Cookie Policy

What cookies are

A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store on your device. The next time you visit, your browser hands that file back to the site, which is how a website can appear to remember something between visits or between pages.

Two things worth clearing up, because they cause a lot of unnecessary worry:

• A cookie is not a program. It is plain text. It cannot run software, install anything, or damage your device.
• A cookie usually holds a reference, not your details. Typically it stores a short identifier that means something to the website, rather than your name or email address.

Cookies also differ in how long they last. A session cookie is deleted as soon as you close your browser. A persistent cookie stays for a set period, which might be days or months, until it expires or you delete it.

Related technologies do similar jobs under different names, such as local storage, pixels and tags. Where this policy says cookies, take it to mean those too.

Why websites use cookies

The web has no memory of its own. Each page request arrives as if it were the first, so without something like cookies a site could not tell that two page views came from the same person a moment apart.

That leads to four broad uses:

• Strictly necessary Required Keeping the site working and secure — staying signed in, protecting forms from abuse, serving pages efficiently. Without these a site may not function properly.
• Preferences Optional Remembering a choice you made, such as a language or a display setting, so you do not have to set it again.
• Analytics Optional Counting visits and page views so the owner can see which pages are useful and which are not.
• Advertising Optional Choosing which ads to show, limiting how often the same ad repeats, and measuring whether ads were seen or clicked.

The first group is genuinely needed for a site to work. The other three are conveniences for the visitor or the owner, which is why the law in many countries treats them differently and asks for your consent before they are set.

Essential cookies

Essential cookies are the ones a site needs in order to function safely. On a site like this one, they would typically relate to security, to page caching that keeps things loading quickly, or to the content management system that runs the site.

These are not used to track you or to build a profile. They exist so the site works, and blocking them may cause parts of it to behave oddly.

Analytics cookies

Analytics cookies help a site owner understand how the site is being used in aggregate: how many people visited, which pages they read, roughly where they came from, and whether something is broken.

Where an analytics service is in use on this site, it is used only for that purpose. We look at patterns across many visitors, not at individuals. We do not use analytics to identify you personally, and we do not connect analytics data with anything you send us through the contact form.

This kind of measurement is genuinely useful for deciding what to fix or write next, but it is not necessary for the site to work, so it belongs in the optional group described in section 2.

Advertising cookies

Websites that carry advertising usually work with an advertising partner rather than selling ad space directly. Where advertising is displayed on this site, that partner may use cookies or similar technologies to decide which ads to show, to avoid repeating the same ad too often, and to measure whether ads were seen or clicked.

Depending on the partner and where you are, this can involve personalised advertising, meaning ads chosen partly on the basis of your browsing rather than only on the content of the page you are reading.

Where the law requires consent before personalised advertising begins, you should be asked before any such cookie is set, and you should be able to change your answer later. Advertising partners also provide their own ad preference controls, which usually let you turn off personalisation while still seeing ads.

Third-party cookies

A first-party cookie is set by the site you are visiting. A third-party cookie is set by a different company whose code runs on the page — an analytics provider, an advertising network, an embedded video player, and so on.

Third-party cookies are handled by those companies under their own privacy policies, not ours. We do not control what they collect or how long they keep it.

The categories of third party that could set cookies in connection with this site are:

• Security or content delivery services sitting in front of the site.
• Analytics providers, where analytics is in use, as described in section 4.
• Advertising partners, where advertising is displayed, as described in section 5.
• Embedded content such as a video player or map, if any is present on a page you visit.

We have deliberately not published a list of named companies here. Supporting services change over time, and a list of names goes stale quietly — a policy that says the wrong thing is worse than one that says less. If you want to know exactly which providers are in use at the moment you are reading this, ask us using the details in section 9 and we will tell you.

How you can manage cookies

You have real control here, and it does not depend on us. Every major browser lets you see which cookies are stored, delete them individually or all at once, block them from specific sites, and block third-party cookies generally.

Where to look in your browser

• ChromeSettings, then Privacy and security, then Third-party cookies and Site settings.
• FirefoxSettings, then Privacy & Security, under Cookies and Site Data.
• SafariSettings or Preferences, then Privacy. On iPhone, look under Settings then Safari.
• EdgeSettings, then Cookies and site permissions.

Menu names shift a little between versions, so if the path above does not match what you see, searching your browser’s help for “cookies” will get you there.

Other ways to reduce cookies

• Private or incognito browsing discards cookies when you close the window.
• Browser tracking protection, built into most modern browsers, blocks many third-party trackers automatically.
• Content blocking extensions can stop analytics and advertising scripts loading at all.
• Advertising preference controls, offered by ad networks, let you turn off personalisation without blocking cookies entirely.
• Any consent banner shown on this site, where one applies to you, should let you change your choices at any time and not only on your first visit.

Changes to this Cookie Policy

We may update this policy from time to time, for example if we begin using a service that sets cookies, stop using one, or add a feature that needs them.

When we do, we will change the Last Updated date at the top of this page. Significant changes will be described rather than slipped in quietly. It is worth glancing at the date if you have not visited for a while.

Contact

If you have a question about cookies on this site, or want to know exactly which services are currently in use, just ask. Pets in World is an online-only project, so the form and the email address below are the routes that reach us.

This policy sits alongside our Privacy Policy, which covers information handling more broadly, and our Terms of Service.