I’ve recently written an article on HTML5′s Local Storage. The technology gives users a new level of ease through being capable of such things as remembering half completed forms for completion whenever they like. However, from the 26th of May 2011, this action is now illegal in the UK without the user’s prior consent.

The law, which comes from the EU’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive will apply to all websites within the EU. It affects all websites which store ‘non-essential’ cookies. So while we have the technology to remove extra hassle for users, as developers we’re now required to implement an extra consent handler (such as a popup) in order to use it.

The ICO website now has a slide which asks the user to accept cookies. Does the average internet user even know what a cookie is?

What does this mean? From what most people seem to understand, (and I use the word understand fairly loosely, as no one seems to completely understand this law, even the ICO are vague), this will basically make for instance, any website that uses google analytics, illegal. It’d also make remembering users’ preferences illegal without consent, which potentially means if a user chose not to grant permission, we can’t even remember that choice, creating a rather laborious cycle.

The law covers anything which stores information on a user’s computer, so HTML5 Local Storage would be inclusive of this despite being a similar technology, rather than a cookie.

From the ICO guidelines, it seems at least this would not affect ‘strictly necessary’ cookie data, for instance an “add to basket” action on an online shop.

We’ve been given a 1 year grace period to implement changes to our websites, but the general consensus is of being fairly uncertain exactly how to do this. From the point of view of a developer, the EU have been incredibly narrow-minded with their view of how cookies are used, and are at least in my opinion, massively hindering the progression of what we’re trying to achieve with making the online user experience as simple and easy to use as possible.

For a good break down and explanation of the law head over to Silktide or have a look at their very good video below.