The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and ePrivacy Directive (ePR) affect how you as a website owner must obtain and store cookie consents from your visitors from the EU.
Try our free compliance test to check if your website’s use of cookies and online tracking is GDPR/ePR compliant.
Consent management is the act or process of managing consents from your users and customers for processing their personal data.
A proper consent management system encompasses the following:
The General Data Protection Regulation is an EU law that came into force on 25 May 2018. It affects all organizations, companies and websites, worldwide, that handle personal data of EU citizens.
The GDPR definition of personal data is very wide, and includes “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person”, including information that can be combined to single out or build a rich profile of a particular data subject.
Under this definition, tracking cookies, as used by most websites, are subject to the GDPR.
This means that you need proper consent from your users prior to the setting of all cookies that track personal data.
Consent is a key issue in the GDPR.
Article 7 of the GDPR treats the conditions for consent, and lists the following:
You most probably do.
If your website makes use of tracking cookies, you need to obtain consent from your users first.
Is your website hosted, for example on WordPress?
Do you make use of Google Analytics or similar tools on your website?
Do you have embedded content on your site, such as YouTube videos or social media buttons?
Then your website probably sets third party tracking cookies on your users’ browsers, and you need to implement a consent management system, that makes sure that...
There exists a vast range of software solutions that offer to manage your website’s user consents.
However, make sure to do your research properly and take care to choose one that is fully compliant and meets all of the above requirements.
Many of the offered tools, even amongst those that claim to be fully compliant, are not.
Cookiebot is a fully compliant software-as-a-service that helps you manage your cookies, offer granular consent and full transparency for yourself and for your users.
Once a month, Cookiebot scans all of the pages of your website, by directing a number of simulated users, that activate and detect all cookies and other known tracking technologies in use on all of the pages of your website.
The result of this audit is sent to you in a report, that can also be integrated on your website, for example as part of your privacy policy or cookie policy, thus ensuring that your information on the tracking activity is always up to date and accurate, as required by the GDPR.
Read about all of the functionality and features, on our Functions page on Cookiebot.com.
In doubt about what cookies are in use on your website?
Try our free test, that scans up to five pages of your website and sends you a report on the cookies and online tracking in use on these pages and gives you an indication of whether your website is GDPR/ePR compliant.
Insideprivacy: ePrivacy Directive
Performancefoundry: WordPress cookie consent notification plugins review
Make your website’s use of cookies and online tracking GDPR/ePR compliant today
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