Website Tracking User Activity
There are NEW legal privacy concerns with website tracking of your website visitors. You should now have due regard for this:
UK Government Advice On New Cookie Regulations
New European Legal Directive On Computer Stored Cookie Tracking And Information Use
You can now clearly see that even an innocent website owner who subscribes to website tracking services may now be acting illegally.
In re-post to 'invasion of privacy accusations' I would simply say that the Internet has spammers, hackers and individuals whose activity needs to be tracked, monitored and routed out of web site activities. Having traceability is a core safeguard to retaining control of any website and the content upon such a site. Many would see this as a legal minimum duty of the website owner.
The key issues are:
- How to describe your tracking information?
- HAVE YOU GOT USER CONCENT prior to tracking?
- Do they know what is being recorded on their computer via a session cookie?
- Do you know what this means because if you don't then you will fall foul of the law?
- Do you know what is being tracked by your 3rd party subscription service?
- How do you use the information you gather?
If you are unsure then you need to audit your website for all means of tracking and logging user activity.
