What we use
We keep this short because the list is short.
| Cookie | Purpose | Life | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
dc_session | Keeps you signed in | Session, or 30 days if you choose to stay signed in | Strictly necessary |
dc_csrf | Blocks cross-site request forgery on forms | Session | Strictly necessary |
dc_prefs | Remembers interface choices, such as your last lookup type | 12 months | Functional |
dc_consent | Records your cookie choice so we stop asking | 12 months | Strictly necessary |
_ga | Google Analytics: tells one returning browser from another. Written only after you allow it | 13 months | Analytics |
_ga_W1P1H1JBX5 | Google Analytics: keeps a single visit together. Written only after you allow it | 13 months | Analytics |
No advertising cookies and no cross-site pixels. The one third-party cookie is Google Analytics, written only if you allow it and carrying no advertising signals. Nothing here follows you off this domain.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4, and only if you allow it. Until you press Allow in the banner, no analytics cookie is written and nothing about your visit is measured. Decline and it stays that way; the choice is remembered for twelve months so you are not asked again.
When it is allowed, it records which pages were opened, roughly how long the visit lasted, and the country and device type. Your IP address is truncated before storage. Advertising signals and personalisation are switched off, so nothing here feeds ad targeting and this data is not used to build a profile of you across other sites.
Google is a third party and processes this on their infrastructure, under the Google privacy policy. What we never send them is anything you searched for: lookup queries stay between your browser and our own servers.
Separately, our server logs record a request and its response time and are kept for a short period. Those are not cookies and do not depend on your choice.
Session recording
We are evaluating Microsoft Clarity, which records how a page is used: where the pointer moved, what was clicked, how far the page was scrolled. It is not switched on yet. When it is, it runs under the same single choice as the analytics above, and this page will say so before it loads.
One thing matters more here than the recording itself. This site has a search box that people type other people's email addresses and phone numbers into, and a recording that captured those would be sending a stranger's identifier to a third party. Form input is masked, and the pages that display a lookup result are excluded from recording entirely. If we cannot keep that true, the tool does not get switched on.
Search Console
We also use Google Search Console, and it sets no cookie and cannot see you. It reports which searches led people here, aggregated by Google on their side. Nothing about your visit reaches it and there is nothing to consent to.
Controlling cookies
Strictly necessary cookies cannot be switched off, because without them sign-in and form security do not work. Everything else can be declined in the banner, changed later on this page, or blocked in your browser settings.
Blocking all cookies will sign you out and keep you signed out.
Do Not Track and GPC
Browser Do Not Track has no agreed meaning and we do not act on it. We do act on the Global Privacy Control signal. See Your privacy choices.
More detail
How the resulting data is handled is covered in the Privacy Policy.