These cookies act as a memory system for that website which contains different information like user preferences, passwords, locations etc.
These cookies are regulated by European GDPR and California CCPA as they can track personal information. Cookie checker is an especially important digital tool which helps any website owner to check their utilization of cookies and trackers consequential.
GDPR or The General Data Protection Regulation is a European regulation which observes the use of personal data of any organization or company. It is an especially important regulation regarding data protection in the last two decades, and it has served for many organizations throughout the world, serving from the European Union. This regulation sets strict rules on data usage, handling, transparency, and user consent and by this people gets control over their data and privacy protection. Any organization must keep track of their collected data and their processing methods.
The Information cookies contain:
- User preference like themes, fonts, sizes etc.
- GPS location and user currency.
- Shopping activity and invoice details
- Website visit frequency and visit durations
- Passwords and usernames
- Purchase recommendation and user field of interest.
Thus cookies can keep track of detailed personal data and can create virtual user profiles with gain information.
There are different types of cookies, and the variation in them is done by their purpose, duration, and provenance.
- Cookies variation based on provenance
- First party cookies: cookies created by the website itself
- Third-party cookies: Cookies created by other websites
- Cookies variation based on the duration
- Session cookies: Temporary cookies, which gets deleted after each session
- Permanent cookies: long lifetime cookies with a lifespan around and more than 12 months. Most of the cases, the expiry date of permanent cookies are written on the cookie.
- Cookies variation based on purpose:
These are strictly necessary cookies, Preference cookies, Statistics cookies, marketing cookies etc.
GDPR in the case of cookie
GDPR contains strict rules by which a cookie should be maintained and track personal data. Basically, cookies do not act as a threat to a personal computer. It does not act as any malware or such. These are small passive files or texts which contains a user’s digital footprint. But this saved information can be accessed by third parties to get personal user information. The GDPR has made the process easy for the user to understand the issues and what is being done to his or her personal information and for which purpose.
Website audit: cookie checker
General data protection regulation or GDPR has the most important impact on how a website is using user’s data and tracking users by means of cookies. The GDPR regulates the collection and the processing, and even the selling of individual user’s personal data inside the European Union. By the same process, CCPA or California consumer privacy act regulates all of the above for California residents. Collecting, tracking, and marketing information and data of cookies fall under the category of personal data in GDPR.
Personal information is defined under GDPR as “any information that relates to an identified or identifiable living individual. Different pieces of information, which is collected together, can lead to the identification of a particular person, also constitute personal data”, this definition is provided by the European Union.
Cookie checker conducts website audit to find out what the cookies of a particular website collect. Most of the websites save around 20 cookies for the single user profile; these cookies even keeps track of IP address, geolocation, preferences for targeted marketing purpose. Most of the website owners even do not have the full idea what the cookies of their own website collect and does. Many of the websites contain third party cookies which the website owner remains unaware of. But as a website owner, it is his or her own responsibility to check and maintain cookies saved by their own website into the user’s browser.
To maintain privacy for website users, website owners should be aware and have control over all the first-party cookies as well as all other third-party cookies which are operating and tracking via their website. Thus a cookie checker comes into play. A cookie checker detects all the operating cookies to the website owners and acknowledges them for their own and their users' data protection and saves all from abuse of personal information.
For the consequential use of the website cookies, both first party and third party for GDPR the keyword is prior consent
Cookie consent checklist for GDPR
Using GDPR website owners cannot set any cookies but has the necessity to gain the consent of the website user, which is known as prior consent. In this, all of the cookies on the website must be kept in pause until the prior consent of the website user is available. The consent of the user must be based on the detailed knowledge on what data are being tracked and for what purpose. This is compulsory for handling all personal data through both first and third-party cookies in the website or any other tracking method available. There must be an easy way for the user to take back the consent. The website owner can only prior ask for user consent if they know all the functionalities of the operating cookies in their website, and this can be done with website audit with the help of cookie checker.
