Cookie policy

Until you answer the consent banner, this site sets no analytics cookies, no advertising cookies, and no identifiers of any kind. Not "we set them but do not use them" - they are not written.

That is not a courtesy. Under EU law, as implemented in Estonia, consent has to come before the storing, not after it.

If you accept statistics, Google Analytics sets the following:

• `_ga` - distinguishes one browser from another so returning visits are not counted as new ones. Expires after two years.
• `_ga_<container id>` - keeps session state for this site. Expires after two years.

Those are the only cookies this site sets today, and both come from Google Analytics.

Accepting marketing does not currently add a cookie, but it does change what Google may do with the visit: it allows remarketing and cross-device measurement, so Hudson can advertise to people who have been here and can tell whether those adverts worked. Accepting statistics without marketing keeps the measurement and leaves the advertising out.

We intend to run search, social and display advertising. When a platform is added it will set its own cookies, and they will be named on this page - with what they are for and how long they last - before it goes live, not after.

One cookie is set regardless, and it is the one that remembers your answer:

• `CookieConsent` - records what you chose and when, set by our consent provider. Without it we would have to ask you on every page, and we would have no record that you were asked.

This is what the law calls strictly necessary: it exists only to honour your choice, so it does not itself require consent.

We still count the visit, using two measurements that store nothing on your device:

• Vercel Web Analytics, which is cookieless by design.
• Google Analytics in its consent-denied mode, where it may not write a cookie or a persistent identifier and sends counts rather than visitors.

What we lose is continuity. We cannot tell a returning reader from a new one, or follow anyone between pages across days. We see numbers, not people - which is a fair trade for not having asked you for anything.

Your answer is not final. Use the consent link in the banner or your browser’s cookie settings to withdraw or change it at any time, and clearing this site’s cookies resets you to having been asked nothing.

Withdrawing is exactly as easy as accepting. A consent banner where "no" is harder than "yes" is not consent.

For completeness: the content management system our own staff use lives at /studio on this domain, and it stores an editor login and interface preferences in local storage. It is closed to the public, excluded from search engines, and nothing it stores is set by, or readable from, the pages you are reading. If you are not signed in to it, it stores nothing.

If we add anything that stores data on your device, it will be listed on this page - what it is called, what it is for, how long it lasts - before it ships, and it will sit behind the same consent. We will update the date at the top when we do.

If you find something storing data on your device that this page does not mention, please tell us at support@hudson.app. We would want to know.