johannes.b

Hey camu,
I absolutely agree with you, I thought exactly the same when reading this. I have not tried out a plugin like Cookilian yet and of course it will slow down your site, but as I already said, it’s either impossible or at least I (and most other freetime- or semiprofessional webdesigners, I guess) wouldn’t know how to run a plugin like WordPress without any cookies.
I looked around on Google a little bit and it seems like there is a draft for a law in Germany, but it’s not active yet (otherwise, I would have found thousands of german blog entries against the law ;)).
I think that the protest against this stupid EU-rule isn’t very popular because most “normal” web users do not even know what a cookie is or they do not care about it. Otherwise, webdesigners in the US and otherwhere outside the EU should be interested in this topic too because the law isn’t only for people who run a site there, but it also affects you when your servers are e.g. in Canada. Any european citizen could sue you for not informing him about something that he does not care about anyway? Seriously?
But I’m going away from our main topic ??
I think that the only solution for this are third-party-plugins. Maybe you can use the popup of those to explain why your site is slower now. And I’m sure that it’s less deterrent when you use a nice layout and a cool text that appeals nice to the visitor.

I think that the option for anonymizing IPs is something different, most of the other Analytics-Plugins allow this option and this problem cannot be solved with a third-party-plugin.

Johannes

Yes, the EU wanted the law to come on the 25th of May, but it didn’t. But of course, the law is going to come here sooner or later. But because of this, I do not really know much about the law and other plugins against it. Of course, the opt-in-form isn’t really nice, but I wouldn’t know how to run my site the way it is now without cookies.

I must admit that I do not really know a lot about the new EU-cookie-law, but in my country (Germany) this isn’t a national law yet and so I cannot be sued for not informing visitors about cookies. And, as long as I do not have to show a message to my visitors aking to allow or deny cookies, I won’t do it because it appears very deterrent.
Also, I do not think that the rules of the EU-cookie-law have to be included in SlimStat because there are plugins like Cookillian that allow to block all cookies on your page until the visitor allows or denies them.
For me personally, an option to anonymize IPs would be more important because the German law sees them as personal data that must not be saved without a clear opt-in (and because that would be to deterrent as well, I suggest to give a checkbox on the options page of SlimStat that allows the Admin to choose if the IPs are saved or not).
I’m really looking forward to the implementation of this because I like SlimStat very much, but unless this feature is included, it would be “illegal” to use and I have to use other plugins (believe my, they’re all terrible ;-))

Great ??

Oh, I didn’t think of themes with this idea…. Yes, I guess you’re right.
Thank you very much for your time.

Looking forward to the new version,
Johannes

Thank you, questions 1 and 3 are completely answered ??

When you embed the iFrame that Piwik gives you, a little text with information about the Cookie is given (“You can decide here if your browser installs a tracking cookie with allows the admin to. […] Please click the following checkbox for diabling this option”). Then, under that, there is a little, checkbox (with an x in it if the user did not use opt-out yet) and behind the checkbox it says “Your visits are currently tracked by Piwik, click to opt-out” or “Your visits are currently not tracked by Piwik, click here to opt-in” if the user had already used opt-out.
And yes, as far as i know, this sets an opt-out-cookie for this user.

And another idea (not really necessary, but making the ‘legal’ usage of SlimStat easier):
Lawyers recommend that the possibiity to opt-out doesn’t only have to be offered in the privacy policy of the page, but it also has to be shown noticeable and striking when users visit the page for the first time (not on every visit), e.g by showing it under the top menu with black font on yellow background. It doesn’t need to have the checkbox there, just a little hint like “This site uses cookies to count visitors, to opt-out, click here”, linking to the privacy policy.
I think (or hope) it isn’t too complicated to create and include this, but I have to admit that I’m really not very goot at coding ??

Of course I already voted 5/5 for SlimStat. It’s really great and you support is very helpful.

Johannes