ICO: no fines for breaking cookie rules [PC Pro]

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has finally provided some clarification about the cookie law that comes into effect this week, saying that website owners that do not comply with the law will not be fined. According to an article on PC Pro:

Sites will generally only be investigated by the ICO after users report them via a yet-to-launch tool on the watchdog’s site. Only the most intrusive cookies will lead to the ICO using its “enforcement powers”, Smith said, which includes fines up to $500,000 or notices requiring companies to take action to fix data protection flaws. 

Smith said fines were unlikely for cookies, as they wouldn’t meet the requirements for being “substantially distressing” to individuals. “We do not rule that out but it’s most unlikely that breaches of cookie requirements meet the requirement for monetary penalty,” he said. “In the area of cookies, it’s quite hard to satisfy the test for a fine.”

A briefing document from the ICO put it more clearly: “In reality the placement of a cookie on an individual’s device will not meet the necessary criteria to be considered for a CMP [civil monetary penalty].”

I’ve already said that action was extremely unlikely in my report on how businesses can make steps towards compliance, but it is good to hear it from the horses mouth, as it is the ICO that will police the law, which many feel is misguided and drafted without a real understanding of cookies or how the internet works.

Read “ICO: no fines for breaking cookie rules” at PC Pro

Categorised in: Online privacy

This post was written by David