Since the amended Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, commonly known as the EU Cookie Law, came into force on 26 May 2012, website owners in Europe have been forced to seek ways to comply with the new regulations.

Designed to protect consumers' online privacy, the Directive focuses, among other things, on the use of tracking technology, including cookies. In short, it requires that websites must inform their visitors about the use of cookies and obtain the visitors’ consent before placing cookies on their computers.

Initially, the cookie legislation caused quite a lot of apprehension as site owners were concerned that they would be forced to get users to opt-in to being tracked using cookies with such means as intrusive and ugly banners and pop-ups.

Fortunately enough, the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) took a lenient approach to enforcement and soon issued new guidance that stated that organizations could rely on individuals’ implied consent to serve them with cookies under certain circumstances legitimately. In practice, this means that websites can get away with simply making their cookie policy more prominent rather than explicitly asking for users to accept cookies.

So, to make your X-Cart 5 based website compliant with the EU legislation on cookies, you will need to implement a decent cookie policy page and make sure your website visitors know where to find it. As a possible solution, we recommend providing a link to this page in your website’s footer menu. Another way would be to add information on how your site uses cookies to your store’s Terms & Conditions or Privacy Policy pages.

Instructions for how to add pages to your X-Cart store - like a Cookie policy page - can be found in this article:

An explanation of how you can include a link to a page in your store’s footer menu is available here:

Suggested reading on the EU Cookie Law compliance: