Last reviewed on the date this page was published. If you are reading this a long time after that, write to us and we will confirm it is still accurate.
A cookie is a small text file a website asks your browser to keep. Some are needed for a site to work at all. Others exist so that somebody — us, an advertiser, an analytics service — can tell one visit from another. This page sets out which are which.
Cookies this site sets itself
- Essential. WordPress sets a small number of cookies to keep the site working, and to remember you if you leave a comment so you do not have to type your name again. These cannot be switched off without breaking the site.
- Preferences. If you dismiss a notice or the site remembers something small about how you like to read, that is stored here. Nothing in this category identifies you.
Cookies set by other companies
These are the ones worth understanding, because they are the ones that follow you between sites.
- Advertising. When advertising is running on this site, our advertising partners and their own partners may set cookies to choose which adverts you see, to stop you seeing the same one repeatedly, and to measure whether an advert worked. Google is one of these partners; Google uses cookies, including the DoubleClick cookie, to serve adverts based on your prior visits to this and other websites.
- Analytics. We use analytics to see which articles are read and which are ignored. This is reported to us in aggregate — we can see that four hundred people read a piece about kitchen shelving, not who they were.
- Affiliate tracking. If you follow a link from here to a retailer, that retailer may set a cookie recording that you arrived from this site. That is how any commission is attributed. It typically expires after a set period, commonly between twenty-four hours and thirty days depending on the retailer.
- Embedded content. Anything embedded from another service — a video, a map, a Pinterest widget — behaves exactly as though you had visited that service directly, and sets whatever cookies that service sets.
How to control them
Every major browser lets you block cookies, delete the ones already stored, or be asked each time. Look for Privacy or Site Settings in the browser preferences. Blocking all cookies will not stop this site working, though it may make some embedded content behave oddly.
For advertising specifically, you can opt out of personalised advertising from Google at google.com/settings/ads, and from many other networks at optout.aboutads.info and youronlinechoices.eu. Opting out does not remove advertising — it makes what you see less closely targeted.
Consent
Where the law that applies to you requires consent before non-essential cookies are set — as it does across the UK and EU — that consent is requested before those cookies load, and you can change your answer at any time by clearing this site from your browser and returning.
Questions
This page sits alongside our privacy policy, which covers personal data more broadly. If anything here is unclear, the contact page has the right address.