Cookie 'ban' bad news for British ecommerce

The proposed European Union ban on cookies will not only cost UK businesses billions of pounds, it could seriously damage consumer confidence in the internet.

E-tail industry figures, internet bodies and established corporations are astonished at the lack of knowledge about the invisible tracking devices shown by the EU in their decision to ban cookies.

James Roper, chief executive of the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), said: "It's a horror story. This is legislative nonsense, these people aren't even thinking in terms of the internet."

Martyn Jobber, senior analytics consultant at website measurement company Netgenesis, agreed with Roper: "These MPs have no idea how intrinsic cookies are to the workings of a website."

To comply with the EU ecommerce directive that covers electronic media and privacy rights, Roper said businesses in the UK will face massive spending to redesign websites in order to replace cookies with another device.

Roper said: "We estimate the ecommerce directive - due to be launched on 17 January 2002 - will cost UK businesses more than £11bn.

"The directive is asking companies to apply things that are against best practice and what they want to do, without sufficient notice, at a time when half the industry's been sacked."

E-tailer Amazon is among the sites which will be seriously affected by the ban because of heavy site personalisation and its use of shopping baskets that require a cookie to operate.

Amazon said in a statement: "Amazon believes there is absolutely no need to ban cookies and worse yet, such a ban could seriously impede consumer access to the online services.

"We believe consumers already have excellent security under existing EU, UK, German and French data protection legislation, with which [we] are fully compliant."