Discover all the page views and cookies in JOUO that you don't know about!
Imagine you offer a service where you come to people's homes. Now someone has invited you to their home. Your customer opens the door for you because she trusts you and your service. You say politely: "Thank you for letting me in! Can I take a few notes about the visit?" But what neither you nor your customer know: The moment she opened the door for you, it wasn't just you who walked in. Behind you, hidden in your shadow, several strangers slipped in with you. While you are still standing politely at the door waiting for an answer, these strangers are already swarming through your customer's house. They look around your customer's rooms, observe her, note details and some of them even scrawl markings on her walls: invisible messages for the next "visitors" who will come by later.
This is exactly what can happen when someone visits your own website! Because by calling up your website, she commissions your service and open the door for you. You can then ask her if she wants to accept cookies, while other websites in the background use the visit to your website to open automatically (enter her home). One or more of these websites can set cookies (i.e. markers or messages for the next visitors), even though your website visitor has not yet given her consent at the door.
The problem: Your customer trusted you and opened the door for you. She didn't know that you had brought a whole group with you, who were now in her private space without being asked. And you? You often didn't even consciously invite or notice these strangers yourself. When you set up your service, you hired various service providers, such as one for appointment management, one for statistics, one for payments, etc. The small print of these service providers (which you hadn't read in full) stated that they were allowed to bring in subcontractors. Suddenly they're in every client's house you visit and you might not even know who they all are.
But you are responsible! Legally, you are obliged to tell your customers BEFORE you enter their home: "Attention, I am bringing representatives from A, B, C and seven other companies. They will look around your house and leave traces." But how are you supposed to do that if you yourself don't know who all is coming through the door with you? If you don't even suspect that your statistics service provider, for example, is secretly bringing three other data collectors with them?
Why you need to know the secret visitors
1. Legal obligation to provide a correct privacy policy
Your privacy policy is a binding documentation of all data processing operations on your website, which you must always keep up to date. The transparency requirement (Art. 12 GDPR) states, for example: "The controller shall take appropriate measures to provide the data subject with all information referred to in Articles 13 and 14 and all communications referred to in Articles 15 to 22 and Article 34 relating to the processing in a concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language" [Art. 12 para. 1 GDPR].
If you do not know which pages are accessed in the background, you cannot meet these requirements. Your privacy policy would be incomplete or incorrect. Both can be warned. Therefore, check now in JOUO which pages are actually called up automatically in the background as soon as a visitor calls up your start page. And check your privacy policy to make sure it is complete.
2. The cookie-setting problem before consent
Cookies are small data packets that are generated by web browsers and websites to store personal user data, among other things.
Particularly critical: Many websites set cookies or contact external servers before the cookie banner even appears or the cookies have been consented to. This is illegal in most cases.
The case law is clear: non-essential cookies may only be set after express consent has been given! In JOUO you can now find out which third-party cookies are on your website.
3. The trust of your visitors
Trust is the basis of every business relationship. This starts with the first visit to your website. If users have the feeling that their data is being passed on uncontrollably, this has a direct impact on your company:
- Purchase decisions: Users may abandon a purchase if they have concerns about data privacy.
- Your reputation: Negative experiences can spread quickly, especially on social media and review portals. A privacy scandal can stick to your brand for years.
- Customer loyalty: Once you've lost trust, it's hard to get it back.
If you don't know which third-party providers are reading in the background, you risk losing this trust - often without realizing it. Transparency and control over your website are not technical details, but business-critical factors. If you respect and protect your visitors, you not only gain legal security, but also loyal customers.
Ignorance can be expensive
Ignorance does not protect you from punishment. The fines imposed by data protection authorities are becoming increasingly strict, and here are a few examples that have also affected small SMEs:
- Fines of up to 20 million euros or 4% of annual global turnover (in accordance with Art. 83 para. 5 GDPR)
- Warning letters from competitors (often several thousand euros per case, depending on the amount in dispute)
- Claims for damages from data subjects in accordance with Art. 82 GDPR (sometimes several hundred euros per person)
How to get clarity
JOUO makes it easy for you to keep track and check your privacy policy. All you have to do is register with JOUO and enter the URL of your website.
Your first audit will be completed within 24 hours at the latest. JOUO only scans publicly accessible data. In the JOUO scan results, you will find your "external resources" mentioned above, which also include the URLs of the start page and the third-party cookies. All information that you find in JOUO under "external resources" must be specified in your privacy policy.
JOUO helps you with the collection of all the technical data you need for your privacy policy: The PDF version of the JOUO scans is also available for you in the "JOUO technical documentation" if you use our add-on product "JOUO TOMs".