Cookies: the four items this site can store, and how to be rid of them

01

Nothing optional is written until the question is answered

A cookie is a short file a site asks a browser to hold, and it comes back to the site on the next request. Local storage does a similar job with a different mechanism and no expiry date of its own. Both are covered by the same rules, and so is anything else that reads from or writes to a reader’s device.

One item is written before any choice is made, and it is the item that keeps the pages working. Everything else waits. A banner asks first, and until it is answered the counting described below does not run at all. Three points about what an answer has to look like, because they are the law rather than a courtesy.

• A box ticked in advance counts for nothing. Neither does silence, and neither does a reader simply carrying on without objecting.
• The choice has to be unbundled. Agreeing to one thing cannot be the price of agreeing to another.
• Refusing has to be as easy as accepting, and a refusal is recorded exactly as an acceptance is.

02

Four items, with their jobs and their lives

The whole inventory fits in one table. There is no advertising network on these pages, no social widget, no embedded video player and no tag manager, which is why the list is this short.

Two of the four are strictly necessary and are not optional, because a site that cannot serve a page or remember a refusal is not functioning. The other two are switched off until somebody says otherwise, and the site reads identically either way.

03

The reference that leaves with a click sits in the address, not on the device

A link to an operator carries a reference that identifies this publication as the source of the visit, and that reference is how the fee described on how we are paid is attributed. It travels inside the web address. Nothing has to be written to a reader’s device for it to work, and nothing is.

Past the click, a different notice applies. The operator’s site will set its own storage under its own terms, and this page has no reach over any of it. A business licensed in Britain is bound on the marketing side: permission for direct electronic messages has to be asked for specifically, has to be capable of being taken back, and cannot be inherited by one brand from another inside the same group.

04

Changing an answer, in the browser or on the page

The answer can be changed at any time and takes effect at once. Reopening the banner replaces the record of the earlier choice rather than adding to it. Where a reader switches the counting off, the marker is not read again and lapses at its own expiry.

The browser gives a blunter route. Every current browser can be told to delete stored items for one site, to delete everything, or to refuse new items altogether. The settings live under privacy or site data, the exact wording depending on the browser, and clearing them removes the record of the answer too, which is why the banner reappears afterwards.

Refusing everything optional breaks nothing on this site. The arithmetic, the tables, the worked sums and the ranking all draw the same way. The only loss is that a returning reader counts as a new one, which affects the publisher’s figures and not the reader’s experience.

05

Why the question is asked in the first place

British law treats a reader’s device as theirs. Storing something on it, or reading something off it, needs permission unless the item is strictly necessary to deliver a service the reader asked for. The Information Commissioner enforces that, alongside the wider rules on electronic marketing, and the standards it applies to consent are the ones set out in part one above.

Gambling operators sit under a further layer again. Their licence conditions require informed and specific consent before direct electronic marketing, require the consent to be withdrawable, and require the licensee to be able to evidence it. From 1 May 2025 the opt-in has to be split up as well, so that a customer agrees separately for each kind of product and each route a message might arrive by.

What is held off the device, and for how long, is set out on privacy, including the server logs and the retention periods that apply to them.

06

When this page moves

An inventory that is out of date is worse than none, so the table above is the record rather than a summary of one. Adding an item means changing that table and moving the printed date at the head of the page. Nothing is added quietly, and an item that would need consent is not written before consent is given. Questions about any of it go to write to us.