Cookies

What a cookie is

A cookie is a small piece of text a site asks your browser to keep and send back on later visits. Some are read by this site only; others belong to a service the site loads. Related technologies, local storage in particular, keep data in your browser the same way without being cookies, and this page covers those too.

Cookies this site needs to work

These are set by us and cannot be turned off, because without them the site cannot do what you came to it for:

• Signing you in. A session cookie identifies you after you log in. Without it every page would treat you as a stranger.
• Security. The same session cookie is what stops one account from reading another's content.
• Remembering your choices. Your cart, your place in the interface, and the fact that you have read this notice are kept in your browser so they survive a page reload.

Blocking these will not break your privacy, but it will break signing in.

Analytics

We also load analytics that count visits and record which pages are used, so we can see what is worth improving. These are read strictly by us, the owners of this site. We do not sell what they collect, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not build a profile of you to share with anyone else.

The analytics run through third-party providers, so the cookies they set carry those providers' names rather than ours. Their role is to deliver the measurement back to us and nothing further.

Shared links

Opening a link someone shared with you sets a cookie named sa_vid, which holds a random identifier and lasts one year. It carries no name, email or account, and it is ours alone: no other site can read it.

Against that identifier we record, for the link you opened, how many times it has been opened from your browser and when, the page that referred you, your browser's user-agent string, and a short description of your browser and device used to recognise you if the cookie is missing. Its only purpose is to tell the person who created the link how many people opened it and how often, rather than counting one curious reader as a crowd.

Deleting the cookie in your browser ends the connection: the next visit starts a new identifier with no link to the previous one.

What we do not do

• No advertising cookies, and no ad networks.
• No selling or renting of anything collected here.
• No following you around other sites.

Controlling cookies

Every browser can show you the cookies a site has set and delete them, and can be told to refuse them entirely, usually under Privacy or Site data in settings. Clearing this site's data also clears your acknowledgement of the notice, so it will appear again on your next visit.

Note that refusing cookies for this site logs you out and keeps you logged out, since the session cookie is the sign-in.

The notice itself

Accepting the banner records nothing about you. It stores a single value in your browser's local storage so the bar stops reappearing: not a cookie, and it never leaves your device.