I thought I would clear up to some misconceptions regarding the use of third party cookies on a site and in paticular statistic tracking cookies such as Google Analytics Urchin cookie. There are two misunderstandings regarding the use of cookies, 1 that its illegal to store a third party cookie on a persons computer, 2 it breaches accessibility guidelines neither of these are true. You do however need to declare the use of third party cookies both in your privacy document and in your P3P document and compact headers.
Google Analytics holds your data on machines in the United States and as such you need to reference that it is held under US law which may differ from local laws of the host site.
If you need further proof that its perfectly legal to use Google Analytics in the UK and elsewhere have a look at www.ico.gov.uk which is the site for the Information Commissioner’s Office the people who regulate and enforce privacy in the UK and who tracks stats using, guess what Google Analytics!
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