What counts as proof
A screenshot of a banner proves a banner existed. It says nothing about what any individual visitor saw or chose, which is what the question is actually about. A count of acceptances is the same problem at a larger scale.
Proof is a per-decision record that ties a pseudonymous visitor to a set of categories, at a time, under a resolved regional rule, against an immutable configuration version that can still be read. The version is the field that makes the rest meaningful.
Answering a specific challenge
- 1
Find the decision
Records are browsable per property and exportable as CSV. The pseudonymous visitor key is what ties a session together.
- 2
Read the configuration it points at
That is what the visitor was shown: the categories, their descriptions, the banner copy, the technologies each category covered.
- 3
Show the regional context
The record carries the resolved location as a country or country-region code: `US-CA`, `GB`, or empty where geolocation failed. Read together with the configuration it points at, that is enough to recompute which regional rule applied and why, rather than having to trust a stored label.
- 4
Show the verification
A dated scan supplies evidence about what the sampled pages and journeys actually ran. Keep its location, browser, pages and consent state with the result; it does not prove what happened on unvisited flows or for every visitor.
- 5
Show that the ledger is intact
Each record stores a hash of itself and of its predecessor on that property, written in the same transaction that appends it. A record altered or removed after the fact breaks the chain from that point on, so the set can be shown to be complete rather than asserted to be.
Be honest about the boundaries
Records begin when the runtime does
There is no record for a visitor who came before installation. If you are asked about a period before that, the answer is that no consent evidence exists for it, which is a better answer than an invented one.
Common questions
How long should consent records be kept?
Long enough to answer a challenge to a decision you relied on. Plan retention runs from twelve months to thirty-six. Indefinite retention creates its own minimisation problem.
Are consent records personal data?
Generally yes, because they relate to an identifiable individual even under a pseudonymous key. That is why they hold a visitor key rather than a name.
Sources and verification
Verified on . Product-behaviour statements were checked against the current implementation and tests. The links below are the verification basis recorded for this article. They support the stated facts, not a legal conclusion for every site or configuration; recheck changing vendor behaviour before relying on it in production.
- Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR)
Legislation
Checked
- StrongPrivacy verification guide
Product documentation
Checked
See what your own site is loading
A browser scan reports the requests and storage it observed during the sampled journey. Use configured workspace scans to compare the states and pages that matter to your implementation.