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EU notification of the site use of cookies Started by elk.helmer.co · · Read 36858 times 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic. previous topic - next topic

EU notification of the site use of cookies

Hello,

I just installed elk on one of my sub-domains "elk.helmer.co". Have not had time to create any boards yet, but will get to it in time. I have an issue in that my sites are hosted in Germany and as such I have to notify. all visitors and users about the sites use of cookies. This is not a problem on SMF as there is a mod for it.

I noticed that when I went to the system screen it said it could not connect to the main ,site and all versions listed on the left were question marks. Also, when I want to the package manager it informed me that the third party site was not available.

Is there any mods available and if so can you provide a link?

Anyways back to the cookie notification, I cannot open the site to the public until I have either a mod or feature.

Thanks,


John

BTW: I really liked what I see so far, great job!
Last Edit: January 13, 2014, 07:08:49 pm by elk.helmer.co

Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #1 –

Hello John and welcome at Elk! :D

Which mod are you using from SMF?
Depending on several factors it may even still work with Elk.

I wrote one for SMF, and I want to port it to Elk "soonish"[1], but it was intended for the UK (first, strict) version of the law (so no use of cookies unless explicitly accepted, etc.).
1 I didn't have motivation, now I have it, I didn't have the time, but I can find it.↵
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Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #2 –

Thank you for the welcome. The EU mod I use for SMF is EUCookie1.1.zip. The other mod that I always install is GoogleTranslateforSMF2.0v1.4.zip.

Thanks,

John

Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #3 –

the translator modification is IMHO useless these days.. all modern browsers such as Chrome or IE11 (dunno if FF also) has got a build-in translation support and suggests websites to be translated in your native language.
Thorsten "TE" Eurich
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Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #4 –

TE,

While what you say about browsers may be true, this is the most requested mod at my other sites.

Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #5 –

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=3693

Will take a look and try to mix with mine (just to have only one to maintain O:-)).

A couple of weeks ago I opened this issue:
https://github.com/elkarte/Elkarte/issues/1207
since there are more and more requests around the world for privacy policy and cookies and so on, I think that it could be addressed (maybe partially, dunno exactly how yet) for 1.1.
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Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #6 –

Thank you. I will have to wait to configure my new Elk site until this is resolved. I am really surprised it was not part of the beta unless they were only targeting the US?

Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #7 –

TBH I'm still a bit unsure about all the different EU regulations... :-\
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Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #8 –

emanuele,

I just heard from the author of the SMF EU Mod and good news, he has ported it to ELK. He would like to know where to upload it too? Have you setup an area yet? If not do I need to host it on my site?

Thanks,


John

Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #9 –

Sorry for the late reply.

For the moment we have collected the addons at github:
https://github.com/elkarte/addons
Sorry for the "technical mumbo-jumbo", but it's to give all the info, if there are doubts feel free to ask!
This repository is a bit "special", because we are not pushing there the full code, but just "sub modules" (it's a way to deal with repositories so that you don't have to push changes to a "central repository", in fact a way to collect "links").

I'm not completely sure this is the best way to deal with addons and suggestions are welcome of course!
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Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #10 –

Baaaaack on topic here for a second.

I was re-digging the EU directive and the various laws to better understand another situation I have pending and I would like to share a bit of my own considerations.

First off: [abbr=I'm not a lawyer]IANAL[/abbr].

That said, let's have a look at the legislation.
At the Europe level, the only thing we have is a directive, the so called ePrivacy directive.
For those not familiar with European legislation paths, a directive is a sort of "general idea" that the bodies of the European Union give to the various Member States (yeah, I know, it's very, very summarised), based on that text, each MS has to write a law that covers the various points of the directive.

So, we have a directive and 28 different implementations, one for each MS.
In the literature section of the wikipedia page, you can find a couple of links to descriptions of the implementation of the directive in UK and France:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Privacy_and_Electronic_Communications

Honestly I still have to deeply read the Italian one, because it's a bit messy (it resulted just a slight variation of text of a previously existent law about privacy), but luckily, we have from the EU a nice web page with a summary of the goals of the directive and some hints on the implementation in order to be compliant with it:
http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm

There are two interesting parts, the first is:
QuoteIn other words, you must ask users if they agree to most cookies and similar technologies (e.g. web beacons, Flash cookies, etc.) before the site starts to use them.
that means that simple javascript boxes to inform the user "we use cookies, deal with it." are not enough. You actually have to ask the user in advance if he allows the site to store cookie or not.

And the second interesting part is:
QuoteCookies clearly exempt from consent according to the EU advisory body on data protection- WP29 include:

  • user‑input cookies (session-id) such as first‑party cookies to keep track of the user's input when filling online forms, shopping carts, etc., for the duration of a session or persistent cookies limited to a few hours in some cases
  • authentication cookies, to identify the user once he has logged in, for the duration of a session
  • user‑centric security cookies, used to detect authentication abuses, for a limited persistent duration
  • multimedia content player cookies, used to store technical data to play back video or audio content, for the duration of a session
  • load‑balancing cookies, for the duration of session
  • user‑interface customisation cookies such as language or font preferences, for the duration of a session (or slightly longer)
  • third‑party social plug‑in content‑sharing cookies, for logged‑in members of a social network.
and that means all the cookies set by ElkArte are all (almost) acceptable.
There may be a couple of edge cases, where the cookie is set forever, instead of a "short period", but not a terribly big deal.

What really requires approval, are cookies used by 3rd-party services, like google analytics, or google adsense (just to mention the two most famous). In these cases, before "enabling" the code for these tools, you should ask the user visiting your site if they want to have these cookies on their computers.
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Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #11 –

Thank goodness! Nothing needs to be done! Puh!

Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #12 –

Of course that's my own personal interpretation of what the Europe seems to want, it may differ from the specific legislation of each single Member State.
But unless some very strict interpretation has been made it should be all good.
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Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #13 –

I just read an article that before 3 June all websites who are using cookies should mention it. I am using Google Analytics and G. Adsense on my forum. Is there any addon for Elkarte regarding cookies? TY
sorry for my bad english

Re: EU notification of the site use of cookies

Reply #14 –

I guess I'd have to write down something.
As far as I understood, analytics should be fine with the simple "warning", while adsense may be a little trickier (because it is a profiling cookie), though I'm no more sure of anything on the matter... :-\
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