What is a Cookie Consent Manager and why do you need software for it?

What is a Cookie Consent Manager

A cookie consent manager is software that you can plug into your website code to run everything to do with the use of cookies on your site. Some countries around the world have what is commonly known as Cookie Law which covers the regulation on the use of non-essential cookies. A cookie consent manager keeps your website compliant with these laws.

CookieScan is the best cookie consent management software you can get.

If you take into consideration the law that governs how cookies are used, you need to consider:

  • The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
  • The ePrivacy Directive, soon to become a regulation in Europe
  • The Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulation, the UK law for the control of cookies among other things.
  • The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), is the only real data protection legislation in the USA and controls how people’s data is used and cookies.
  • Any other cookie law in the world

Trying to keep your website compliant with all these laws, in a seamless way would be impossible without using CookieScan.

What is cookie consent management software?

Cookie Consent Manager Software or CookieScan consent management is a way to control how cookies are used on your website and how you can demonstrate compliance with the data protection laws and the cookie law in general. CookieScan once plugged into your website will scan your site for all first and third-party cookies used and categorise them. The five categories are:

Necessary Cookies (also known as Strictly Necessary or Essential cookies) are essential to navigate around a website and use its features. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to use basic services like viewing other pages, etc. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you’ve been on the internet.

These cookies are always turned on as we do not have to gain your consent to set them.

Examples of how we use ‘necessary’ cookies include:

  • Setting unique identifiers for each unique visitor, so site numbers can be analysed.
  • Navigation of the website pages.

Statistics Cookies collect data for statistical purposes on how visitors use a website; they don’t contain personal information such as names and email addresses and are used to improve your user experience of a website.

For us to set these cookies we need your consent, so the default setting is they are turned off until we gain your informed consent to allow them.

Here are some examples of how we use Statistical cookies:

  • Gathering data about visits to the website, including numbers of visitors and visits, length of time spent on the site, pages clicked on, or where visitors have come from.
  • For comparison with other websites using data collected by industry-accepted measurement and research companies.

Information supplied by Statistic cookies helps us to understand how you use the website; for example, whether or not you have visited before, what you looked at or clicked on and how you found us. We can then use this data to help improve our services. We generally use independent analytics companies to perform these services for us and when this is the case, these cookies may be set by a third-party company (third party cookies).

Preference cookies (also known as Functional cookies) allow users to customise how a website looks for them: they can remember usernames, language preferences, and regions, and can be used to provide more personal services like local weather reports and traffic news.

For us to set these cookies we need your consent, so the default setting is they are turned off until we gain your informed consent to allow them.

Here is an example of how we use functionality cookies:

  • Remembering if you’ve been to the site before so that messages intended for first-time users are not displayed to you.

Marketing cookies (also known as Targeting cookies) are used to deliver advertisements more relevant to you but can also limit the number of times you see an advertisement and be used to chart the effectiveness of an ad campaign by tracking users’ clicks. They can also provide security in transactions. They are usually placed by third-party advertising networks with a website operator’s permission but can be placed by the operator themselves.

They can remember that you have visited a website, and this information can be shared with other organisations, including other advertisers. They cannot determine who you are though, as the data collected is never linked to your profile.

For us to set these cookies we need your consent, so the default setting is they are turned off until we gain your informed consent to allow them.

Unclassified Cookies are cookies that are used on websites and no information is available about their purpose. When these cookies are identified on your site CookieScan will let you know about them and even list them in the pop-up or Cookie banner for the site visitor to see, but not inf=formation will be available as to their purpose. All the site visitors will see is ‘Pending’.

CookieScan consent management will continue to research these cookies and when a purpose can be found, they will be updated and assigned to the appropriate Category. CookieScan will also build your cookie policy or notice and update this every time the site is scanned.

CookieScan will record the consent given by the website user for each category and retain this consent list for future use if needed. It is important as a website owner to be able to show when consent is given and when it is not. If a site visitor makes a complaint that they have been receiving marketing material after visiting your site and they claim they did not consent to marketing cookies, you will need this report to defend yourself of acknowledge that there is a system error and correct it.

So use CookieScan consent management as your cookie consent manager and be safe with all the cookie laws.

How to control cookies

A website visitor can control cookies in a number of different ways. Firstly they can change the setting on their device to block all cookies or Black list and White list cookies. This means they put together a list of websites they will allow using cookies and a list of sites they don’t want cookies used on. This is very difficult to manage and for the average website visitor, not very practical.

The easiest way is for the website owner to put cookie consent software on the site that controls the cookies. This will then allow the site visitor to either consent to the use of cookies or decline the use of cookies.

CookieScan does all of this for you.

What is cookie consent?

GDPR Cookie consent management is like any other consent defined in law. The GDPR gave the first real definition for consent when it came into force on the 25th May 2018.

Consent is defined in Article 4(11) as: “any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her”.

So using the GDPR cookie consent management platform is the same as the ePrivacy directive cookie consent and any other cookie consent in the world, where they have a cookie law.

So using a consent manager, like CookieScan will provide the platform for the collection of cookie consent and keep a full record for you, in case you ever need it.

About Our Cookie Consent Software – CookieScan

CookieScan is the best cookie consent management platform on the market today. Once the code is embedded into your site’s headers, it will regularly scan your site and identify all the first-party and third-party cookies used. You select the type of pop-up or cookie banner you want to be displayed on your site, change the colour theme of the pop-up or cookie banner to match the site’s theme and away you go.

CookieScan will allow site users to select what cookies they want to consent to and what ones they don’t. CookieScan will remember this preference for each site visitor by placing a cookie on their device which records their choice.

CookieScan will produce a cookie policy or notice with the cookies used on the site. This is automatically updated every time your site is scanned. The cookie policy is a legal requirement under the ePrivacy, GDPR and GDPR CCPA laws, so you have to have one.

Ensure your website is PECR and ePrivacy compliant

Create a FREE CookieScan account today and start managing your cookie consent.

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