About Implicit Consent

Overview

Implicit consent occurs when consent is inferred from a person's actions or inactions, rather than being directly stated or written. It is the assumption that a data subject agrees to something based on their behavior or the circumstances without explicitly stating it.

You can use implicit consent to increase engagement with your customers by providing them a seamless interaction with your business purposes. This type of consent can help your organization send personalized and targeted communications by showing customers that their preferences are respected while still receiving valuable information related to their interests. In addition, implicit consent will also eliminate the need for users to manually provide additional information, improving the flow of user interaction when interacting with a preference center.

Implicit vs. Explicit Consent

Two types of consent can be used to define a data subject's agreement to subscribe to a purpose and receive communications about it.

It requires a clear, unambiguous agreement. This could be done through a signature, check box, or verbal statement. The data subject is fully aware that they are granting permission for a specific purpose.

It relies on context or behavior to infer agreement without explicit confirmation (either verbal or written acknowledgement). In this scenario, data subjects do not see for themselves the purpose and their actions imply agreement.

Business Use Case

Implicit consent takes place when a data subject provides personal details to a business for a business purpose without explicitly signing up for a related purpose. Given this sequence, the business can assume the customer's consent to receive information regarding the second purpose as long as they do not opt out of the first one.

For example, a fitness company offers a month free trial of its app including nutrition advice, real-time coaching, and personalized workout sessions. To access the free trial, customers have to sign up via a form that collects their contact information. While the primary intent of collecting this data is to facilitate access to the app's premium features during the trial, the fitness company also assumes implicit consent to send marketing communications, such as newsletters and promotional offers, unless the customer explicitly opts out.

Setting up implicit consent for purposes of processing

New purposes

  1. On the Universal Consent & Preference Management menu, select Purposes. The Standard Purposes tab on the Purposes screen appears.

  2. Click the Add New button. The Create Purpose screen appears.

  3. On the Details tab, enable the Enable implicit consent setting.



  4. On the Expire after field, enter the length of time in days, months, or years that a data subject's implicit consent to the purpose will remain valid.

  5. Enable the Show explicit consent checkbox in preference center setting if you want to allow data subjects to confirm consent explicitly in your preference center.

  6. Enter the description that you want to show for implicit consent capture in the Implicit confirmation text field.

  7. Complete the rest of the fields on the Details tab, as necessary.

  8. Click the Finish button.

    Note:

    The expiration of the purpose will apply to the purpose version for which consent was given. Please note that for profiles that have not provided any type of consent (i.e., Not Given), the data subject's purpose status will not expire. For more information, see Setting Up Purposes of Processing.

Existing purposes

  1. On the Universal Consent & Preference Management menu, select Purposes. The Standard Purposes tab on the Purposes screen appears.

  2. Click the link in the Name column for the purpose you want to edit. The Purpose Details screen appears.

    Note:

    For purposes in Active status, you will need to create a new version of the purpose before you can configure it.

  3. Click the Create New Version button.

  4. On the Details tab, enable the Enable implicit consent setting.



  5. Enable the Show explicit consent checkbox in preference center setting if you want to allow data subjects to confirm consent explicitly in your preference center.

  6. On the Set implicit consent to expire field, enter the length of time in days, months, or years that a data subject's consent to the purpose will remain valid.

  7. Enter the message that you want to show for implicit consent in the Implicit confirmation text field.

  8. Click the Save button. The new configuration will appear on the Details tab.

    Note:

    If the purpose was in Active status, you will need to click the Publish button after making the changes.

Note:

Due to its nature, implicit consent is not collected through a common web form. Sending implicit consent is only possible through Custom API Collection Points.

For more information, see Creating Custom API Collection Points.

For more information on Implicit Transaction Type and Implicit Purpose Status, see Universal Consent & Preference Management Transaction Types and Purpose Statuses and Viewing Consent Receipts & Transactions.

Trust Center experience

If a purpose in Implicit status is present in your Trust Center, upon user login

  • The purpose will be enabled by default.

  • A message and a checkbox to let the user confirm will display (if Show explicit consent checkbox in preference center is enabled).