You know that popup. The one that appears before you can read a single word of content. “We use cookies to improve your experience. Accept All / Manage Preferences / Reject All.”
Everyone hates it. Visitors hate clicking through it. Website owners hate implementing it. Lawyers hate trying to make it compliant. And yet, billions of websites display some version of this banner every day.
We decided to skip the whole thing.
Why Cookies Became a Problem
Cookies were invented in 1994 to solve a simple problem: HTTP is stateless. Websites couldn’t remember if you were logged in from one page to the next. Cookies fixed that.
Then advertising companies realized they could use cookies to track users across the entire web. Visit a shoe website, and suddenly every other website shows you shoe ads. That third-party tracking is why we have cookie consent laws.
The problem isn’t cookies themselves—it’s what they’re used for.
The Consent Banner Arms Race
When GDPR took effect in 2018, websites scrambled to add cookie consent banners. What followed was a arms race of increasingly complex implementations:
- First: Simple “Accept” buttons
- Then: Required “Reject” options (but hidden behind multiple clicks)
- Then: Dark patterns to trick users into accepting
- Then: Enforcement actions against those dark patterns
- Now: Multi-layered consent flows that nobody reads
The average website visitor is asked to make decisions about hundreds of cookies they don’t understand, from companies they’ve never heard of, to enable features they didn’t ask for.
What Cookies Actually Cost You
Conversion Rate Impact
Studies show cookie banners reduce engagement:
- Bounce rate increases 3-5% when a banner appears
- Time on site drops as users get annoyed
- Form completions decrease by measurable amounts
That’s real money walking away from your website.
Legal Risk
Cookie consent is a legal minefield:
- Different rules in different jurisdictions (GDPR, CCPA, LGPD, POPIA…)
- Consent must be freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous
- Pre-checked boxes don’t count
- Consent must be as easy to withdraw as to give
- You need records of when and how consent was obtained
One misstep and you’re facing regulatory scrutiny.
Technical Debt
Implementing proper cookie consent requires:
- A consent management platform (often paid)
- Integration with your analytics, ads, and marketing tools
- Conditional script loading based on consent
- Regular audits to ensure compliance
- Updates when regulations change
It’s expensive complexity that adds no value to your business.
Our Approach: Just Don’t Use Them
When we built Zero Trust Analytics, we asked a simple question: Do we actually need cookies?
The answer was no.
Here’s what cookies are typically used for in analytics:
| Cookie Purpose | Our Alternative |
|---|---|
| Identify returning visitors | Anonymous session-based tracking |
| Track user journey across pages | Server-side session handling |
| Remember user preferences | We don’t need to remember |
| Cross-site tracking | We don’t do this at all |
By designing for privacy from the start, we eliminated the need for cookies entirely.
How We Track Without Cookies
Session Handling
Instead of storing a cookie, we generate a session identifier based on a hash of the visitor’s IP and user agent, combined with a daily-rotating salt. This gives us accurate session data without any persistent storage on the user’s device.
Unique Visitors
Our daily-rotating hash means we can count unique visitors within a day, but we can’t track individuals over time. That’s a feature, not a bug—it’s all you need for analytics, and it’s fundamentally more private.
The Result
- No cookie consent banner needed - Because there are no cookies
- Full GDPR compliance - No personal data processing to consent to
- Better user experience - Visitors see your content immediately
- Less legal risk - No consent records to maintain
Making the Switch
If you’re tired of cookie consent complexity, switching to Zero Trust Analytics is straightforward:
- Remove your cookie consent banner
- Add our lightweight script
- Remove Google Analytics and other tracking cookies
- Enjoy a cleaner, faster website
Your visitors will thank you. Your lawyers will thank you. And you’ll still get all the analytics insights you need.
Cookie-free analytics from day one. Start your free trial and simplify your website.