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Cookie free tracking analytics for EU Cookie Law directive

Cookieless Tracking is the feature that allows webmasters to track their website visitor traffic without utilization of cookies.

What are the cookies?


Cookies are basic text files that are placed in each visitor's browser cache that help to identify particular visitors when they come back to a specific site. The cookie files usually contain information such as the website ID, an assigned visitor ID and other essential or non-essential bits of information. The web technology in it's mature form is based on tracking and personalizing each visitor's experience and the cookie files play a vital role in such implementation.

What is EU Cookie Law directive?

The "Cookie Law" derives from a modification to the EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, which took place in November of 2009. It supports the means to safeguard online privacy and protect web users from unwanted marketing.

Per the EU Cookie Law directive being gradually implemented for the most member states of European Union, websites are required by law to gain the consent of web users before serving them web cookies.

fraudLog.com offers a feature that allows you to track your visitors without using cookies. The cookieless tracking mode is a solution for helping web developers to achieve the directive of the EU Cookie Law, and gives you as a webmaster an ability to track your visitor traffic without asking your visitors to approve the usage of cookies. However, you may still need to present your visitors with an option to opt-out. Refer to your local EU Cookie Law directive for more information.

Using cookies without an explicit consent from each one of the website's visitors may result in fines up to £500000. At this time the directive only applies to the affected European Union member states such as United Kingdom, Denmark, Estonia, France, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden, or any website that targets EU readers and consumers. Even if the website is hosted or based outside the EU territories but targets EU audience, the law remains in full effect.

It is important to note that merely placing a disclaimer on a website asking the EU visitors to disable the cookies in their browsers is NOT considered sufficient, and is becomes a violation of the current EU Cookie Law directive.

The law permits usage of the following cookies without an explicit consent from each visitor

  • Essential cookies such as those providing functionality for:
    • Shopping cart
    • Session management
    • Security management
    • Server workload distribution
    • Online banking management
    • Facilitating necessary transmission of a communication
The directive requires a website visitor consent if the following are used:
  • Non-essential cookies, such as those used in:
    • Facebook Like, Google+, Twitter buttons that facilitate means of tracking or counting users
    • Visitor tracking cookies such as those used in Google Analytics and Yahoo! Web Analytics
    • Affiliate programs cookies, that identify visitors when they come back to a specific site
    • Any cookies that are used to recognize returning visitors for customized greetings and other purposes
    • Other cookies that contribute to tracking a particular computer without user consent
Using the non-essential cookies on a website without an agreement of each individual website visitor is a direct violation of the law; therefore the offending website becomes a target for strict reinforcement measurements such as the fine or “cease the operations” order.

To find out which cookies are used on your website, you may use a tool such as Firefox extension called View Cookies or a Attacat Chrome extension.

If the webmasters decide to keep serving cookies, they need to initiate some form of direct communication with each visitor coming to their website(s) and receive a specific acknowledgement from each visitor that allows them placing browser cookies for local storage on the visitor's computer.

Note: When using cookie-free tracking mode with fraudLog, some visitor tracking features may not be available as certain reports are strictly dependent on the cookie usage.



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