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Since my site serves worldwide users, I feel it must comply with EU laws, especially the cookie law. I have some things on my site that uses cookies to save user settings, but on the EU laws page at http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm, it states:

user‑interface customisation cookies such as language or font preferences, for the duration of a session (or slightly longer)

I want to make my cookies last longer, but now I think long lasting cookies are hurting my adsense income greatly because then adsense believes I'm breaking EU law and thus I'll make less from visitors in the europe region, and on the slow days, those visitors were helping with my income.

Now my question is What exactly does "slightly longer" mean in the EU law? Does it mean something like I can't have a cookie last longer than the session time plus a couple of seconds or what?

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  • You are missing an important element. The EU law applies only to sites within the EU that serves the EU. To quote the same page: EUROPA websites must follow the Commission's guidelines on privacy and data protection and inform users that cookies are not being used to gather information unnecessarily. I do not believe that the EU law has any effect upon Adsense earnings. It certainly does not hurt to comply of course and I encourage anyone who wants to comply. However, it is annoying as strained poop to see these EU cookie banners hogging real-estate and otherwise getting in the way. Cheers!!
    – closetnoc
    Commented Jun 17, 2016 at 0:04
  • Thats why I put my EU banner at the bottom of my pages instead of at the top.
    – Mike -- No longer here
    Commented Jun 17, 2016 at 3:20
  • I use an HP Mini and even on the bottom, it is annoying to me. I find it very distracting. Not as annoying as all the pop-ups asking for my e-mail. I went to a site just yesterday, a completely legitimate site, several of these pop-ups annoyed me to cause a bounce which I do often when I see these. Do these folks realize that Google is targeting this techniques?? I suggest doing what you feel is right for you. What you are doing is perfectly fine. I am just a grumpy old guy that gets pissy when things get in the way of content. ;-) Cheers!!
    – closetnoc
    Commented Jun 17, 2016 at 3:32
  • Maybe? but when my income drops drastically, something is wrong, so I'm making sure I'm not missing anything. It's like I must understand chinese even though I know nothing about the language.
    – Mike -- No longer here
    Commented Jun 18, 2016 at 2:56
  • The best way to understand Chinese is to feed them. ;-) I do encourage you to try everything including bribes! Cheers!!
    – closetnoc
    Commented Jun 18, 2016 at 3:00

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The reason why the term "slightly longer" is used is that different websites have needs to have the cookies last different durations past the end of the session. The basic interpretation of this wording is that the cookie should not last too long after the end of the session as sessions tend to die due to a user exiting a site without clicking on a logout link and there needs to be wiggle room as to how long the session has been idle for and so deemed abandoned and when the cookie is removed, especially as the cookie needs to die based on expire date and not based on the end of the session (which would be on the server and not the browser if the user has left the site and the session has timed out). The basic premise is that the cookie should not last to cover multiple sessions, it should only last to cover a single session. How you implement that is up to you.

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