What is a User Consent?

Under GDPR, valid consent has to meet several conditions at once. It must be a genuine choice, not a condition of service where the data is not needed. It must be specific to a stated purpose rather than a blanket permission. The person must know who is collecting the data and what for. And it must be as easy to withdraw as it was to give.

Consent is not always the right basis, which surprises people. If someone fills in a form to request a callback, you generally do not need consent to call them back — you need it to be obvious that is what will happen, and you need a lawful basis, which here is usually the steps taken at their request. Consent becomes important for things the person would not expect, such as adding them to a marketing list or setting non-essential tracking cookies.

The design lesson is to be honest at the point of collection. When a chat widget asks for a phone number, the visitor should already know why. Clerkzo lets you write the wording around lead capture and choose which fields to ask for, so the request explains itself rather than harvesting details the person did not expect to give.