Cookie policy.

The short version

There is still no banner. A banner earns the interruption when a site is handing your browsing to an ad network, and this one isn't: the measurement is first-party, it stays in our own account, and section 04 tells you how to switch it off in about thirty seconds. We would rather explain it here than make you click something to reach the page.

What a cookie actually is

A small text file a website asks your browser to keep, and hand back on your next visit. Some are genuinely useful: staying logged in, remembering a language, keeping a shopping basket between pages.

The controversial ones are third-party cookies, set by a company other than the site you're visiting. Those are what let an advertiser recognise you on a different website next week and build a picture of where you've been. That's the category people mean when they say "tracking", and it's the category this site doesn't use.

Cookies aren't the only way a browser stores things. localStorage and sessionStorage do a similar job. For completeness: this site's own code uses neither.

What this site sets

Two cookies, both set by this domain rather than by anyone else, and both belonging to Google Analytics:

• _ga. Holds a random identifier, so that three pages read in one sitting count as one visit rather than three visitors. It expires after two years, which is Google's default rather than a number we chose.
• _ga_D30ZQ47CG8. Does the same job for this particular property and keeps the session going while you read. Same two-year expiry.

Neither cookie carries your name, your email, or anything you typed into the enquiry form. What we see in the reports is counts: how many people arrived, which page they landed on, roughly which town or region, and whether they came from a search or a link. Not who you are.

To be specific about what is still not here:

• No advertising or remarketing pixels. Nothing from an ad network is loaded, and the analytics is not wired to one.
• No social embeds. No like buttons, no embedded feeds, no share widgets that phone home.
• No chat widget. If you want to talk to us, the phone number is at the top of every page.
• No session or preference cookies of our own. The site itself doesn't need to remember anything about you between pages.

Our hosting keeps standard server logs, which record IP addresses and requested pages, and rotates them after a short period. Those are logs on a server rather than anything stored in your browser, and the privacy policy covers them.

The third parties

Google Analytics. The measurement described above runs on Google's tag, loaded from googletagmanager.com, and the counts are processed and stored by Google on our behalf. Google is a US company, so that data is handled outside Canada. We use it to answer one question: is anybody finding this site, and through which page.

Google Fonts. The typefaces on this site are loaded from Google's font service. That means your browser makes a request to fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com, and Google sees your IP address and browser as part of serving the file.

Google states that its Fonts service doesn't set cookies and doesn't use these requests for advertising or profiling. We're relaying that rather than able to verify it ourselves, which is why it's on this page instead of left unsaid.

Both of those are Google, which is worth saying out loud rather than listing twice and hoping you don't join them up. If you would rather Google saw nothing at all from this site, section 04 covers the analytics, and self-hosting the fonts is still on our list.

Two other things worth naming, because they're links rather than embeds. Our Google reviews link and our LinkedIn link go to those companies' own sites, and once you click through you're under their policies, not ours. Nothing about them loads on this page unless you click.

Switching it off

Blocking cookies for this domain in your browser has the same effect, and so do most tracker-blocking extensions and Safari's built-in protection. We would rather tell you that than pretend the choice isn't yours.

For the rest of the web it's worth knowing where the controls are. Every major browser lets you view stored cookies, delete them, and block third-party cookies by default.

• Chrome: Settings, then Privacy and security, then Third-party cookies.
• Safari: Settings, then Privacy. Cross-site tracking prevention is on by default.
• Firefox: Settings, then Privacy & Security. "Strict" blocks most trackers.
• Edge: Settings, then Cookies and site permissions.

Blocking third-party cookies breaks very little in practice, and blocking all cookies breaks a lot: you'll be logged out of most things constantly. Third-party-only is the setting most people actually want.

Sites we build for clients

This policy is about alpwebstudio.com. Sites we build for clients are the client's own, and what they load is their decision.

Our default is the same as here: first-party analytics where the business wants to know whether the site is working, and no advertising or cross-site tracking unless the client asks for it and understands what it means. When a client does want an ad pixel, a booking embed or a chat widget, we tell them what it costs their visitors and make sure their site has a cookie policy and, where it's needed, a consent banner. A trades site running the Lead Machine has more moving parts than this one, and its policy says so.

If you've landed here from a site we built and want to know what that specific site does, ask the business directly, or ask us and we'll tell you.

Changes

If we add anything that stores data in your browser or calls out to a third party, this page gets updated before it goes live, not after. The date at the top tells you when it last changed.

Questions: [email protected] or (902) 225-5280.