New EU Anti-tracking Laws Impact On Affiliate Cookies

BBC reported yesterday that from 25 May 2011, new EU directives come into effect which say that “explicit consent” is required when tracking users via cookies.  The new rules come from the European e-Privacy directive, and attemps to deal with behavioural advertising.

Behavioural advertising is mainly done by large advertising companies, where they track your surfing behaviour from one site to the next, eventually building up a profile and using that info to display ads on new sites based on your previous surfing habits. Just think about how many sites use AdWords, and how the AdWord servers can collect and easily compile info on your surfing habits if it chooses.

I think this is a great new law, but of course like every other internet law, I really don’t see how they will be able to enforce it other than big lawsuits against well known companies after the fact. But if your company is not located or branched in the EU, then what can they do? 

We have been having a discussion on GayWideWebmasters as to how this new law will affect adult affiliate tracking cookies. In my opinion, affiliate cookies are not being used for behavioural tracking, they are simply being used to store cart information, which is specifically excluded in these new rules. However, this is my opinion which really makes no difference on how the EU will implement its new anti-tracking directives.

So what happens if all the sudden using cookies with EU surfers are blocked? I know that NATS triple-tracks, via cookies as well as IP address and sessions. However, we are still waiting for information on how CCBill, Epoch and others track. Here is a direct link to this thread if you are interested in following it: http://forums.gaywidewebmasters.com/showthread.php?t=35900