Obligations

Before you answer, the screen says: “Four questions, once. The list of what the law asks of your site adapts to your answers.” The answers are saved without reloading the page.

The countries are those of the Laws screen: 248 countries, regions and US states.

Since Cookie Rocks Audit 2.9.12, Who are your visitors? has a picker: type a few letters of a country, a state or a province, and pick it from the list, with its flag. Shortcuts tick whole regions at once, such as the European Union and the EEA, or the whole world. A summary bar of your answers shows while you answer. Since 2.9.13, it is the only summary, with the form open or closed: point at a flag to see the name of its country.

Your answers show in one summary bar at the top of About your site, with the form open or closed: Based in, Visitors, Site and Hosting. Each country has a round flag: point at it to see its name. Many visitors read as a count, such as “12 countries” or “3 states or provinces”. A question left empty reads “Not answered yet”. To change the answers, click Edit.

To change your answers, click the pencil icon next to About your site. Its tooltip reads Change the answers. The questions open again, and the button at the bottom reads Save the answers.

Your answers also count on other screens: the points of the Overview, the sheets shown first on the Laws screen, and the checks of your current banner (choice duration, buttons of equal weight, a way to change one’s mind, Global Privacy Control). See Legal questions.

Under the questions, Law updates has one box: Tell me when a law or a cookie tool used on this site changes. It is ticked by default. Once a day, Cookie Rocks then reads two lists signed by its legal watch on feed.cookierocks.com:

• the alerts, of which it keeps only what concerns your countries and your cookies. They show under News and alerts on the Overview;
• the law fact sheets, kept up to date between two versions of the plugin.

The screen says that nothing about your site or your visitors is sent. In detail: the request carries no parameter and no cookie. Like any request, it reaches the server with your server’s IP address. It also carries a token common to every Audit, which identifies no site. With Cookie Rocks Pro and a valid key, that token is your licence key.

Untick the box to stop both lists. The sheets delivered with the plugin are then used.

The points come in three groups, each with its colour: To do first (yellow), then Done (green), then Good to know (blue). Each point starts with its coloured label, then its title. Only the first point to do that has a button gets the main (blue) button. The other points to do have a plain button. Points done or good to know have a simple link instead. Many points also have a Source: link to the official text or guidance, which opens in a new tab. Under the list, the screen gives the date the rules were last checked: “This summary helps you find your way; it does not replace a lawyer’s advice.”

Your cookie banner

These points are checked against the banner your site already has. Cookie Rocks reads its settings when it can, and the last scan of the Cookies screen. What it cannot check is marked Good to know, with “Check it in your cookie banner.”

Your countries, your site, your hosting

Cookie Rocks reads your privacy policy page and looks for what it should contain. This part works before you answer the four questions. The page read is the one chosen on the Consent screen, or else the privacy page of WordPress. It must be published.

The check searches for words, in English, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Czech, Danish, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Hungarian, Finnish, Greek, Bulgarian, Estonian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Slovak, Slovenian, Irish, Maltese, Norwegian Bokmål, Icelandic, Arabic, Catalan, Turkish, Japanese, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Hindi, Serbian, Macedonian, Albanian, Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Mongolian, Malay, Bangla and Nepali. It is a help to check, not a verdict. Each point is Found, To add or, for a language that could not be read, To check. A missing point comes with a text to copy and a Copy button. The words in brackets are yours to fill in. Edit the page opens it in the editor.

• Who is responsible for the data.
• How to contact you about personal data. An email address counts.
• Why you may use the data (legal basis).
• How long you keep the data.
• The visitors’ rights.
• The right to complain to the authority. The text to copy follows the places your site addresses: “If you live in the European Union, you can complain to the data protection authority of your country (…)”, then the authority of the United Kingdom or of California when you address them, and the authority of the owner’s country when it is known.
• The services and cookies used on the site. Found when the page names each tool found on your site, when a published cookie policy page exists in that language, or when the page contains [cookie_rocks_policy].
• Transfers outside the European Union. Only when your site targets the European Union, the EEA or the United Kingdom, and uses a tool of Google, Meta, LinkedIn, Microsoft, X, Snap, Pinterest or Hotjar.
• Where the site is hosted. Only when your answer on this screen gives a hosting country outside the European Union and the EEA. The text to copy says “This site is hosted in this country: …”, and the privacy policy must name the same country.
• Your representative in the countries of your visitors. Only when one is required.
• How you respond to browser privacy signals (Global Privacy Control, Do Not Track). Only when you address the United States: California and Colorado ask the privacy policy to say this.
• How to change your cookie choices.
• The date of the last update.

The texts to copy are in the language of the page when Cookie Rocks has them. Otherwise they are in English, and the screen says so: “The texts to copy are in English: Cookie Rocks does not have them in this language yet.”

On a site in several languages (Polylang or WPML), each published translation of the page is read, with one list per language and its count, for example “7 of 10”. A language without a translation is marked To translate.

• The points about your banner are checked on the settings of the Cookie Rocks banner. Buttons such as Open the Consent page, Open the Appearance page or Open Proof of consent take you to the setting.
• One-click fixes: Keep choices for the right number of months, Honour the GPC signal, Create the page for the cookie policy.
• Extra points: Every cookie of the site described (button Classify the cookies), Services loaded by Google Tag Manager, and, when all your countries allow them, Audience measurement without consent and Information mode (button See the option). When the register of proofs is copied to an outside storage, a point asks you to name that provider in your privacy policy, and the privacy policy check adds Where the record of choices is copied.