What Is Cookie Consent?
ConsentProof is a cookie consent checker that scans any website with a real browser and records which cookies and third-party trackers fire before the visitor consents.
A definition worth quoting
Cookie consent is a visitor's freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous agreement, expressed by a clear affirmative action, to a website storing or reading information on their device for purposes that are not strictly necessary to deliver the service they asked for.
Everything contentious in the field follows from one clause: the agreement has to exist before the storing or reading happens. A banner shown while the analytics script is already running has not collected consent; it has announced an intention.
What is exempt
Strictly necessary storage does not need consent: a session identifier that keeps you logged in, a shopping basket, a load-balancing token, a security cookie. The test is whether the service the visitor explicitly requested could work without it.
The exemption is about necessity to the visitor's requested service, not necessity to the business. Analytics that the business finds essential is still not strictly necessary in this sense.
How to tell if a site honours it
Open the site in a browser with no history for it, open developer tools before the page loads, and watch what is set and requested before you touch the banner. Anything non-essential in that window has not been consented to.
A scanner automates that procedure and, more usefully, repeats it later — because the interesting failure is not the one that exists today, but the one that arrives with next month's marketing tag.
Frequently asked
- What is cookie consent in simple terms?
- It is permission, given before the fact, for a website to store or read things on your device that it does not strictly need in order to work. Analytics, advertising and session-replay cookies all need it; a login session cookie does not.
- Is clicking anywhere on the page the same as consenting?
- No. Consent has to be an unambiguous affirmative action for the stated purpose. Continuing to browse, scrolling, or closing a banner are not consent.
- Do cookie rules apply to things that are not cookies?
- Yes. The rule covers storing or accessing information on a device, so local storage, session storage, pixels and device fingerprinting are in scope as well. A scan records storage writes alongside cookies for that reason.
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