Cookies and tracking .

[thibaultdp]

in theory or in practice?

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In theory you’re only tracked when you accept the cookie. You might have been tracked before you touch accept, but it should only be sent to your analytics program (Google analytics most of the time) after you press accept.

It could also be that when you don’t click accept, data is still being sent to GA, but anonymised.

In practise, you’re being tracked whether you click accept or you don’t. Really depends on how far they went with being GDPR compliant but i’ve seen way more sites doing piss all than sites who are 100% compliant.

[tenhourguy]

Whether you receive cookies before accepting depends on the website. You can clear a website’s (and its third parties’) cookies and watch them potentially repopulate if you can be bothered with the experiment.

If a user declines cookies, whether this results in a bounce or not again depends. If you redirect users who have declined to a “sorry, you need cookies” page or to google.com like some websites bizarrely do, then that’s obviously a bounce. If the website remembers the user’s cookie preferences and doesn’t harass them over it, you should be good bounce-wise.