Cookie Categories
Understanding how Cookiewise categorizes cookies and how to manage them.
The Five Categories
Cookiewise classifies every detected cookie into one of five standard categories, aligned with IAB Europe's Transparency & Consent Framework:
Necessary
Essential for the website to function. These cannot be disabled by the user.
Examples: Session IDs, CSRF tokens, authentication cookies, load balancer cookies, cookie consent preferences.
Functional
Remember user preferences and enhance functionality. Not strictly necessary but improve the experience.
Examples: Language preferences, region selection, accessibility settings, UI customization, chat widget state.
Analytics
Collect anonymized data about how visitors use the website. Help site owners understand traffic patterns.
Examples: Google Analytics (_ga, _gid), Hotjar (_hjid), Plausible, Matomo, Amplitude.
Marketing
Track visitors across websites for advertising purposes. Used for retargeting and ad personalization.
Examples: Facebook Pixel (_fbp), Google Ads (_gcl_au), LinkedIn Insight Tag, TikTok Pixel, ad network cookies.
Social Media
Enable social sharing features and embedded content. May track users across sites.
Examples: Twitter widgets, Instagram embeds, YouTube video cookies, Facebook comments, LinkedIn share buttons.
Auto-Categorization
Cookiewise automatically categorizes cookies using a pattern-matching engine that recognizes thousands of known cookies by name and domain. The engine is updated regularly as new tracking technologies emerge.
Categorization is based on:
- Cookie name patterns - e.g.,
_ga*→ Analytics,_fbp→ Marketing - Domain matching - e.g.,
doubleclick.net→ Marketing,youtube.com→ Social - Cookie attributes - HttpOnly session cookies are more likely Necessary
Manual Overrides
You can manually change a cookie's category at any time from the Cookie Scanner results page. Manual categorizations are preserved across future scans - the scanner will not overwrite your custom assignments.
This is useful for:
- Custom first-party cookies that the auto-categorizer doesn't recognize
- Cookies that serve a different purpose on your specific site
- New third-party cookies not yet in our database
Category Display in Banner
The consent banner automatically shows toggle switches for each category (except Necessary, which is always on and cannot be disabled). The number of cookies in each category is displayed to give users informed control.