Legal
Cookies
This page lists the cookies Thoughtsfromhere actually sets. There are two, and they are both technical. There is no analytics cookie and no advertising cookie.
What a cookie is here
A cookie is a small text file a site asks your browser to keep. I use cookies for two narrow jobs: remembering whether you have accepted or declined the notice, and keeping a short technical session when PHP needs one. I do not use cookies to follow you from page to page as a profile, and I do not use them to advertise.
The notice at the bottom of each page is visible until you make a choice. After you choose, the site stores that choice so the notice does not return on every visit. You can undo that choice with the button on this page.
The consent cookie
The consent cookie is named tfh_consent. It stores either the word accept or the word decline. It is set with a path of / and a life of 180 days (15,552,000 seconds). It does not hold your name, your e-mail, or a page history. It holds the choice you pressed on the notice.
Accept and decline both hide the notice. Neither choice turns on a tracker, because there is no tracker to turn on. The button still matters. It keeps the site from asking you the same question on every load, and it keeps a record, in your own browser, of the choice you made.
The PHP session
When a page needs a short-lived technical session, PHP may set a session cookie. That cookie is the ordinary session cookie a PHP host uses. I do not put your letter inside it. I do not use it to advertise. It expires when the session ends, which in ordinary use is when you close the browser or when the server lets the session go.
If you block all cookies, the public pages still read. The notice will keep returning because the site cannot remember a choice it is not allowed to store. The contact form still works as a form. A blocked cookie does not stop a letter from being typed.
What I do not set
I do not set analytics cookies. I do not set advertising cookies. I do not set a cookie that remembers which essays you opened. I do not embed a third-party script whose job is to watch a reader. The map on the contact page is a simple embed from a map service. That embed is not a cookie I set, and it is not something I use to build a list.
Thoughtsfromhere runs on commercial shared hosting. The host may keep technical logs, which are described on the privacy page. Logs are not cookies. I mention them here so the two kinds of record are not confused.
How to reset your choice
The button below clears the consent cookie and shows the notice again. It does not delete a letter you have already sent. It does not change a page you have already read. It only returns the banner so you can choose again.
How to clear cookies in a browser
Every browser has a place to delete cookies for a single site or for all sites. In most desktop browsers it lives under settings, then privacy, then cookies or site data. You can search the settings panel for the word cookie and follow the list that appears. After you delete tfh_consent, the notice on this site will return on the next visit.
If you use more than one browser, each one holds its own copy of the choice. Clearing the cookie in one browser does not clear it in another. That is ordinary browser behaviour, not a setting I control from this desk.