What is it about?
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on 1.10.2019 that internet users must actively consent to the setting of cookies (so-called opt-in procedure). The judgement can be read here.
This means: The previously common notice with a link to deactivate cookies (so-called opt-out procedure) is not sufficient and thus a violation of the data protection regulations (GDPR).
Against this background, we as a TYPO3 agency have developed the extension WACON Cookie Management (WCM for short), with which website visitors can set the desired cookies themselves.
The extension is compatible with TYPO3 versions v7, v8, v9 and v10 and is available in TER as well as in GitHub. It is distributed under the licence conditions of the GNU GPL Version 2 published and can be used free of charge.
If you need support for the installation, we would be happy to help. Simply contact us
What are "cookies" and why are they problematic?
"Cookies" are small pieces of text information that websites can store on their visitors' devices. In fact, they are the only way to "recognise" visitors between two page views (apart from cumbersome and incomplete alternative solutions such as URL rewriting). From a technical point of view, cookies are therefore indispensable for web applications such as shopping baskets, ordering processes and login areas (all so-called session cookies). The situation is different for so-called tracking (analysis of visitor behaviour), marketing (individual ad placement) and other so-called third-party cookies, which have only limited significance for the functioning of the website.
"Cookies" have fallen into disrepute primarily because they have been abused by large internet corporations to ruthlessly spy on visitor behaviour both on their own portals and - by providing free services such as like buttons, timeline embeds, googleAnalytics, etc. - were abused on external sites.
What is WCM?
WCM is a TYPO3 extension that allows visitors to your website to control the cookie settings used themselves. We provide the extension free of charge, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 on GitHub. However, some basic TYPOSCRIPT knowledge is required for installation and configuration. For the adaptation of the Content Consent Box (see below), knowledge of CSS is helpful.
The consent box appears in a pop-up window that allows the visitor to view and activate/deactivate the cookies at any time during the first visit and - by means of a button - on every sub-page:
The cookies used are maintained centrally in the TYPO3 backend:
- Cookie name
- Name and link to provider
- Categorisation("Necessary", "Statistics", "External", etc.)
- Information text(What does the cookie do? Why is it necessary?)
For social media components such as the Twitter timeline or other so-called third-party information that is integrated via iframe, it is possible to enable the visitor by clicking on an image. To do this, the TYPO3 editor can specify at the desired point:
- which iframe code (provided by the manufacturer) is to be integrated
- which default image is to be displayed (e.g. "frosted glass effect")
- how the info text ("Click here to activate...") should look like
What happens technically?
This could be an explanation for your website visitors (e.g. as an addition to the data protection information):
Cookies from tracking or other third-party providers (e.g. Analytics, Matomo, googleMap, SocialMedia, weather apps, etc.) are usually implemented by integrating a code snippet (e.g. JavaScript for tracking codes, iframe for maps, etc.) into the source code of the website.
Our cookie extension manages exactly these code snippets. This means that if a cookie is not to be set, the entire code snippet of this provider is simply not output in the source code. This means that individual cookies are not "prevented", but rather the entire code part that is responsible for the use (creation, reading, changing, etc.) of the cookie.
Is there an evaluation/statistic about the selection behavior of the users ?
Yes, in the dashboard you can view statistics that anonymously count the selection behavior of the users. This is not a user tracking but a pure counter (due to gdpr regulations). Hence, if users change settings multiple times, this is counted each time.
The most important thing at the end
You can find the extension as a download ...
in TER under:
https://extensions.typo3.org/extension/wacon_cookie_management
in GitHub under:
https://github.com/wacon-internet-gmbh/wacon_cookie_management/