Laws

At the top, the screen gives the date the sheets were last checked, and says plainly that it is not legal advice.

• The row of your countries: the country of the site owner and the countries you address, from your answers on the Obligations screen. When you address several US states, they show under one United States tab. One sheet shows at a time.
• The sheet: its header, key facts, the rules and details, with the sources beside them.
• Other countries: every other sheet, as cards in folded regions. The first two regions are open. Each region shows its number of sheets. Each card shows the flag, the name and the type of law.
• Find a country: a search field above the cards, which looks at the start of each word of a name, with buttons to keep one type of law. All shows every card. Each button shows its number of countries.

Before you answer the questions, the row of countries is replaced by a link, Open the Obligations page, and the list is titled All countries.

The regions, in order: Rules common to the European Union, Countries of the European Union and the EEA, Europe outside the European Union, Americas, Asia, Middle East, Africa, Oceania. In Americas, the US sheets come first, under one United States line that shows their number.

• The flag and the name. A US state shows the flag of the United States.
• A pill for the regime, that is what the law asks before a site uses cookies: Ask first (prior consent) (nothing runs before the visitor consents), Opt-out (cookies may run, and visitors must be able to opt out) or Notice only (tell visitors what the site uses).
• A summary in a few sentences, then What to respect, as a list.
• Language, on every sheet, at the same place: “The banner, its buttons and the cookie policy must be in …” when the law requires a language, “Recommended: …” when it advises one, otherwise “No language is required by law.”
• Facts, when the sheet has them: Audience measurement, Keeping the choice, Applies to, Maximum fine, Children’s consent, Cookie wall, Latest public decision (its date, with the short name of the authority), Representative, Changing one’s mind, AI on the site, Accessibility, Regional rules for a country whose regions or states add their own rules, and Coming into force for a rule that applies from a later date (“From [date]: …”).
• Official texts, with links. A text that is not published online is named without a link.
• Authority, with links to its guidance: its official name, its English name and its short name when it has them. For the European Union: “The data protection authority of each EU country”. A country without a data protection authority yet says so.
• What the Cookie Rocks banner does: how the Cookie Rocks banner applies this law.

Each US state with a comprehensive privacy law has its own sheet. One more sheet, United States: states without a comprehensive privacy law, covers the other states. There, no state rule makes you ask before using cookies in general, but federal law still applies. On the Obligations screen, United States covers all these sheets, or you can tick only some states.

For each state, Cookie Rocks also knows whether its law requires honouring the Global Privacy Control signal, and from which date. A browser can send this signal to say “do not sell or share my data”. The Overview and the Obligations screen use these dates.

• The points of the Obligations screen: one per country of your site, with the first sentence of its summary and a link to its sheet here, then the local representative, data kept in the country, hosting abroad.
• How long the visitor’s choice may be kept before asking again, and, in a few countries, how long the banner must wait before asking again after a refusal. When your countries differ, the strictest limit counts.
• Whether “Accept” and “Reject” must look alike, and whether visitors need a way to change their choice on every page. The strictest of your countries counts. When you address a whole region, or All regions, every sheet of that region counts. A site owner based in A country not in this list counts as the European Union.
• The Global Privacy Control points, for the states you address.

The sheets come with the plugin. Between two versions, Cookie Rocks reads once a day the sheets published by its legal watch, and uses them when they are newer. The list is signed, and contains data only, never code. You can turn this off on the Obligations screen: under Law updates, untick Tell me when a law or a cookie tool used on this site changes. The sheets of the plugin are then used. See Obligations for what this reading sends.

The texts of the sheets are translated apart from the rest of the Audit. A sheet can show in English while their translation is not installed on your site yet.

The same sheets are published on the Laws covered page of this site. For how Cookie Rocks applies them, see Legal questions.