If your website is using any type of cookies, you’ll need a cookie policy. A cookies policy is a document that informs your users of the cookies you’re using on your website and why you’re using them.
In this short post, we’ll explain how to write a cookie policy, how you can create one, and provide you with a cookie policy template that you can use as a guide.
Let’s start from the basics. To understand if you need a cookie policy, you need to know what cookies are first.
Cookies are small data files generally stored on a user’s computer/browser. Every time you go back to a website you’ve already visited, cookies remember your preferences (such as your password or language).
Cookies can have different purposes:
If your website uses cookies – even just technical cookies – you’ll need a cookie policy.
Scan your site and find out now!
While a privacy policy makes legally required disclosures about your data processing activities in general, a cookie policy is a legal document that deals specifically with your use of cookies, as you’ll see in our cookie policy template below.
Having a cookies policy is a legal requirement under various privacy laws, such as the EU’s Cookie Law.
If you’re based in the EU, or you have EU-based users, you’ll need to comply with the ePrivacy Directive (also called Cookie Law).
The Cookie Law requires you to inform users that you’re using cookies on your site and obtain their consent before doing so.
In practice, you’ll need to:
👉 Learn more about the EU’s ePrivacy Directive
There are some elements that every generic cookie policy has to include:
Also, consider that your policy should be available in all the languages in which your services are provided.
Writing a cookie policy yourself may be difficult if you don’t have legal expertise. We always advise you to seek the help of a legal expert, or use a reliable online generator (with clauses written by legal experts), like iubenda!
If you’d still like to try writing your own cookie policy, you’ll need to:
*Note that if you have users from different regions (e.g. Europe and the US) simultaneously, you’ll need to write sections with the disclosures specific to those regions, otherwise you risk fines and other penalties like lawsuits.
💡 When it comes to figuring out the specific names of the cookies that run on your site, you can use one of the manual methods mentioned here or use our free Site Scanner to get an idea of the services running on your site.
You can create your cookies policy with online generators, like iubenda’s Privacy and Cookie Policy Generator.
iubenda can help you create a comprehensive cookie policy, with clauses written by actual lawyers.
All you need to do is:
To help you have a better idea of how a cookie policy should look like, here’s a cookie policy template. Just click the button below to open it 👇
It’s against your best interests as, legally, cookie policies need to be specific to the cookies and scripts running on YOUR site.
Creating your cookie policy has never been so easy!
Moreover, our Generator is supported by an international legal team, which takes care of updating your documents when the laws change. So you have just one thing left to do: focus on your business.
The solution to generate your Privacy Policy. Customizable from 1700+ clauses, available in 9 languages and self-updating
