How to categorize the cookies on my site? What categories are there?

To maintain compliance with privacy laws, one of the key aspects is ensuring that the cookies on your site are properly categorized. However, classifying them can often be confusing. In this article, we show you what cookie categories exist, how to recognize them, and how to categorize them from our platform.

Cookie Categories

Here we will show you the classification of Cookies that you will find on our platform.

At illow, we provide users with the classification of cookies by determining them according to their main functions or objectives as follows:

• Necessary Cookies: Necessary cookies, also called essential or strictly necessary cookies, are vital for a website's basic operation. They enable core functions like page navigation, secure area access, and basic user authentication. These cookies are essential for proper website functioning and services that users explicitly need. They don't need user consent due to their fundamental importance.
  
  For instance, in the case of an e-commerce website using Stripe, Stripe employs cookies that are essential for the smooth operation of your site's payment process.
  
  
• Statistics Cookies: Also known as Analytics cookies, track user interactions on websites to gather data about page visits, time spent, and clicks. This helps improve site performance and user experience. Data is usually collected anonymously and used for insights into user behavior and content optimization.
  
  A clear example of this could be the primary cookie used by Google Analytics, "_ga," which enables the services to distinguish one visitor from another. This cookie is used by all websites that implement Google Analytics, including Google services.
  
  
• Marketing Cookies: Marketing cookies, also known as advertising cookies, are used on websites to track user activity and gather information about their browsing habits. These cookies are primarily employed to display relevant and personalized ads to users based on their interests and online behavior. This information is utilized to create user profiles and audience segments, enabling advertisers to target their messages more effectively.
  
  For example, if you use Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or LinkedIn Ads among others, these platforms utilize such cookies to re-engage potential customers and enhance your overall marketing strategy.
  
  
• Preference Cookies: Preference cookies, also known as preference or customization cookies, are used on websites to remember user preferences and settings. These cookies store information such as language preferences, font sizes, color schemes, and other customizable options chosen by the user. Unlike some other types of cookies, preference cookies typically do not track users across different websites or gather personal information.
  
  Preference cookies, as mentioned before, are those that store information about the user's preferences on your site. For example, they are responsible for recognizing the user's customization on your site, the language they have chosen, colors, etc., with the aim of providing a better user experience the next time the user visits your site.

illow will never break a site if a user rejects cookies. Rejecting cookies may limit analytics visibility and prevent remarketing to that specific user, but the site will always function because necessary cookies, which cannot be turned off, ensure its operation even if users decline cookies.