Cookie policy
We set no cookies of our own. The only storage on this site belongs to Google, none of it loads before you agree, and you can withdraw at any time.
What we set: nothing
ProvenBrief writes no cookie, and reads none. There is no login, no cart, no session and no tracking pixel of ours. Our own analytics — page views, referrers, load performance and JavaScript errors — reach us through a first-party beacon that carries no cookie and no fingerprint, and is recorded against the page rather than against you. Nothing about it can follow you to another site, which is why it needs no consent.
Your theme choice (light or dark) is kept in your browser's localStorage. It never leaves your device and is not a cookie.
What Google sets, once you allow it
ProvenBrief is funded by advertising. Ads are served by Google AdSense, and we use Google Analytics to see which stories readers actually reach. Both are third parties, both use storage, and neither is permitted to do so until your choice is recorded.
| Category | Set by | What it does | Consent signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advertising | Google AdSense and the ad partners Google works with | Selects which ads to show, limits how often you see the same one, and detects invalid or fraudulent traffic. | ad_storage |
| Ad personalisation | Uses your prior visits to this and other sites to choose ads. Decline this and you still see ads — they are just non-personalised. | ad_user_data, ad_personalization | |
| Analytics | Google Analytics | Counts visits and measures which stories and referrers bring readers in. | analytics_storage |
| Your consent record | Google's consent platform | Remembers the choice you made so you are not asked on every page. Strictly necessary; this is the one the settings link below clears. | — |
How the choice works
If you are visiting from the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, all four signals above start at denied and a dialogue asks you before any advertising or analytics storage is allowed. That is not a banner shown after the fact — the deny state is set before Google's scripts run, so declining means the storage never happens rather than being cleaned up afterwards.
Elsewhere, advertising and analytics storage is permitted by default, as local law allows. You can still switch it off, at any time, from either of the controls below.
Changing your mind
Withdrawing is as easy as agreeing was, and takes effect immediately:
- Privacy & cookie settings reopens the dialogue and clears the choice we had stored.
- Google's Ads Settings turns off ad personalisation across every Google property, not just this one.
- aboutads.info/choices — or youronlinechoices.eu in Europe — covers participating third-party vendors industry-wide.
- Every browser can block or delete cookies for a site outright. Blocking ours costs you nothing: no part of ProvenBrief needs a cookie to work.
- If you are in a US state with an opt-out right, see your privacy choices.
Who the third parties are
Advertising is served by Google AdSense (ca-pub-4409270436425240) and by the ad partners Google works with on our behalf. The current vendor list, with each vendor's own policy and opt-out, is shown inside the consent dialogue and at Google's partner sites disclosure. We run no other ad network, no data broker, and no social tracking pixels, and we do not sell your data to any of them.
Questions
This page and our privacy policy should agree; if you spot a place where they don't, that is a bug and we want to hear about it — contact us.