Actually, there aren’t any cookies set directly* by us. No sneaky tracking going on here!
The site does though include code which counts visitors and determines things such as which pages are most popular.
No personal or confidential data is created or stored by this code. None of this information allows anyone to identify you specifically as an individual or anything about what your favourite colour is and whether you prefer cats or dogs.
The code used is created by Fathom Analytics, an independent privacy-focused Canadian company whose business ethos is to avoid the extensive tracking that some other analytics software imposes on users to gather data.
Our visitor tracking is only in operation when you’re on this site, we don’t know where you go afterwards. We do know where you came from if you came here from another site, eg. from an ad or text link, but not which bus route you live on.
Anonymous statistical data about details of your visit to this website, including which pages you viewed, the average time spent on the site, plus traffic information – eg. location data (which country a visitor came from), which link or search engine brought you here – we can see which one, but not what you searched for.
And we can see which browser you used, eg. Chrome, and whether you were on a phone, tablet, or a desktop/laptop computer.
Web designers like to know this kind of stuff, not so they can gossip, but so they can plan the ongoing technical development and functionality of our site.
You can understand why it’s very useful to know a little about our visitors and which pages you’re reading – or ignoring!
* However, if you click on any links to third-party sites or social media networks, they will likely set cookies or tracking pixels which can be used to build your profile on their service.
Cookies are not all bad, they’re a practical mechanism for conveying information from one session to another; over 90% of websites currently use cookies. For example, cookies are how your bank or Amazon ‘remembers’ you when you revisit the site.
Please note though that these websites have their own privacy policies and standards. Not everybody is as nice as us, so because we have no control over them, we have to state that we don’t accept any responsibility or liability for what they might get up to. So be careful out there.
This document was last updated on February 25th, 2021.