Cookies are small files a site stores in your browser, and they are how a page remembers anything at all between one request and the next. Here is what LobeCraft uses them for, one category at a time.
Updates
Cookies come and go as services change, and this page follows them. It is updated when something actually changes, not periodically for appearance, and the date above says when.
Cookies in use here
- Required. These carry the page to your browser, protect the connection, and remember your answer to this very notice.
- Statistics. Google Analytics, aggregated: what gets read, what gets skipped, which sites send readers here. No individual profile.
- Ads. Google AdSense sets cookies to fill the ad slots and to keep the same advertisement from repeating endlessly.
How long they stay
Some of these last only as long as the tab stays open. Others, the measurement and ad cookies in particular, sit there for months.
The actual names
- _ga and _gid come from Google Analytics and exist to tell browsers apart when counting visits.
- __gads and __gpi come from Google AdSense, which uses them to pick ads and limit repeats.
- wordpress_test_cookie and the wp-settings-* family are WordPress internals: a capability check and your display preferences.
- comment_author_* appears only after you comment, and only so the form is pre-filled the next time.
It is worth saying what is absent. No cookie here reaches your files, tracks you outside the browser, or gets sold. None exists to put a name to a reader.
Embedded content
Embedded material from third parties can bring its own cookies with it. We cannot enumerate them here because they belong to the provider and change without reference to us.
The opt-out links
- Google’s own controls sit at adssettings.google.com and cover personalised advertising wherever you meet it.
- Analytics measurement is refused site-wide by installing Google’s opt-out add-on from tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
- Nothing above depends on us: your browser can block third-party cookies outright, or clear this site’s cookies alone.
Automated signals
Browser signals such as Do Not Track are not honoured consistently across the web because there is no agreed standard for what they oblige a site to do. We rely on the cookie controls described above, which do have a defined effect.
Asking first
Where consent is required before a non-essential cookie is set, it is asked for on your first visit and your answer is itself remembered in a cookie. Changing your mind means clearing that cookie, after which you will be asked again.
What you can switch off
None of this is locked. Browser privacy settings remove cookies already stored and refuse new ones — at the cost of some site behaviour if you include the technical ones.
Getting in touch
Questions go to the contact page.