Important Notice about Cookies

[Adam]

We are committed to protecting your privacy. We will only use the information that we collect about you lawfully (in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and the EU Privacy and Communications Directive). This includes information submitted voluntarily by you through a form or gathered automatically as you visit this website.

You should not submit any sensitive or private information through this website except through acknowledged secure areas. The owners of this website accept no responsibility for data submitted through insecure areas of this website.

By submitting your contact details to us, we may contact you with information regarding our website.

This website uses cookies which are stored on your browser. You can usually modify your browser settings to prevent this happening. However, by disabling cookies, or certain types of cookie, you may hinder your user experience on this and other websites, or prevent them from working entirely.

Some cookies used on this website are essential in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. Without these cookies, a forum cannot exist.

Some cookies used on this website collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages.

These cookies don't collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. It is only used to improve how a website works.

Some cookies used on this website allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features.

These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of web pages that you can customise. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect may be anonymised and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.

Cookies may also be used to improve the user experience and to enable some of the functionality provided by this website.

Please note that some cookies may be placed by third party service providers who perform some of these functions (or other services) for us. Cookies are used on this website for the following third party services: Google Analytics, LinkedIn Follow button, Facebook Like Button, Twitter Follow button, Google +1 button, AddThis social bookmarking tool, YouTube videos. Some of these services may be used to track your behaviour on other websites and we have no control over this.

By continuing to use this website without adjusting your browser's cookie settings, you agree that we can place these cookies on your device.

As is true with most websites, our server will automatically log data regarding each visit such as your IP address, browser type, referring/exit pages, and operating system. We may use this information to monitor server errors, server administration or to monitor visitor behaviour. It is not possible for this to be disabled on a per-user basis so you must leave this website (and the internet entirely) if you do not agree to this happening.

This privacy policy applies to this website only and does not apply to any websites that this website may link to.

If you have any questions/comments about privacy, you should contact us using the link below.

[Simon]

Haha, more laws that assert nearly all users are dumb (spot-on) and thus requires the internet to be dumb-safe (absolutely moronic).

-- Simon

[Adam]

Well said, Simon!

It's a pain in the arse for me, but I'm sure there'll be some way around it.

[ccexplore]

Sorry to hear this, especially surreal since people all over the world can access this forum, including places with different laws.  Sounds like you'll have to implement something like this:

1) for each operation on the forum that needs a cookie, and user hasn't previously given consent, go to a consent page
2) if user not given consent after reading page, operation will have to continue w/o the cookie, even if it might mean something becomes broken to the user
3) if given consent, this is remembered (maybe via a cookie on the user's machine, haha http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/winktounge.gif" alt=";P" title="Wink-Tongue" class="smiley" />) so that the next time the user triggers the operation again, they won't be bothered by the consent page again.

Optionally, for future people in process of registering to the forums, the consent page can be part of the registration process, to make it less annoying.

[finlay]

Well... the only thing you use cookies for is logging people in automatically, right? So at the login screen just make the user tick a box to say that they're alright with having it logged in a cookie. Frankly, from what i can tell, it's basically a confusing shambles of a law that nobody really knows how to implement, or what they're meant to do to avoid being penalised. And I don't think you're going to be targeted by it, at any rate. I think it's more aimed at sites that install marketing cookies in the background, and generally being unscrupulous with cookies.

One site I just read said that if it's necessary to log a cookie for the user to use the site, it doesn't really require permission...