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Cookie Policy

Last updated: Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Our Cookie Policy

Oatmeal chocoloate chip, Warmed slightly, preferably served with milk. We reserve the right to change our preferences arbitrarily based on season, time of day, events of the evening prior, availability and whim.

Our Browser Cookie Policy

Ah, yes. Of course. Ahem.

A browser cookie is a piece of data that websites ask your browser to store on your machine. Each time you view a page on a website it's like the website never saw you before - it's all brand new to the website. Basically, websites have the memory of a goldfish. The website needs a way to remind itself that you've visited before, and that's what it uses cookies for.

It's important to note that cookies are site specific. A cookie set by one website cannot generally be accessed by another website. (Read about Same-origin policy on Wikipedia).

This policy describes how CodeProject and other third parties use cookies.

General Browsing

CodeProject stores a cookie when you first visit the site in order to create a "session". A session is akin to a visit: you come to the Site, browse some pages, interact on the forums, and leave. That's a session. The "session cookie" is stored only for the duration of your session and allows the Site to store state information such as the fact that you've logged in successfully (so you don't have to log in each page view) and whatever settings you've chosen (for instance, fluid page rendering instead of fixed-width).

Other cookies are stored for longer periods (over a year in some cases) and are used for customisation of the Site (for instance the current category of content you prefer) without you needing to be logged in.

Advertising

Advertising allows us to continue to provide services for free. As such we're aware that advertising must be ethical, non-invasive and safe. We use Google's Industrial strength (and closely scrutinised) DoubleClick platform for ad serving, and this service may store cookies on your system in order to show you ads that are actually interesing and relevant instead of random and pointless. Cookies also allow the ad server to count the number of ads served and clicks clicked so that billing for our advertising clients is fair and transparent. See How DoubleClick uses cookies. You can control the cookies used by DoubleClick using Googles Ad Settings.

Finally, cookies allow the ad serving platform to understand which ads you've seen (so it can limit the number of times you see an ad), and which ads you've clicked on (so it can attempt to show you more of those types of ads). No personal information is sent to the ad serving system.

Verification

If you worry that ad systems are watching you (they are really just watching the random number they themselves placed in a cookie) then you may be heartened to know that ad systems are themselves watched. Verification services such as DoubleVerify may place cookies on your system so they can track which ads are being shown to you in order to keep the advertising fair and transparent and to combat fraud and abuse. See DoubleVerify's privacy policy.

So who's watching DoubleVerify?

Analytics

We use analytics services such as Google Analytics to understand how our services are being used, which in turn allows us to better tailor our Product and Service offerings to you. We do not share personally identifiable “raw” data with our clients or any third parties. We may, however, share aggregate, non-personal data such as total pageview or visitor counts.

What information is collected on Me via cookies?

Not a lot. The data we get from you is typically collected via a form submission. Remember that cookies are set by a website: they can only contain data that the website already has. Cookies can, however, allow data to be correlated: You visit our site one day, we set a cookie, and then you visit the site again the next day, and we read the cookies we stored in order for us to know that it's really you again. Yay! We're really happy you came back. Here's a cookie!

But I don't like cookies. No cookies for me, please

Technology is here to help, but by blocking cookies you will be unable to log-in, you won't be able to customise the site settings, and you may get lots of ads for that other technology stack you've been trying so hard to avoid.

You can change your cookie consent settings on this site by modifying your account settings under the Privacy tab. This allows you to block certain cookies not required for basic functionality. Unfortunately the only way to fully block cookies would be to (you guessed it!) store a cookie so the site knows not to store a cookie.

You other option is you can adjust the settings on your internet browser and choose from the available Cookies settings. For example, Chrome makes it super easy: Just go to Settings, click Advanced, choose Content Settings, select Cookies, and add a site to your Blocked list.

Contact Us

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding this Cookies Policy, please contact CodeProject at privacy@codeproject.com.