The EU-driven legislation designed to protect web-users from being tracked by cookies without their consent comes into full force this year. Companies with online services need to ensure compliance with the law as the Independent Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has powers to penalise non-compliant companies after May.

Moves to control the way internet browsing habits are monitored and used to direct online advertising campaigns are set to have a major impact on the work of digital marketers and advertisers when new privacy legislation is enforced.

The Regulations make it clear that UK businesses and organisations running websites need to get consent from visitors in order to store cookies on users’ computers. The European Directive on which these Regulations are based was revised in the UK with the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations last year which included added powers for serving a monetary penalty on an organisation when ‘very serious’ breaches of the regulations occur.

It also introduced new powers for the Information Commissioner to investigate breaches of the regulations by obtaining information from certain third party organisations.

Michael Ross from eCommera, says: "There is significant risk that all of our advantages will be squandered by unnecessary regulation. We are already seeing how regulatory constraints can catalyse an exodus of e-commerce businesses to more favourable jurisdictions.

"This is not a fantasy. Many of the great names in e-commerce – Amazon, eBay, Skype, Apple, Rakuten – have a significant contracting entity in Luxembourg. Some of this is clearly for tax reasons, but also the Luxembourg government is very e-commerce friendly. One can be assured that the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg will be less likely to litigate against its domestic businesses than the UK’s Information Commissioner."

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