Cookies Loading Before Consent? How to Check Your Client Sites
TL;DR
Open the page in a private window and look at its cookies before you touch the banner, then again after accepting. For many client sites, Baromio Consent Scan runs the same two passes every week and lists each cookie it saw, with the time and the location. It reports what it saw, not a legal verdict.
Most cookie banners are set up once and never checked again. The plugin is installed, the banner shows "Accept" and "Reject", and everyone moves on. Nobody goes back to see what the browser actually loads before a visitor clicks anything.
Checking one site by hand
For a single page your browser is enough. In Chrome:
- Open a private (incognito) window, so no earlier consent is remembered.
- Open DevTools, go to the Application tab and select Cookies under Storage.
- Load the page and do not touch the banner. Note which cookies appear and which domains set them.
- Accept the banner, reload the page and compare the two lists.
Analytics or advertising cookies in the first list, such as _ga (Google Analytics) or _fbp (Meta), are the ones worth raising with your client. In Firefox the same list is under the Storage tab.
Why this does not scale
Ten minutes for one site is fine. With 10, 20 or 30 client sites, and banner plugins that change with every update, nobody repeats it every week. That is the gap Consent Scan closes.
What Consent Scan does
Consent Scan loads a monitored page twice: once before any consent decision, and once after accepting the banner. In each pass it records every cookie it sees: the name, the domain and, where it recognises the cookie, the vendor behind it. Cookies it cannot identify are listed but never judged.
Each finding is a plain observation, in this format:
Baromio saw
_fbp(Meta) load before consent on this page, on 24 Sep at 04:12, from DE.
(An example of the format, not a real site.)
It does not score the page or pass or fail it, and it gives no legal verdict: one page load cannot settle that, and Baromio does not pretend it can. What you do next, whether you talk to the client, check the plugin settings or ask a lawyer, is your call.
Scope
- One page per monitor, the URL you monitor, not a whole-site audit.
- One scan a week, plus a manual Scan now at most once an hour.
- HTTP and keyword monitors, on every plan: 1 monitor on Free, 5 on Pro, 15 on Business.
Turning it on
Click Add New Monitor, or edit an existing HTTP or keyword monitor, and switch on Consent Scan. The monitor then gets a Consent tab, where the results of each scan appear.