Cookie Scripts

What Is a Cookie Script?

For those of us somewhat new or alien to the developer’s world, the term script simply refers to the “scripting language” that a developer writes in when they code a website or an app or what have you.

It’s a string of text, a coding language that commands functions and executes tasks.

In the case of a cookie script, we’re talking about a piece of code that is inserted into the website’s coding to specifically deal with cookies and online tracking present and operating on that site.

A cookie is a file that is placed on your users’ devices when they visit your website. There are different cookies, some are necessary, meaning they are first-party cookies essential for the website to function. These are not privacy intrusive.

Others are marketing cookies or analytic cookies; third-party cookies that gather and share user data and sometimes sensitive, personal information with other companies. In fact, a billion-dollar industry has evolved around this gathering and sharing (i.e. selling) of personal information. We will have a comprehensive look at this later.

Cookie scripts are at the core of the Cookiebot consent management platform.

The Cookiebot™ scanner detects all of the tracking on your website, then automatically controls it until your users have given their prior consent (required by the GDPR in EU) or features a Do Not Sell My Personal Information link (required by the CCPA in California).

Not sure if your site is GDPR-compliant? Try our free cookie scanner and learn what data your website is collecting. Find out your compliance risk in minutes.

GDPR, CCPA and Cookie Scripts

In 2018, the EU the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which requires website operators to obtain the prior consent of a user before activating cookies and tracking on their website.

To live up to the GDPR as a website operator, you are required to not only know what cookies exists on your domain, you must also be able to control them.

Even if your website isn’t from the EU, you still have to comply with the GDPR if you have just one visitor from Europe. The GDPR protects all EU citizens and its jurisdiction is global

On January 1, 2020, California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) took effect, regulating how businesses are allowed to collect and sell the personal information of California residents.

If your website is located in California, you may be wondering how to be compliant with the California Consumer Privacy Act.

Protecting your website and its users from third-party trackers is and remains a solid solution against privacy intrusion by the ad tech industry.

This is what the Cookiebot Consent Management Platform does. We enable compliance the GDPR, CCPA, and more global privacy laws.

What Do Cookie Scripts Do?

Cookie scripts are the locks to your virtual house, so you and your guests can be safe.

When you implement cookie scripts on your website, they load a JavaScript that exposes, groups and controls all tracking, first or third-party, on your domain.

On the behavioral markets of the ad tech industry today, personal information and data is harvested and sold to the highest bidder billions of times each day in what is known as real time bidding systems that most people are completely unaware of.

This has frightening implications for human anonymity, autonomy and identity.

These markets are based on predictive analyzes of behavioral data (that means the data of who you are and what you do), and they profit greatly from attempting to herd users towards the predictive commercial outcomes.

Cookiebot was built in response to protect data and user privacy.

Our Cookiebot CMP Cookie Scripts

Cookiebot CMP is straightforward, and can be up and running in minutes. The automated scanner detects all cookies and trackers in use, and uses the information to populate your banner and cookie declaration.

As generators of cookie scripts, our mission is to protect privacy rights and personal data. Our cookie scripts are our humble, but thorough and effective contribution to this larger struggle raging today. Behind our Cookiebot CMP scripts are other parts of our technology that enables privacy on your website.

The Cookiebot CMP scanner maps out the cookies and tracking on your domains, and our cookie scripts block them into groups determined by their function.

Control is then handed over to the website visitor, who is presented with a cookie consent banner, in which they can choose what tracking they will allow to interact with their devices.

Look and lock with cookie scripts.

Cookiebot CMP operates two types of cookie scripts:

• A consent dialog script code, which is a cookie script that manages the prior consent banner required by the European GDPR.
• A cookie declaration script code, which is a cookie script that shows the end-user the entirety of your website's cookies and tracking, whether of own or third-party provenance tracking cookies.

The first cookie script will manage the cookie consent banner that you undoubtably know from most websites today.

The second cookie script will spawn the cookie declaration, in which each cookie is named, its provider identified, its purpose specified, and its expiration stated.

This useful declaration of all the otherwise hidden workings and wirings of your website can be easily integrated in your website’s privacy policy or cookie policy text. This way, you make sure that you are always up to date and honest about what your visitors can expect from your domain.

To implement the cookie consent banner on your domain, follow the three-step process here.

It is important to follow all three steps order to make sure that your website is GDPR compliant.

Once it is implemented correctly, the cookie consent banner will feature when a user arrives on your domain, giving them the choice of consent.

To see how Cookiebot CMP works on the inside, visit our developer page.

Try Cookiebot CMP for free now and scan your website to see how unlocked and wide-open your doors are, and how many strangers are roaming around in your virtual house already.

Behavioral Ads Benefit the Ad Tech Industry

The shocking handling of user data has often been justified by the industry itself with the argument that it provides huge value to publishers and businesses.

But a recent study published by the Wall Street Journal – the first empirical study of its kind – suggests that the impact of behaviorally targeted advertising on publisher’s revenue amounts to only a 4% increase in revenue.

“The harm to privacy, the expansion of government surveillance, the ability to microtarget and drive divisive content (…) were often justified to industry because of this ‘huge’ value to publishers”, Ashkan Soltani, co-author of the CCPA commented on the conclusions of the study. 

The real profits go to the ad tech industry, along with the power of surveillance.

For an industry that charges sixty cents for every dollar spent on digital ads, these are sobering findings.

For all of us fighting for a human future beyond digital surveillance, this is yet another look through the window at the ugly truth of surveillance capitalism.

Here at Usercentrics, we believe that a cookie solution like ours – with our cookie scripts that manage consent and our full tracking declarations – is the right way forward.