A cookie policy review is essential to ensure compliance with data protection laws (e.g., GDPR, and the ePrivacy Directive) and enhance user transparency. The process ensures that websites provide clear, lawful, and user-friendly disclosures about cookie usage. A structured approach that ensures, through technical means, that all cookies on a website have been accurately listed and described ensures thorough compliance, usability, and legal soundness.

Step-by-Step Breakdown of the Review Process

1. Upload or link to an existing cookie policy

The process begins by uploading a Word or PDF document of a cookie policy or pasting a link to a website's cookie policy directly to CuratedAI.

What happens next is entirely automated - we crawl the website (if you have linked to the cookie policy) and accept all cookie banners placed on the main page and its subpages. We then collect a list of all cookies placed on the website and its subpages. We will visualise for you a report of all cookies we've found on the website.

2. Cookie categorisation

For each cookie we find on your website, we check whether it's listed and correctly described in the cookie policy. That means whether the policy specifies the cookie's name, whether it's first or third party, the provider of the cookie, its purpose (strictly necessary, performance, analytics, marketing), and its storage period.

We check this information automatically against a cookie database. Whenever we see incomplete or missing information about a cookie, we add it to the cookie table list in the policy. If such a list is missing in the first place, we create and complete it.

3. Transparency Criteria Review

In addition to automatically checking and categorising cookies, CuratedAI checks the content of the cookie policy against compared against legal standards (GDPR, ePrivacy Directive, EDPB guidelines, etc.). The tool also evaluates the language of the policy - whether it's clear, accessible, and easy to understand. The criteria against which we check the policy take into consideration in particular Article 29 Working Party - Guidelines on transparency under Regulation 2016/679.

Key criteria we check the policy for include:

• Does the policy clearly describe cookie usage?

• Does it include easy-to-understand information about what cookies are and what are the main types of cookies?

• Does the policy adequately describe the data subject's options to accept/reject cookies?

• Is there clearly described information on how to reach the company's DPO or another team member responsible for privacy and data protection?

4. Proposal of Changes

Based on the review, recommendations are made directly in the text to fix compliance gaps and improve transparency. These changes can be accepted/declined or edited directly in CuratedAI.

5. Review & Download

Once the review is finalized and the relevant changes are accepted you can download the cookie policy in Word (with comments on all changes made) so it's ready to be implementated on the website. If only the cookie table is relevant, then you can download just the table in an Excel format with all relevant information.

Why this is effective and saves time?

• Cookie Automation: No more manual checking of cookies and looking up cookie information to correctly classify them. We do all of that automatically in a couple of minutes.

• User Transparency: Make sure that the cookie policy allows to users understand and control their cookie preferences.

• Risk Mitigation: Reduce legal risks related to non-compliance and enforcement actions by ensuring you're not missing a thing in your cookie policy.

• Continuous Improvement: CuratedAI makes regular updates easy so you can ensure the policy remains current and effective.

Try our cookie policy review for FREE at app.curatedai.eu and do let us know what you think at founders@curatedai.eu.