What is GDPR?

GDPR is the European data-protection law that governs how businesses collect and use people's personal data. If you have visitors from the EU or UK, it shapes how you are allowed to run analytics and ads.

The one-sentence version

The General Data Protection Regulation gives people rights over their personal data and puts duties on any organisation that handles it. The UK has its own near-identical version, UK GDPR, which works alongside the PECR rules that specifically cover cookies.

What counts as personal data

More than people expect. A name or email is obvious, but so is an IP address, a device ID, or the random identifier a cookie uses to recognise a browser. That is why analytics and advertising fall under GDPR at all: they routinely process identifiers that can single someone out.

What it means for your tracking

• You need a lawful basis to process data. For analytics and marketing cookies that basis is usually consent, collected before the cookie is set.
• You must tell people what you collect and why, normally in a privacy and cookie policy.
• You should only collect what you need, and let people withdraw consent.

How sites stay compliant and still measure

The practical answer is a proper consent banner plus Google Consent Mode, which throttles tags down to privacy-safe modelling when someone declines, rather than switching measurement off entirely. Done well, you respect the law and still see most of your numbers.

Datahound are analytics and ad-tracking specialists. We fix broken GA4, Google Tag Manager and server-side tracking so every sale, form and call gets counted. Back to datahound.agency · All tracking guides · Are cookie banners legally required?