Cookies

The short version

We set no advertising cookies. No pixel, no social tag, no fingerprinting, nothing that follows you onto another website.

We do want to know which of these pages are read, and for that we use Google Analytics. It stores a cookie on your device, so it does not run unless you agree. Decline and nothing is loaded at all: not a cookie, not a page view, not a cookieless ping. Refusing is one press, the same size and beside the other, and you can change your mind at any time from the foot of any page — which deletes what was set.

We measure because a page nobody reaches is worth rewriting, and because we would rather know than guess.

The law here is the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, which require your consent before anything is stored on, or read from, your device — unless it is strictly necessary for the thing you asked for. One of the cookies below is strictly necessary and is set without asking. The analytics ones are not, so you are asked first.

You are asked once, about one thing. A banner that bundles a hundred ‘partners’ behind a single Accept teaches people to click past the ones that matter.

What is actually stored

__cf_bm — Cloudflare — about 30 minutes

Tells a person apart from an automated request, so the site stays available when it is under load or under attack. It holds a random identifier and is used for that and nothing else. Cloudflare delivers this site; it does not advertise to you.

_ga and _ga_… — Google — up to two years

Only if you agree. They hold a random identifier so that Google Analytics can tell a returning browser from a new one, and ten visits from one person are not counted as ten people. We read totals by page; there is no screen anywhere that shows us what you in particular did. Decline and these are never set. Withdraw afterwards and they are deleted, and the page is reloaded without the tag.

cleave.consent — this site — until you clear it

Not a cookie: it sits in your browser’s own storage and holds nothing but your answer and the date you gave it. It is here so you are not asked again on every page — remembering a refusal is the only way a refusal can hold.

Nothing else

No advertising cookie, no third party beyond the two named above. If you look and find something we have not named here, tell us — that would be a fault.

If we ever measure more than this

Counting which pages are read is as far as it goes. Anything that followed you onto another website, or built a picture of you to advertise at, is a different question and would be asked as one — separately, and refusable on its own rather than bundled in with this.

Nothing will be set first and explained later, and carrying on reading will not be treated as an answer. This page will say what it is, cookie by cookie, before it is switched on rather than after.

What leaves your browser regardless

Being straightforward about this is more useful than a clean claim.

Our web server keeps the ordinary record of every request: the address it came from, the page asked for, the time, and what the browser reported itself to be. That is how a web server works and how we find out when something is broken. It is not tied to you as a person, and it is not used to build a picture of you.

The typefaces are served from this website, not from Google. They used to come from Google Fonts, which meant Google was told your address before a word of the page had been read and before you had been asked anything. The files now sit beside the pages, so nothing at all leaves your browser for a third party.

If you send us an enquiry, what you typed is kept so that we can answer it. The privacy policy says how, and for how long.

If this changes

If we ever add something new that stores anything on your device, we will ask before it runs, in the same way, with refusing no harder than agreeing. We will not set something first and tell you afterwards, and we will not treat carrying on reading as though it were an answer.

If what we ask about changes, the question is put to you again rather than quietly covered by an answer you gave to something else. The date at the top of this page tells you when it was last true.

Questions

byappointment@cleave.com, marked for the attention of Sanay Shah, who is our Data Protection Contact.