For consumers, how does GPC work?

As a first step, privacy preferences can be set by the user in their browser if that browser supports the GPC standard.

The list of browsers that support GPC is continuously growing. As of this writing, this includes Firefox Nightly (opens in a new tab), Brave (opens in a new tab) and DuckDuckGo (opens in a new tab). In addition to this, GPC has created a Chrome Plugin (opens in a new tab) to support GPC on Chrome.

From their browser, the consumer sets their Global Privacy Control preference to true, meaning they opt out of data sales or sharing. From the consumer’s perspective, that’s all there is to it - when the user browses future websites, their browser shares a signal that confirms the user has opted out of data sales or sharing. Your website must respect that signal and ensure the user's personal data is appropriately protected and not processed.