Automatically Manage Consent On Your Website

What is consent management?

Consent management is the process of informing users about your personal data collection, use, and sharing practices and their choices over if, how, and when that data gets collected or used.

For this process, you might implement any of the following:

• Legal agreements
• Web policies
• Managed system
• Internal procedures
• A mix of all of the above

Consent management helps businesses comply with the complex and nuanced requirements outlined by data privacy legislation around the globe, like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the amended California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

These regulations deal with consumer consent and describe their rights regarding their ability to opt into or out of certain data collection and processing choices.

While these laws can be very similar, they often also have important but subtle differences, and it’s your responsibility to ensure you’re meeting all of the various requirements if your business falls under the jurisdiction of multiple data privacy laws.

What is user consent and do you need it?

User consent refers to legally getting explicit, informed permission from website visitors to collect and use their personal information, including through tracking technology or internet cookies.

“Consent,” as defined by Article 7 of the GDPR, explicitly means:

“… 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.”

While the GDPR explicitly calls for entities to get opt-in consent from consumers before any data collection occurs, laws like the amended CCPA mandate that you have opt-out consent options in place for consumers who don’t want categories of their personal information used in specific ways, which includes the use of cookies or other tracking technologies.

What does the user consent collection process look like?

While the specific details for collecting and storing user consent choices vary from one CMP tool to the next, let’s briefly summarize what this process looks like from a technical perspective.

First, an individual visits your website, which renders in a tab in their internet browser.

Then, our consent banner pops up and immediately asks if they choose to accept, deny, or customize the cookies and trackers your website uses and wants to place on their browser.

• If the user accepts consent: Their data is collected and processed unless they change their minds. Our tools save their choice in the consent preference center, and a record of their decision is safely stored in secure data systems. They can change their preferences at any time.
• If the user denies consent: The trackers and servers are blocked from their browsers, and no data collection or processing occurs. Their choice gets saved in the consent preference center, and a record of their decision is safely stored in secure data systems. They can come back to change their minds at any time.
• If the user doesn’t choose: The consent banner continues to pop up and asks for their preferences as an unobtrusive sticky menu.

When users return to your site later, our system retains and honors their consent choices in accordance with legislation like the GDPR and the amended CCPA, making privacy compliance easy.

What is a consent management platform (CMP)?

A consent management platform or CMP simplifies some of the legal guidelines outlined by data privacy legislation, so you don’t have to perform all steps manually.

A CMP obtains explicit consent from website visitors through a consent banner before placing any trackers or cookies on their browsers.

A good consent management platform will scan your site for cookies, automatically categorize and block them, provide a cookie policy, store consent logs, and keep everything updated automatically.

Why do you need a Consent Management Platform?

The best consent management platforms help you comply with data privacy laws and regulations, including the previously mentioned GDPR, the CCPA as amended by the CPRA, and the Virginia CDPA.

Under those pieces of legislation, cookies and other trackers legally qualify as personal information.

Because these laws have what is known as an extraterritorial scope, their jurisdiction extends beyond normal territorial boundaries and most likely applies to your business.

So to use trackers or cookies legally on your site, you must follow all guidelines outlined by these laws.

There are a lot of requirements to account for, which can take up hours of your precious time. Using a managed solution, like our CMP web tools, quickly takes care of all of those compliance issues, saving you time, money, and a massive headache.

How to manage consent on your website

You can manage consent on your website in two ways: manually or automatically. The manual way is not recommended unless you really know what you’re doing. There are a lot of steps that our CMP — backed by our legal team — can automate.

You can easily manage consent on your website by using our consent management platform to:

• Automatically scan your site to detect all cookies and trackers you’re using — and schedule future automatic scans to easily stay up-to-date.
• Categorize the cookies and trackers for you — the CMP tool immediately blocks specific scripts based on your users’ consent preferences.
• Choose the colors, fonts, display style, language, banner position, and more for the consent banner and preference center.
• Generate a cookie policy for you — it even updates in real-time whenever a future auto-scan occurs.
• Maintain consent logs that you can access right from your Termly dashboard if needed.