How to make sure your user consent management is working and why you should do so
Dear Data-Traveller, please note that this is a Linkedin-Remix. I posted this content about managing user consent already on LinkedIn in August 2022, but I want to make sure it doesn’t get lost in the social network abyss.
For your accessibility-experience and also for our own content backup, we repost the original text here.
Have a look, leave a like if you like it, and join the conversation in the comments if this sparks a thought!
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We all fail in managing user consent.
I just failed with it. When checking my Posthog auto tracker data, I saw an event “clicked on a button with text Deny.” There is only one on my website from the cookie consent. But this should have never been tracked since I only track identifiable user interaction with consent.
Why did it happen?
I have a rule in my GTM setup that should prevent this tag from firing when they have not given consent. But I added it quickly and relied on myself to know what to do. So I did not test it. I missed a parameter, and it did not work, obviously.
Why didn’t I test it?
Because it takes time and it’s tedious – you need to test in a “fresh” env so as not to get caught by side effects.
Now I have fixed it. And tested it. But will it happen again? Yes, it will.
So I will pick an item that is quite some time in my backlog—having an automated test for consent. Something that runs several times a day and checks for:
– consent banner is visible
– consent banner has all options I have defined (I had clients where the UX designers had removed the deny button because of insufficient “user” (aka business) experience
– when consent is denied no requests go out to analytics and ad platforms.
This is all doable – for example, with Cypress.io – I got excellent tips from Will Sweet on how to approach it – but never implemented it. Now I will.
If you want something similar, write me, and we will do it for you too.