A cookie is a small file that a website asks your browser to store. The browser sends the file back to the site on every subsequent request, which is how a site remembers that you are logged in, that you accepted a banner, or that you prefer dark mode.
Cookies cannot read your hard drive, access your email, or identify you by name. A cookie can tell this site that the browser now holding the file visited the same page five minutes ago; without the cookie, the second visit looks like a brand-new visitor.
UK data-protection law treats most cookies as personal data when they can identify a device, even if they cannot name a person. The practical effect is that we need your consent for anything beyond strictly-necessary cookies — the ones without which the site cannot function.
Strictly-necessary cookies include the one that remembers your consent choice, the one that holds your language preference, and the Cloudflare security cookie that distinguishes a browser from a bot. Everything else — analytics, A/B testing, cross-site tracking — is optional, and you say yes to any of it only by choosing it in the consent banner.
The site uses three cookies by default. A session cookie remembers your consent choice for the banner at the top of the page. A preference cookie remembers whether you asked for the mobile or desktop layout. A security cookie, set by Cloudflare, helps distinguish real browsers from automated traffic.
None of the default cookies tracks you across other sites. They expire within 24 hours of your last visit, except the consent cookie, which lasts 12 months so you do not see the banner on every page view.
Two cookies that we deliberately do not set: a cross-site advertising cookie, and a social-widget cookie. The site has no third-party ad slots and no embedded social buttons, so those cookies have no reason to exist here. If a future design adds either, it will be announced at the top of this page and offered as a separate consent choice.
If you accept the analytics option in the consent banner, one additional cookie is set by our analytics provider. It records an anonymised identifier that lets us count unique readers, see which pages they read, and understand which referrers brought them in.
The analytics cookie does not record keystrokes, scroll position, mouse movement or form inputs. You can revoke consent at any time by clearing cookies for this site or by using the 'reset consent' link in the footer.
The aggregated analytics data never leaves the EU. The provider is contracted on standard data-processing terms; the full contract is available on request. If you work in compliance for a different operator and need the DPA for your own records, write to the editorial inbox.
When you click an outbound link to the operator, the operator may set its own cookies on its own domain. One of those cookies carries a short identifier that tells the operator you arrived from this site, which is how our commercial agreement is tracked.
The operator's cookies are governed by the operator's own cookie policy, not ours. If you prefer not to be associated with this site when you open an account, open the operator's website in a fresh private window and type the address directly.
If you are a UK reader and would prefer the operator never associates you with this site, the cleanest route is to clear cookies for both domains after each visit, or use a private browsing window from the outset. The commercial agreement does not require the operator to tell us anything about you — only that a referral occurred — but we understand the preference and respect it.