Scanned on 28 June 2026 at 14:07 UTC
As of , howtogeek.com has a GDPR compliance score of 0/100 with 69 pre-consent tracking violations detected.
Only Privacy Score 100 means full compliance. These violations mean that before you could even click the Cookie Consent banner, this website already collected your personal data and shared it with third parties. Learn why this matters (our blog) →
Who is responsible? The website owner is solely responsible for these violations and in general often benefits monetarily (directly or indirectly) from collecting and sharing your data without your consent.
Tracks your browsing behaviour to build a profile and serve targeted ads before you give consent.
A tag manager loading tracking scripts before the visitor has given consent.
Collects usage statistics (pages visited, clicks, session duration) without consent.
Tracking cookies are used to identify and follow users across websites. Under GDPR, these require explicit consent before being set, but on this website they are active immediately.
Low-severity concerns: external fonts, empty tag containers, WebSocket connections, and third-party storage.
Services and cookies that comply with GDPR requirements. No consent needed.
Pending classification by our team. No impact on your privacy score.
These items are pending classification. No impact on your privacy score.
Most findings on this page are configuration problems, not catastrophes. These plain-language guides explain what each one means and how to fix it, written for website owners rather than lawyers.
All guides live at gdprscanner.eu/guides.
howtogeek.com has a GDPR compliance score of 0/100.
A score below 50 indicates serious GDPR compliance failures. Multiple high-severity trackers or advertising scripts load before consent, exposing the website to potential fines of up to €20 million or 4% of annual global turnover under GDPR Article 83.
54 trackers detected loading before user consent:
Legal basis: This violates GDPR Article 6(1)(a), ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3), and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Advertising trackers profile visitors for targeted ads. The CJEU's Planet49 ruling (1 October 2019) confirmed that consent must be active and informed — pre-ticked boxes or implied consent are insufficient. This applies to all cookies and tracking mechanisms used for advertising purposes.
Legal basis: This violates GDPR Article 6(1)(a), ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3), and CNIL Decision SAN-2022-023. Tag managers that actively load tracking scripts before consent enable personal data processing without a legal basis. The CNIL fined Google €150 million in 2022 partly because its tag manager loaded tracking before users could refuse cookies.
This GDPR compliance scan of howtogeek.com was performed by GDPR Scanner, a pre-consent privacy scanning tool. The scan captures all trackers, cookies, and third-party scripts that load before a user clicks any consent button.
Under GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), websites must obtain explicit consent before processing personal data. Any tracker or cookie that fires before consent is a potential violation of EU privacy law.
A privacy score of 100/100 means the website loads zero trackers and zero tracking cookies before the user gives consent. This is the standard required by GDPR Article 5(1)(a) and Article 7.
Essential cookies (session management, security tokens) and first-party functional cookies do not incur penalties, as they are covered by the legitimate interest legal basis. See an example: playhth.com scores 100/100.
Legal basis: This violates GDPR Article 6(1)(a), ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3), and Austrian DSB Decision (DSB-D155.027, 2022). Analytics trackers process personal data such as IP addresses and browsing behaviour. The Austrian Data Protection Authority ruled in January 2022 that Google Analytics use without consent violates GDPR, as data is transferred to the US without adequate safeguards. The ePrivacy Directive requires prior consent for accessing information on a user's device unless strictly necessary.
Legal basis: This violates GDPR Article 6(1)(a), ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3), and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Advertising trackers profile visitors for targeted ads. The CJEU's Planet49 ruling (1 October 2019) confirmed that consent must be active and informed — pre-ticked boxes or implied consent are insufficient. This applies to all cookies and tracking mechanisms used for advertising purposes.
Legal basis: This violates GDPR Article 44 and LG München I (Case 3 O 17493/20, 20 January 2022). Loading fonts from external servers transmits visitor IP addresses to third-party servers, often outside the EU. The Munich Regional Court ruled on 20 January 2022 that embedding Google Fonts without consent violates GDPR, awarding €100 in damages per visitor. Self-hosting fonts eliminates this violation entirely.
Legal basis: This violates GDPR Article 6(1)(a), ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3), and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Advertising trackers profile visitors for targeted ads. The CJEU's Planet49 ruling (1 October 2019) confirmed that consent must be active and informed — pre-ticked boxes or implied consent are insufficient. This applies to all cookies and tracking mechanisms used for advertising purposes.
Legal basis: This violates GDPR Article 6(1)(a), ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3), and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Advertising trackers profile visitors for targeted ads. The CJEU's Planet49 ruling (1 October 2019) confirmed that consent must be active and informed — pre-ticked boxes or implied consent are insufficient. This applies to all cookies and tracking mechanisms used for advertising purposes.
Legal basis: This violates GDPR Article 6(1)(a), ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3), and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Advertising trackers profile visitors for targeted ads. The CJEU's Planet49 ruling (1 October 2019) confirmed that consent must be active and informed — pre-ticked boxes or implied consent are insufficient. This applies to all cookies and tracking mechanisms used for advertising purposes.
Legal basis: This violates GDPR Article 6(1)(a), ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3), and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Advertising trackers profile visitors for targeted ads. The CJEU's Planet49 ruling (1 October 2019) confirmed that consent must be active and informed — pre-ticked boxes or implied consent are insufficient. This applies to all cookies and tracking mechanisms used for advertising purposes.
Legal basis: This violates GDPR Article 6(1)(a), ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3), and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Advertising trackers profile visitors for targeted ads. The CJEU's Planet49 ruling (1 October 2019) confirmed that consent must be active and informed — pre-ticked boxes or implied consent are insufficient. This applies to all cookies and tracking mechanisms used for advertising purposes.
Legal basis: This violates GDPR Article 6(1)(a), ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3), and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Advertising trackers profile visitors for targeted ads. The CJEU's Planet49 ruling (1 October 2019) confirmed that consent must be active and informed — pre-ticked boxes or implied consent are insufficient. This applies to all cookies and tracking mechanisms used for advertising purposes.
Legal basis: This violates ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3) and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Third-party storage access (localStorage, sessionStorage) on external domains constitutes accessing device information without user consent. The Planet49 ruling confirmed that the ePrivacy Directive's consent requirement applies to all information stored on or accessed from a user's terminal equipment.
Legal basis: This violates ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3) and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Third-party storage access (localStorage, sessionStorage) on external domains constitutes accessing device information without user consent. The Planet49 ruling confirmed that the ePrivacy Directive's consent requirement applies to all information stored on or accessed from a user's terminal equipment.
Legal basis: This violates ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3) and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Third-party storage access (localStorage, sessionStorage) on external domains constitutes accessing device information without user consent. The Planet49 ruling confirmed that the ePrivacy Directive's consent requirement applies to all information stored on or accessed from a user's terminal equipment.
Legal basis: This violates ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3) and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Third-party storage access (localStorage, sessionStorage) on external domains constitutes accessing device information without user consent. The Planet49 ruling confirmed that the ePrivacy Directive's consent requirement applies to all information stored on or accessed from a user's terminal equipment.
Legal basis: This violates ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3) and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Third-party storage access (localStorage, sessionStorage) on external domains constitutes accessing device information without user consent. The Planet49 ruling confirmed that the ePrivacy Directive's consent requirement applies to all information stored on or accessed from a user's terminal equipment.
Legal basis: This violates ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3) and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Third-party storage access (localStorage, sessionStorage) on external domains constitutes accessing device information without user consent. The Planet49 ruling confirmed that the ePrivacy Directive's consent requirement applies to all information stored on or accessed from a user's terminal equipment.
Legal basis: This violates ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3) and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Third-party storage access (localStorage, sessionStorage) on external domains constitutes accessing device information without user consent. The Planet49 ruling confirmed that the ePrivacy Directive's consent requirement applies to all information stored on or accessed from a user's terminal equipment.
Legal basis: This violates ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3) and CJEU Planet49 (C-673/17). Third-party storage access (localStorage, sessionStorage) on external domains constitutes accessing device information without user consent. The Planet49 ruling confirmed that the ePrivacy Directive's consent requirement applies to all information stored on or accessed from a user's terminal equipment.
| Cookie Name | Domain | Type | Service | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| _ga | .howtogeek.com | 1st party | Google Analytics - ID used to identify users | Session |
| _ga_PVR2ZX9X91 | .howtogeek.com | 1st party | Google Analytics - ID used to identify users | Session |
howtogeek.com has serious GDPR compliance deficiencies with a score of 0/100 and 69 violations detected. Multiple trackers and cookies are loading before user consent, which constitutes a clear breach of the ePrivacy Directive Article 5(3).
This level of non-compliance exposes the website operator to significant regulatory risk. Under GDPR Article 83(5), infringements of the basic principles for processing — including conditions for consent — are subject to administrative fines of up to €20 million or 4% of annual global turnover. Recent enforcement trends show increasing DPA activity across the EU.
Immediate action is recommended: audit all third-party scripts, implement a Consent Management Platform (CMP) that blocks non-essential trackers before consent, and verify compliance through re-scanning.
howtogeek.com scores 0/100 with 69 violation(s) detected. Trackers or cookies were found loading before user consent.
Our scan detected 94 tracker(s) loading before consent, including Google Ads, jsdelivr.net, Google Tag Manager (active - loading: Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google DoubleClick +6 more).
Yes, 10 cookie(s) were detected before the user interacted with any consent banner.
howtogeek.com has a GDPR compliance score of 0/100 as of 28 June 2026. A score of 100 means no trackers or cookies load before consent. howtogeek.com currently has 69 violation(s) affecting its score.
howtogeek.com should implement a Consent Management Platform (CMP) that blocks all non-essential trackers and cookies until the visitor gives explicit consent. This includes configuring tag managers like Google Tag Manager to use consent-aware triggers, self-hosting external fonts, and auditing all third-party scripts. After making changes, re-scan with GDPR Scanner to verify compliance.