Auto Blocker helps protect your website visitors' privacy by automatically detecting and blocking third-party tracking mechanisms until visitors give their consent. It's available for all Termly users, including the Free plan. It runs on every page where your Termly consent banner script is installed with Auto Blocker enabled. Learn how to turn it on in the Auto Blocker implementation guide.

How Does Auto Blocker Work?

Auto Blocker can only block scripts that load after it. Place the Termly consent banner script as the first script in the <head> section of every page. Keep in mind:

• Any third-party script that loads before the Termly script will not be blocked.
• Scripts that are dynamically injected at runtime, including some scripts added through tag managers, may not be caught by Auto Blocker.

To confirm Auto Blocker is working on your site, see How to verify that cookies are blocked.

Display a Prompt to Unblock iframes

An iframe is an element embedded on your page, such as a map, a YouTube video, or similar content. When a visitor has not consented to the category a third-party iframe belongs to, the iframe is blocked, which can affect their browsing experience. Iframes hosted on your own website are not blocked.

To help with this, Termly displays a prompt over blocked iframes. Visitors can use the prompt to unblock that iframe for a single page load. To unblock it on all pages, visitors can update their saved consent preferences. Read more about how your visitors can unblock embedded videos and other iframes.

Block Unknown Tracking Sources

Auto Blocker also has the ability to block unknown tracking sources. This means that any third-party tracking sources that Auto Blocker does not recognize will be assigned the "Unclassified" tracking category.

These sources will be blocked unless the visitor has accepted all tracking categories or has consented to the "Unclassified" category in their preference center.

Customize Auto Blocker's Behavior

Any third-party tracking source that Auto Blocker does not recognize is assigned the "Unclassified" tracking category. These sources stay blocked unless the visitor accepts all tracking categories or consents to the "Unclassified" category in their preference center.

Customize Auto Blocker's Behavior

You can create a custom blocking map to customize Auto Blocker's behavior. This allows you to define specific rules for how certain tracking mechanisms should be handled. Learn more about creating a custom blocking map.

Auto Blocker categorizes tracking mechanisms automatically, but you can override its behavior in these ways. For an overview, see How can I change how Auto Blocker categorizes and blocks scripts?

• Domain Rules (recommended). Categorize and block scripts by the domain they come from, directly in your dashboard under Consent Management > Domain Rules. Domain Rules can be set at the account or website level and may take 5 to 10 minutes to take effect on your site.
• Custom blocking map. Recategorize, block, or unblock all scripts from a specific domain using a code snippet on your page. The blocking map must be loaded before the Termly embed script.
• Manual blocking. Recategorize, block, or unblock a single script or element by adding a data-categories attribute to it.

Which setting takes priority?

• Any category you assign manually takes precedence over Auto Blocker's automatic categorization. For example, if Auto Blocker categorizes a script as "Unclassified" and you manually categorize it as "Advertising," it will load for visitors who consent to advertising trackers.
• If you use both manual blocking and a custom blocking map, manual blocking overrides the custom blocking map.
• If you use both a custom blocking map and Domain Rules, the custom blocking map takes precedence. You don't need to remove an existing blocking map to start using Domain Rules.

Note: Recategorizing cookies in your dashboard's cookie report does not change Auto Blocker's behavior. Dashboard cookie categories only affect your cookie policy and your visitors' preference center. Likewise, reclassifying a domain in Domain Rules does not change your cookie categories. To change what Auto Blocker blocks, use one of the options above.