What happens when you accept cookies on a website

When you click Accept, you are giving a website permission to store a few extra small files in your browser. That is it, at the technical level. What those files then do is worth understanding, so here is exactly what changes.

What happens the moment you click Accept

The site is now allowed to set its non-essential cookies: usually analytics cookies that count your visit, and advertising cookies that help measure and target ads. These sit in your browser and are read on later visits so the site can recognise your device and remember your preferences and session.

What cookies can and cannot do

• They can remember your login, basket, language and settings.
• They can let analytics count you as a returning visitor and let ad platforms measure whether their ads worked.
• They cannot read files on your computer, install software, or see anything outside the browser.
• They cannot carry viruses; a cookie is plain text, not a program.

What changes for your privacy

The meaningful change is advertising. Accepting ad cookies allows platforms to recognise your device across sites and build a picture of your interests to target ads and measure them. Accepting analytics-only cookies is far more benign, it simply helps the site owner understand their traffic. You can usually change your mind later in the site’s cookie settings.

If you own the website, there is a flip side

For a site owner, a visitor clicking Accept is exactly when your analytics and ad tracking are allowed to work. If your banner or consent setup is wired wrong, you can lose the data even from people who said yes, which is a surprisingly common and expensive fault.

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