Consent and cookies

You decide whether your visitors must agree before they are measured. You know which of your visitors the law covers. This page explains what the tracking code does so you can set it up the way you need.

What the code stores

The code sets no cookies. It keeps two random numbers in the browser's own storage: a visitor number (kept up to 13 months) and a session number (ends after 30 minutes of quiet). No name, email or IP address. The full list is on our Cookies page.

Sites with OneTrust, Cookiebot or Google Consent Mode

The code recognises these consent tools by itself. It waits for the visitor's answer for analytics, and stores and sends nothing until the visitor agrees. You don't need to set anything up.

While a page is loading, the code waits a moment (up to two seconds) to see whether a consent tool appears, and keeps and sends nothing in that time.

Sites with another consent tool

Two ways to hold measurement back until the visitor agrees:

• Fire the code from your consent tool, or on a consent trigger in Tag Manager. Anything sent before the code loads is queued, so nothing is lost.
• Mark the code as needing consent. Add data-consent="required" to the second script line. Then, on every page where the visitor has agreed, call ec("consent", "granted"). If they refuse, call ec("consent", "denied"); that answer is remembered.

If your consent tool might call ec before the code has loaded, add this line first so the calls are queued:

window.ec = window.ec || function () { (window.ec.q = window.ec.q || []).push(arguments); };

Sites with no consent tool

If your site has no consent tool, the code measures from the first page. That is your choice as the site owner.

What always stops measurement

• Global Privacy Control turned on in the visitor's browser.
• Opting out: a link with ?ec_optout=1, or ec("optout"). ec("optin") undoes it.

Visitors who haven't agreed see your page as it is and are left out of tests.

Your own visits

Eric's install check and "Show me first" previews are kept out of your numbers.