Privacy Policy Detector

Detect privacy policy, terms of service, and legal page links on websites.

What does Privacy Policy Detector do?

This actor scans websites for legal and compliance pages -- privacy policy, terms of service, cookie policy, disclaimer, and accessibility statements. It also detects cookie consent banners, GDPR mentions, and CCPA references. Useful for compliance audits and vendor assessments.

The actor crawls the page DOM to find links matching known legal page patterns, checks footer and navigation areas for policy links, and reports the location and type of each legal page found along with consent banner detection results.

Use cases

• Compliance audit -- verify that privacy policy and terms of service pages exist across all your web properties
• Vendor assessment -- check whether third-party services and partners publish privacy policies before onboarding
• GDPR compliance -- detect cookie consent banners and GDPR mentions to verify regulation adherence
• Website review -- audit legal page coverage across hundreds of domains in a single run
• Due diligence -- screen potential acquisitions or partnerships for basic legal page presence

Why use Privacy Policy Detector?

• Batch processing -- scan hundreds of websites in one run instead of manually checking each site
• Structured output -- get clean JSON with link URLs, link text, location on page, and legal page types
• Consent banner detection -- automatically identifies cookie consent pop-ups and GDPR/CCPA references
• API access -- integrate legal page checks into your vendor onboarding or compliance monitoring pipeline
• Pay-per-event pricing -- only pay per URL scanned with no monthly subscription
• Multiple legal page types -- detects privacy policy, terms of service, cookie policy, disclaimer, and accessibility statements in one pass

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
urls	array	Yes	--	List of URLs to scan for privacy policy and legal pages. Each URL is loaded and the page DOM is searched for legal links.

Example input

{
    "urls": [
        "https://www.google.com",
        "https://www.github.com",
        "https://example.com"
    ]
}

Output fields

Each URL produces one record with the following fields:

Field	Description
url	The original URL provided in the input
hasPrivacyPolicy	Whether a privacy policy link was found
hasTermsOfService	Whether a terms of service link was found
hasCookiePolicy	Whether a cookie policy link was found
legalPageCount	Total number of legal page links detected
legalLinks	Array of legal link objects with type, URL, text, and location
cookieConsentDetected	Whether a cookie consent banner was detected
error	Error message if the scan failed, null otherwise
checkedAt	ISO 8601 timestamp of the scan

Output example

{
    "url": "https://www.google.com",
    "hasPrivacyPolicy": true,
    "hasTermsOfService": true,
    "hasCookiePolicy": false,
    "legalPageCount": 2,
    "legalLinks": [
        { "type": "privacy-policy", "url": "https://policies.google.com/privacy", "text": "Privacy", "location": "footer" },
        { "type": "terms-of-service", "url": "https://policies.google.com/terms", "text": "Terms", "location": "footer" }
    ],
    "cookieConsentDetected": false,
    "error": null,
    "checkedAt": "2026-03-01T12:00:00.000Z"
}

How much does it cost?

Privacy Policy Detector uses Apify's pay-per-event pricing. You only pay for what you use.

Event	Price	Description
Start	$0.035	One-time per run
URL scanned	$0.001	Per URL scanned

Cost examples:

• 10 URLs: $0.035 + 10 x $0.001 = $0.045
• 100 URLs: $0.035 + 100 x $0.001 = $0.135
• 1,000 URLs: $0.035 + 1,000 x $0.001 = $1.035

Using the Apify API

You can start Privacy Policy Detector programmatically using the Apify API. Replace YOUR_TOKEN with your Apify API token.

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/privacy-policy-detector').call({
    urls: ['https://www.google.com', 'https://www.github.com'],
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('automation-lab/privacy-policy-detector').call(run_input={
    'urls': ['https://www.google.com', 'https://www.github.com'],
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

Integrations

Connect Privacy Policy Detector with other tools using Apify integrations. Export results to Google Sheets for vendor compliance tracking, send Slack alerts when a monitored site removes its privacy policy, automate vendor screening workflows in Make or Zapier, push results to n8n for custom reporting, or configure webhooks for real-time notifications.

Tips and best practices

• Run against your full domain list to catch any web properties missing required legal pages before a regulatory audit.
• Check the legalLinks location field to verify that legal links appear in the footer where users expect them, not buried in obscure pages.
• Combine with Cookie Scanner to cross-reference whether sites that set tracking cookies also have a cookie policy page.
• Schedule quarterly scans on vendor lists to ensure partners maintain their privacy policies over time.
• Use cookieConsentDetected as a quick GDPR readiness indicator for European-facing websites.

FAQ

What types of legal pages does this actor detect? The actor detects privacy policy, terms of service, cookie policy, disclaimer, and accessibility statement pages. It identifies them by matching link text and URL patterns against known conventions.

Does the actor follow links to verify the legal pages exist? The actor finds and reports legal page links on the scanned URL. It does not follow those links to verify the target page content.

Can I use this to check if a site is GDPR compliant? The actor checks for the presence of legal pages and consent banners, which are indicators of GDPR readiness. However, it does not evaluate the content or legal sufficiency of those pages. Use it as a screening tool rather than a full compliance audit.

How does the actor detect cookie consent banners? The actor looks for common consent management platforms and cookie banner patterns in the page DOM, including known consent libraries like OneTrust, CookieBot, and custom implementations that use standard consent-related class names and identifiers.

Can I check multiple pages on the same domain? Yes. You can provide multiple URLs from the same domain (e.g., homepage, about page, contact page) to check whether legal links are consistently present across different sections of a website.