Cookie Policy

Cookies, and who sets them

This site sets two cookies, both for Google Analytics, which measures how the site is used: _ga and one more whose name begins with _ga_. They hold a random identifier that recognises a returning browser and the state of your current visit, and they last up to two years. Nothing else here sets a cookie.

Analytics loads on every page, for every visitor, as soon as the page opens. The one other thing on the page that comes from elsewhere is the security check on the run form, which tells a person from a script. It sets no cookie on this site; whatever it keeps belongs to its provider's own domain. There is no advertising technology and no social embeds, and the fonts are served from this site.

Two things are deliberately withheld from it. Its advertising features are off, so what it measures is not used to show you ads. And the page of a run is reported only as a run page — never by its address or its title — because the address is what keeps a brief unlisted and the title is your own topic.

What is stored in your browser

One entry holds the runs this browser started: for each one, the run's address, its topic and the local time it started. Only the 200 most recent are kept, and older entries fall off the end.

It is written by your browser and read by your browser. It never reaches us, and it is not what counts your allowance — that is done on our side, from a one-way hash of your connection, and the Privacy Policy describes it.

Why it exists

A run takes real work to produce, and its address is the only way back to it. Without this list, closing the tab would lose a finished brief. There is no account to keep it in, so your browser holds it.

How to remove it

Remove runs one at a time on the history page, or clear this site's data in your browser settings: the whole list goes with it, and so do the analytics cookies.

If your browser blocks site data, or you are in a private window, the list simply stays empty and everything else keeps working.

To keep analytics from running at all, block it in your browser or install Google's opt-out add-on for Google Analytics. The site works the same without it.