Cookie policy

This policy is about what is stored on the device you are reading this on, what asks your permission first, and how to change your mind afterwards. It sits alongside the privacy policy, which covers personal data generally. Where the two touch, this one points there rather than repeating it.

What this covers

“Cookies” here is shorthand for cookies and everything that behaves like one: local storage, session storage, and anything else a page reads from or writes to your device. The law treats them together, and so do we, because the question that matters to you is not which browser feature a script used but whether something was left behind on your machine.

This policy covers domora.md and every page on it, in all three languages. It does not cover other sites we link to. Once you follow a link away from here you are on somebody else’s site, under somebody else’s policy, and we have no say in what it stores.

What is stored on your device today

One thing: the record of the cookie choice you made. As at the effective date printed at the top of this page, that is the whole list.

No analytics runs on this site. Nothing counts your visit, nothing records it, nothing builds a profile of you and nothing follows you from this site to another one. The typefaces are served from our own domain rather than from a font provider’s network, so reading a page does not hand your address to a third party for the sake of a typeface.

You were still asked, and that is the right way round: the mechanism is in place before there is anything for it to hold back. Answering the banner today records your answer and changes nothing else, because there is nothing yet for it to switch off.

The two categories

There are two categories on this site, and only one of them is yours to decide.

Strictly necessary. Not toggleable, and no consent is asked for it, because the site cannot do what you have asked it to do without it. Two things fall in here:

• The record of your cookie choice — described below. Storing “you said no” is the only way to avoid asking you the same question on every page. This is the only thing stored on your device today.
• The bot check on the contact form — a security measure rather than measurement, which is why it is not gated by consent. It is not switched on yet.

Your language is not on that list, and nothing is stored to remember it. It is in the address of the page you are reading, so switching language is a link to another address and nothing more.

Analytics and session recording. Consent-gated, and off until you say otherwise. No box is pre-ticked, and no answer means no. If you never touch the banner, none of it runs. Nothing in this category runs today either — see the section below.

This is one toggle covering two different things, and you should know that before you decide. Say yes and you would be agreeing both to be counted — how many people opened a page, roughly where from, what referred them — and to be recorded: the movement of your pointer, your scrolling and your clicks, replayed afterwards as a session. We have not split them into two switches, so accepting either is accepting both, and rejecting is rejecting both.

That is the whole list. There is no advertising category and no marketing category, because we buy no advertising, run no ad network tag and share nothing with a data broker, as the privacy policy sets out.

Your choice

On your first visit a banner asks you what you want. Accept all and Reject all sit next to each other on that first screen, at the same size and the same weight. Rejecting everything is one click, exactly as accepting everything is one click. It is not a text link, it is not paler than the other button, and it is not on a second screen you have to go looking for. There is a third control that opens the categories if you would rather decide them one at a time.

Nothing non-essential runs before you answer. Not while the banner is open, not while you are reading it, not if you ignore it and scroll past.

There is no cookie wall. Rejecting everything does not lock a page, blur it, shorten it or degrade it in any way, and the banner does not come back to ask again on the next page. Every page of this site, including the contact form, works completely with everything non-essential rejected. That is deliberate: a choice you are punished for making is not a choice.

Changing your mind

Every page of this site carries a Cookie settings control in the footer, in every language. It reopens the same banner, showing what you chose last time, and you can change any of it there and then.

Withdrawing consent is meant to be as easy as giving it — Article 7(3) of the GDPR requires that, and it is also simply fair. So there is no email to write, no form to fill in and nobody to ask. Withdrawal is not retrospective: it stops the processing from that point on, and it does not make what happened while your consent stood unlawful.

Clearing your browser’s storage for this site also erases the record of your choice. The banner will then ask you again, because from our side you look like someone who has never answered.

What we record about your choice

Your answer is recorded on your device and nowhere else. Three things go into it:

• When you chose — a timestamp.
• What you chose — the categories you allowed, and the ones you did not.
• Which version you were shown — the version number of this policy at the time.

That record never leaves your device. We keep no server-side consent log, and that is a decision rather than an oversight: a log on our side would mean creating and holding a further record about you, on every visit, in exchange for evidential value we do not need. There is no account here, no login and no identifier that ties the record to you as a person; it is a note in your browser that only your browser reads.

A recorded choice stands for 30 days, whether you accepted or rejected, and then the banner asks again.

A new version of this policy asks you again immediately. Consent to one set of purposes cannot be inherited by another. If we add a purpose you have never seen, an answer you gave to the old document is an answer to a different question, and treating it as agreement to the new one would be helping ourselves to a permission you never gave. So when the version recorded against your choice no longer matches the version in force, your answer stops counting and the banner comes back.

Analytics and session recording, if we switch them on

Nothing in this section describes anything that happens today. It is here so that you know what the consent-gated category is for, and what we have committed to doing before any of it starts.

If we enable it, it will be two things behind one consent: counting visits — how many people opened a page, roughly where in the world from, what referred them, and in what order pages were read — and recording them, as the movement of a pointer, scrolling and clicks, replayed afterwards as a session and aggregated into heatmaps.

Three commitments attach to that, and we are writing them down now rather than at the point where it would be convenient to forget them:

• Nothing starts without your consent. The category is off by default, no box is pre-ticked, and no answer means no.
• The session recorder will be configured to mask all text and input content, everywhere on this site — the strict setting, applied site-wide rather than to a list of fields somebody has to keep up to date. It applies to the contact form exactly as it applies to everything else, so what you type would not be in a recording. Half of that setting lives in this site’s own code and is already enforced there; the other half is a switch on the recording account, which does not exist yet. Both have to be in place first.
• A new version of this policy comes first. Before anything is switched on we publish a new version of this document naming what is collected, who receives it, where it goes, on what basis and for how long, together with the full list of cookies each tool sets and how long each one lasts — and, because the version changes, the banner asks you again. You will not find out from a cookie appearing on your device.

Masking is not anonymity and we would not dress it up as one, which is why this category sits behind consent rather than being argued to be exempt from it.

Changes

This document carries a version number and an effective date, both printed at the top of this page. They are how you know which text describes what is actually happening on the site.

When what we store changes, we publish a new version with a new number and a new effective date. We do not silently edit the version that is in force, and superseded versions stay available so you can see what was true on the day you chose. A new version re-prompts, for the reason given above: your old answer answered the old document.