Cookie policy

A cookie is a small file a site asks your browser to keep. This site keeps as few as it can get away with, and the ones that are left are listed below by name, so you can check this page against what is actually on your device rather than taking our word for it.

Cookies this site sets itself

• Your consent choice. Set when you answer the cookie message, so it does not ask again. It records what you allowed and nothing else. It is set by the consent tool, not by us, and it is required for the site to honour your answer.
• Nothing else. There is no login cookie for readers, no session cookie, no preference cookie, no shopping cart, no personalisation cookie. Reading this site sets none of them.

How page views are counted without a cookie

The archive counts how many people read each record, because those counts decide which title leads the home page. That counting uses no cookie at all and stores no identifier. What is kept is a row saying which page, which day and how many. To stop one reader refreshing a page from counting twenty times, the address and browser string are hashed together and the hash is held for thirty minutes on the server, then it expires. Nothing is written to your device and nothing about you is stored.

Cookies advertising may set

Advertising is served by Google AdSense. Where you have allowed advertising cookies, Google and its partners may set and read identifiers on your device to choose advertisements, limit how often you see the same one, and measure whether it worked. These are Google’s cookies, not ours, and Google describes them at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

Where you have refused them, advertising still appears but is not personalised, and Google is told not to use advertising identifiers for you.

What is not here

• No analytics suite following you from page to page
• No social network pixel, no like or share button that reports your visit
• No heatmap or session recording tool
• No fingerprinting, and no attempt to recognise you without a cookie
• No cookie is ever set before you have answered the message, other than the one that records your answer

Changing your mind

Your choice is not final. The Cookie preferences link at the bottom of every page reopens the message, and whatever you choose there replaces what you chose before. You can also delete cookies in your browser at any time, in which case the message will ask again on your next visit.

Refusing everything

Nothing on this site stops working if you refuse. Every record, every list, every filter and every guide behaves the same way. The only difference is that the advertising is chosen without reference to you.

Questions

The wider picture is in the privacy policy, and what advertising can and cannot buy is in the advertising disclosure.