Cookie Policy

Last Updated: October 26, 2026

This policy explains what cookies and similar technologies are used on criticfarm.com. Read it with our Privacy Policy.

1. The short version

Critic Farm sets no cookies unless you allow analytics. We use Google Analytics 4 to count visits and see which pages help readers, and only if you press Allow in the banner at the bottom of the page. Until you do, Google Analytics is not loaded and nothing from Google reaches your browser. The same Allow lets our own recorder keep session recordings and heatmaps of how our pages are used, on our own server; it sets no cookies, and what you type is never recorded. We run no advertising pixels, no affiliate attribution tags, and no cross-site tracking.

We would rather say that plainly than publish a long policy describing tracking we do not do.

2. What we actually use

Technology	Used on this site?	Notes
Strictly necessary cookies	No	The site is statically published and needs no session cookie to work
Functional cookies	No	Nothing you enter is remembered between visits
Analytics cookies	Only if you allow them	Google Analytics 4 (_ga, _ga_<id>), set only after you press Allow. Google Signals and ad personalisation are switched off
Session recordings and heatmaps (our own)	Only if you allow them	Our own recorder notes the pages you visit, your clicks and taps and what you clicked on, scrolling, mouse movement, and how the page looked and changed while you were on it, so we can replay a visit and see where pages confuse people. Everything typed into a form is masked in your browser before anything is sent, and so are email addresses and phone numbers shown on a page. It sets no cookies: it keeps a visit id (cf-bx, in session storage, gone when you close the tab) and a browser id (cf-bx-visitor, in local storage, so we can tell a first visit from a return one). Recordings stay on our own server and go to no third party
Advertising or affiliate cookies	No	We run no advertising and set no attribution tags
Browser local storage	Only in the community	If you sign in to the community, your browser keeps a sign-in token (cf-community-session) so you stay signed in, and a story you have started but not posted (cf-community-draft) so it is not lost. Both stay on your device, are never read by anyone else, and are removed when you sign out or post. Our calculators keep their working figures in memory only. Separately, cf-analytics-consent remembers whether you allowed or declined analytics, so we do not ask again; it never leaves your browser

Our calculators and the matching quiz run in your browser and do not need to store anything on your device to work. The community stores only the two items above, and only once you sign in or start writing; they are strictly necessary for what you asked it to do, which is why the banner does not ask about them. The banner asks about analytics and session recordings only. If you refresh the page mid-quiz, you start again — a direct consequence of storing nothing.

3. Third parties

If you subscribe to our newsletter, the subscription form sends your email address to our own server, which passes it to Kit (kit.com), the email platform we use to send it, under Kit’s own privacy notice. Your browser never contacts Kit, so Kit sets no cookies on it. Before the form sends anything, your browser solves a small puzzle that proves a person is signing up; it stores nothing on your device.

If you allow analytics, your browser loads Google’s analytics script (gtag.js) from googletagmanager.com, and Google processes your visit under its own privacy policy. If you do not, nothing is loaded from Google. Session recordings are not a third party: they are made by our own code and kept on our own server.

We embed nothing else: no third-party fonts loaded at run time, no social widgets, no embedded video players, no third-party comment system (the community is our own), and no chat widget.

4. Server logs

Separately from cookies, our web host records standard request information — IP address, browser user-agent, page requested, and time — as almost every web server does. This is used for security and reliability, not to build a profile of you. See section 2.2 of the Privacy Policy.

5. Your controls

• The analytics banner. “Allow” and “No thanks” look the same and do the same amount of work. Nothing is pre-ticked. To change your mind later, use Analytics choice at the bottom of any page. Withdrawing stops measurement and session recording at once, deletes the Google Analytics cookies we can reach, and removes the recorder’s two ids from your browser.
• Global Privacy Control. If your browser sends a GPC signal, we treat it as “No thanks”: analytics and session recording are not loaded and we do not show the banner. We neither sell nor share personal information either way. See Your Privacy Choices.
• Browser settings. Every major browser lets you block or delete cookies. The site works the same without them.
• Do Not Track. There is still no agreed standard for how sites should respond to DNT; use the banner or GPC instead.

6. If this changes

If we add any other non-essential technology, we will update this page before switching it on, and ask for your permission in the same way: rejecting will be exactly as easy as accepting, and nothing will be pre-ticked.

7. Contact us