Automatic (Scheduled) Scanning

Websites change. A new plugin, embed, or marketing tag can quietly add cookies and trackers your consent banner doesn’t know about yet, and a manual scan is easy to forget. Automatic Scanning closes that gap: it re-scans your site on a schedule in the background, compares the results to your current cookie list, and flags anything that changed.

On SureCookie Pro, it goes further and can hold newly detected cookies for review, email you a summary, and block brand-new trackers until you approve them, so drift never reaches your visitors unreviewed.

Automatic Scanning is available on all plans. Monthly scanning is free; weekly scanning, the review options, email digests, and Compliance Guard are SureCookie Pro features. You’ll find it at SureCookie → Tracking Manager → Scanning → Automatic.

What It Does

Automatic Scanning uses the same browser-based scanner as a manual scan, just on a timer.

• Runs scheduled scans in the background through WordPress cron.
• Compares each scan to your current cookie list and reports what’s new, removed, or recategorized.
• On Pro, decides what happens to new cookies (review, auto-apply, or publish), emails a digest, and can block new trackers until approved.

Because it reuses the scanner, automatic scans draw from the same daily page budget shared across your connected sites.

Turn On Automatic Scanning

1. Go to SureCookie → Tracking Manager → Scanning → Automatic.
2. Toggle Enable Automatic Scanning on.
3. Set the options below, then click Save.

Choose a Scan Frequency

Pick how often SureCookie re-scans, based on how frequently your site changes.

• Monthly – Re-scan your site once a month. Available on all plans.
• Weekly – Re-scan every week for faster drift detection. A SureCookie Pro feature.

Choose What to Scan

The Pages to Scan setting controls the scope of each scheduled scan.

• Pages from Manual Scan – Reuse the pages you selected on the Cookie Scanner. This is the default.
• All Published Content – Scan your published posts and pages, up to your plan’s page limit.
• Selected Pages – Choose specific pages to scan.

A wider scope catches more, but uses more of your shared daily page budget.

Decide What Happens When New Cookies Are Found

This section is a SureCookie Pro feature. It controls how a newly detected cookie is handled before it reaches your banner.

• Review Before Publishing (Recommended) – Hold new cookies for one-click review before they appear on the banner. Nothing changes for visitors until you approve it.
• Allow Without Review (Not Recommended) – New cookies go live immediately, with no review step.
• Auto-Apply Trusted Cookies – Apply high-confidence categories automatically, and hold the rest for review.

Get Notified of Changes

Turn on Notify Me When Cookies or Trackers Change to receive an email summary after each scan that detects changes. Enter the address in Send Digests To, and use Test Email to confirm delivery.

Compliance Guard

Turn on Compliance Guard to block a newly detected tracker domain until you have reviewed it. It stops a tracker that arrived with a new plugin, embed or marketing tag from firing before anyone has categorized it.

A held domain is not filed under a consent category. It goes into a state of its own that no visitor choice can unlock, so clicking Accept All will not bring it back, and neither will any other banner button or consent model. Where a blocked embed sits on a held domain, the visitor sees a plain placeholder reading “This content is currently blocked.” with no button to load it, because there is no consent that would release it.

Only an administrator can lift a hold, from the Blocked Until Reviewed card described below.

Important: Compliance Guard enforces the hold through resource blocking, so it does nothing while Block Scripts Until Consent is off. Turn that on under SureCookie > Tracking Manager > Scripts and Embeds.

Release a Held Domain

Releasing is how a hold ends. It is part of Compliance Guard, so it is a SureCookie Pro feature.

1. Go to SureCookie > Tracking Manager > Scanning > Automatic.
2. Scroll past the Last Scan card to the Blocked Until Reviewed card. It appears only while Enable Automatic Scanning is on and at least one domain is held, so if it is not on the screen, nothing is being held.
3. Click Review to open the list.
4. Read the line under each domain before you act. Consent-gated after release means another blocking rule still covers it, so it will wait for consent in the normal way. Nothing else blocks this domain means the opposite: release it and it loads for everyone, before consent.
5. Click Release on the domain you want to let through. Where releasing would also drop a broader domain that is held, or leave nothing blocking it, the button changes to Confirm Release and needs a second click.

Release one domain at a time. Each domain is its own decision, so there is no bulk release and no “release everything” control.

Important: a release is permanent. SureCookie records it so later scans do not hold that domain again, and there is no control that puts a domain back on hold.

Review What Changed

The Last Scan card shows when the most recent scan ran, with counts for New Cookies, Removed, Recategorized, and, when the scan saw any, New Tracker Domains. Click View Changes to read what the scan found. That list is a report. There is nothing to approve or release inside it.

The controls sit lower down the same screen, below the Last Scan card, in two cards that are part of SureCookie Pro:

• Pending Review: cookies waiting for you to confirm the category SureCookie suggested. Approve them one by one, or use Approve All.
• Blocked Until Reviewed: tracker domains Compliance Guard is holding. See “Release a Held Domain” above.

Each card is hidden while it is empty, so if you see nothing below Last Scan, nothing is waiting on you.

Requirements and Limits

• Your site must be connected to SureCookie, the same as manual scanning.
• WordPress cron must be running. Scheduled scans rely on it. If cron is disabled, SureCookie shows a warning and scans may not run on time. Set up a real server cron job on low-traffic sites.
• Scans share your daily page budget across all sites connected to the same license.

Troubleshooting

• The scheduled scan never runs – Automatic Scanning relies on WordPress cron. On low-traffic sites, or when DISABLE_WP_CRON is set, scans can stall. Set up a server cron job to trigger cron reliably.
• New cookies aren’t being blocked – Compliance Guard only blocks new trackers when Block Scripts Until Consent is on. Enable it under SureCookie → Tracking Manager → Scripts and Embeds → Block Scripts Until Consent.
• You released a domain and the service still does not load: releasing hands a domain back to your normal rules, it does not exempt it from them. A service that sets no cookies can still be blocked on category grounds, because its row under Scripts and Embeds is gated behind a consent category, and only Essential is released without consent. To let it load before consent, go to SureCookie > Tracking Manager > Scripts and Embeds, find the rows for that host, and set Behavior on each to Always load. Set it on every row that names the host: a script row and an embed row are separate entries, and releasing one does not release the other.
• A scan reports no changes, but you added a tracker – The tracker may load only on a page the scan didn’t reach. Widen the scope or add that page, then wait for the next scan.