved within the cookie itself. No matter who were to get that cookie they could not find anything out about the client the cookie came from. There is no personal information within it. That's simply a randomly generated key to information within a session saved only within the Geo database and routinely expires based on your "cookie life" setting within the Geo admin tool.

So if your Geo site only uses Geo cookies there is no need to implement any feature to ask the clients agreement for cookies as it only uses "essential cookies".

The best external explanation we've found of the EU Cookie Law is found here:

http://www.theeucookielaw.com/

If you install other software/features that set intrusive type cookies you will need to seek "cookie approval solutions".

startup_tutorial_and_checklist/usability_configuration/cookie_use.txt · Last modified: 2015/01/09 21:25 by geojames