What is Intentional Consent?
Intentional consent puts clarity and control in the visitor’s hands. The idea is simple: people should understand what runs and why, choose deliberately, and change that choice later without friction. Cookie Compliance builds the banner, wording, and logging around that principle.
The idea behind Intentional Consent
- Accountable by design. The system records the decision and the enabled purposes so you can demonstrate how and when consent happened.
- Clarity over tactics. The experience explains purposes in plain language and avoids dark patterns. Scrolling or timeouts never count as consent.
- Parity of choices. Accept and decline stand side by side. Visitors can also open details before acting.
- Purpose-bound use. Consent enables only the purposes a visitor selects—nothing extra.
- Reversible and respectful. A Revoke Consent control stays available. People can revisit or withdraw their choice at any time.
How Cookie Compliance expresses consent
Cookie Compliance uses two layers that visitors and teams can understand:
- Access Levels — human-friendly presets: Private, Balanced, Personalized.
- Purpose Categories — the “why” behind processing: Basic Operations, Site Optimization, Content Personalization, Ad Personalization.
Access Levels toggle those purposes in a way that matches your policy. The banner shows the presets; the application holds the mapping.
Consent choices: 2 or 3 options
You choose whether the banner presents two or three choices:
- Two choices:
- Private or Reject (your configured mix of purposes)
- Personalized or Accept (only Basic Operations)
- Three choices:
- Private or Reject (Basic Operations only)
- Balanced or Accept Some (your declared “middle” preset)
- Personalized or Accept All (measurement + personalization, as configured)
Choose the model that best fits your policy and audience. The wording and layout keep both paths equally visible.
Default consent level (before any action)
Before a visitor acts, the banner uses a default consent level defined in the application. You may vary this by Geolocation (e.g., stricter defaults in the EU/UK). The default does not imply acceptance—it only sets the starting posture the page follows until the visitor chooses.
Examples:
- EU baseline → default = Private (only Basic Operations)
- Other regions → default = Balanced or your declared baseline
Consent duration
Cookie Compliance uses a single Duration parameter to control how long consent remains valid and when the banner asks again after it expires. You can offer a Consent duration selector to let visitors choose (e.g., 1–6 months), or hide it and rely on your preset.
Duration should match your legal basis and policy. Visitors can revoke or change their choice earlier via the Revoke Consent control.
Before consent: prior protection
- Nothing non-essential runs. Scripts and iframes that match providers in your catalog stay held until the visitor chooses.
- GPC (if enabled). When a browser sends Global Privacy Control, Cookie Compliance starts in a protected state and treats sale/sharing-related purposes (typically Ad Personalization) as off until the visitor explicitly opts in.
- Geolocation defaults. You set stricter or lighter defaults per region (e.g., EU, UK, US, CA, BR, Other). The banner shows the same choices, but starts from the right baseline.
After consent: immediate, consistent behavior
- The banner updates the running state right away; no page reload required.
- Consent Modes—Google, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft—read the same state. Tags degrade gracefully before consent and expand only after the visitor accepts the relevant purposes.
- Revoke or change updates behavior on the spot. On the next load, only the allowed providers run.