Berkshire, UK: 26 May 2011 - As changes to the EU’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive come into effect, jetNEXUS, a leading provider of Application Delivery technology report on the widespread confusion and difficulties organisations face in becoming compliant with new cookie usage law.

Driven by a desire to add to the level of protection afforded to the privacy of internet users, the new regulation shifts the emphasis away from the user to ‘opt out’ of allowing cookies to be stored on their access device. Instead it places the burden firmly on the website providers to actively obtain the user’s permission first.

This is evident in the framing of the legislation itself and was also made clear by European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding in a speech to the European Parliament;

"I want to explicitly clarify that people shall have the right – and not only the possibility – to withdraw their consent to data processing. The burden of proof should be on data controllers – those who process your personal data. They must prove that they need to keep the data, rather than individuals having to prove that collecting their data is not necessary."

The regulation does recognise that not all cookies are the same and there are some which may be deemed “strictly necessary” (i.e. required for the service to function) but also makes clear that ‘intrusive’ and third parties cookies could be especially problematic.

Given that most companies will have little idea how many cookies their sites now utilise, or even the intended function of many legacy cookies, ensuring compliance will prove extremely difficult for many. In the words of Christopher Graham of The Information Commissioner’s Office, “The implementation of this new legislation is challenging and involves significant technological consideration”, but he is clear that “we will undoubtedly start to receive complaints about companies who are using cookies without consent”.

Greg Howett, CEO at jetNEXUS commented that, “This legislation could have remarkably far reaching consequences and you can see that an awful lot of people will be confronted with having to comply but won’t know where to start in terms of identifying their site’s cookies, determining what data they may be collecting and so on”.

Mr Howett also said that he was confident that jetNEXUS would be able to help their clients, who include The Financial Times, William Hill and The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, ensure that their websites are compliant. “Happily we have both the toolkit and the expertise we need to help our clients address these issues, but I fear that there will be a lot of people out there who won’t even know where to begin”.

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About jetNEXUS

jetNEXUS is an international supplier of Load Balancing, Application Acceleration and Application Delivery technology.

We are a successful, profitable and privately owned company with over 10 years' industry experience. Our product portfolio is accessible to a wide and varied client base, ranging from simple, cost effective point solutions to Enterprise-grade application delivery gateways.

We understand that this technology is mission critical and as such, maintain a tenacious focus on the quality of our products and technical support. Via a network of head offices in London, United States and Malaysia, jetNEXUS continually strives to deliver outstanding support to our partners and customers regardless of location.

Our approach to this international presence is: Global Voice, Local Accent. With a pragmatic attitude to product development, jetNEXUS aims to include the features that deliver the biggest difference to the end user experience. These features are packaged in a format that is flexible, intuitive and easy to configure. We want to ensure that every interaction we have with our customers and partners is positive.

We love our business and we want this passion to be reflected in our product quality, innovative features and attitude towards support.

For more information please visit www.jetnexus.com