Glossary
Cookie consent
Cookie consent is the banner a site shows on a first visit asking permission to store cookies and similar identifiers beyond the strictly necessary ones that keep you signed in and the pages working. The optional layer it is asking about is normally analytics and advertising.
GlossaryPrivacyBillingSafety
Where you see it
As an overlay across the bottom or centre of the page before you have browsed anything, offering some combination of accept, reject, and a manage or preferences option that opens the detailed list.
Why it matters
Refusing the optional cookies narrows how far your activity on that site can be joined to advertising elsewhere, and that is the whole of what it does - your account, your address on the network and your payment record are untouched. The real switches usually sit behind manage rather than on the front of the banner, and whether a reject option has to be offered at all depends on the rules where you live.