One of the most common questions we receive is “Does my website use cookies?” This is an important question to then evaluate whether you have to comply with privacy and cookie laws. Luckily, there’s an easy way to find out.
👀 In this post, we’ll show you how to identify the cookies used by your website using our free tool and how you can make sure that your use of cookies complies with GDPR and ePrivacy requirements.
Short on time? Jump to… ⬇️
Firstly, let’s recap what a cookie is.
A cookie is a small piece of data that is sent from a website or app and often stored on a user’s computer via their web browser.
Cookies can be first-party (cookies actually produced by your website or app) or third-party (cookies in use on your site or app, but which are produced by third-party services like widgets, iframes, scripts etc.)
Regardless of if the cookies being run on your site are first-party or third-party, you’re still required to comply with laws like the GDPR and ePrivacy (Cookie Law) and block non-exempt cookies prior to user consent. So, how do you answer the question: “does my website use cookies?”
The cookies running on your website are likely the result of the combined use of different tools, widgets, scripts etc.
One of the easiest ways for you to figure out which cookies are installed by your site is to identify the services running on your site. Our free site scanner identifies services running on your site, making it incredibly easy for you to identify potential cookie sources.
Simply:
The site scanner identifies most, if not all, services running on your site.
The Privacy and Cookie Policy Generator that it’s a part of, integrates seamlessly with our Privacy Controls and Cookie Solution to make it easy for you to block cookie scripts prior to consent, collect consent and asynchronously run those cookie scripts once consent has been collected.
You can identify cookies using a free scanning software, a browser extension like Wappalyzer and BuiltWith. You can also easily find this information in the development console of browsers like Chrome or Firefox. Keep reading for a guide on how to do this.
💡 For more info on the different ways to identify cookies running on your site, read this guide. Otherwise, you can get started right away with Cookie Law and GDPR compliance by clicking the button below!
