The ICO says the UK’s top 1,000 websites comply on cookies. We checked.

The three tests

Alongside test 1: 312 sites (60%) sent requests to advertising or cross-site tracking companies before any choice. Some of those requests set no cookies (Google’s “Consent Mode” sends cookieless pings), so we don’t count them as a fail. Test 3 only counts sites where we found a reject button to click. 24 sites offered a paid option instead of a free reject (“consent or pay”); the ICO accepts that model in some cases, so we report it separately and don’t count it as a fail.

By sector

Every site that failed a test

Worst first. Tap a site for the full check: every company, where the data goes and what happened when we clicked reject.