Businesses that have websites will be aware of the regulations that govern the use of ‘cookies’. Recently, an opinion of the Advocate General of the European Union on questions referred to the Court of Justice by the Federal Court of Justice in Germany on the use of cookies on websites stressed the need for ‘active consent’ by the web user to be given before a cookie is stored.

The Advocate General ruled that there is no valid consent ‘where the storage of information, or access to information already stored in the user’s terminal equipment, is permitted by way of a pre-ticked checkbox which the user must deselect to refuse his consent and where consent is given not separately but at the same time as confirmation in the participation in an online lottery’.