Cookie Policy
This page lists the cookies this site sets and how to switch off the ones you do not want. WORLDHAB is free to read because advertising pays for it, and advertising is why most of these exist. Last updated: August 2026.
What a cookie actually is
A cookie is a small text file a site asks your browser to keep, so the next request can be recognised as coming from the same visitor. It cannot read your hard drive, and by itself it holds an identifier and a date. What makes cookies worth a policy page is what gets attached to that identifier over time.
Two other technologies do the same job by other means, and this page covers them too. Local storage keeps a value in the browser without sending it back on every request, which is how the site remembers you closed the consent banner. Pixels, or tags, are tiny invisible requests inside a page or an email that confirm the thing loaded.
The four kinds we set
Everything here falls into one of four groups, and the consent banner is organised the same way. Only the first group loads before you have answered.
- Strictly necessary. Security, load balancing, protection against automated abuse, and the record of your cookie choice. These run without consent because the site cannot be served safely without them.
- Preferences. Settings you chose yourself, such as light or dark reading mode and whether the newsletter prompt has been dismissed. Nothing here follows you to another site.
- Analytics. Counting readers, page views, time on page, country level location, and which article brought somebody in. We read it in aggregate to decide what to commission next.
- Advertising. Set by the exchanges that fill the display slots. They cap how often you see one creative, screen for fraudulent traffic, and where you consented, select ads against your advertising identifier.
Analytics and advertising cookies wait for consent wherever the law requires it: the UK, the European Economic Area and anywhere with the same rule. If a category is ever added, it joins this list the same day.
Advertising, and what your answer changes
Display advertising here is sold through programmatic exchanges rather than slot by slot, so the companies setting advertising cookies are not us. We are paid for impressions, and your newsletter address and comment account are never passed to them.
Consent decides which kind of advertising you get, not whether you get any. Agree and ads can be personalised from your identifier and the interest categories attached to it. Refuse and we ask the exchanges for non-personalised advertising chosen from the page subject and a rough location, which is nearer to how a magazine sold a back page. Non-personalised inventory pays us less, which is worth saying rather than pretending the choice is free for us.
Who else sets cookies here
Alongside the exchanges, a few services run parts of the site: the delivery network, our analytics provider, the platform that sends the newsletter, the comment and spam filter, and the consent platform that records your answer. Each sets what its own job needs, and none is handed your reading history.
We are not printing a partner table here. The set of exchanges bidding on our inventory changes more often than a policy page gets edited, and a list accurate in the spring is worse than no list. The live list of advertising partners, each linking to its own policy, sits inside the consent manager. That is the only version true on the day you read it.
Turning it off, and changing your mind later
The consent manager reopens from the link in the footer of every page, on every visit. Switch a category off, switch one back on, or withdraw the lot, and it takes effect on the next page you load. For readers covered by California law the same control carries the Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information label. We also honour a Global Privacy Control signal, so the opt-out can apply before you click anything.
Your browser will show you the cookies this site has set, delete them, block third-party cookies, and clear everything when you close the window. The controls sit under privacy or site settings, and a private window discards the lot. Block the strictly necessary group and the banner reappears on every page, because the record of your answer is itself a cookie.
Outside the browser, industry pages let you opt out of many advertising companies at once: YourAdChoices from the Digital Advertising Alliance, the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out, and Your Online Choices in Europe. Phones and tablets have their own setting to reset or limit the advertising identifier, which works at device level. None of these opt-outs remove advertising; they stop it being tailored to you.
How long they last
Session cookies die when you close the browser, which covers most of the security and load balancing ones. Preference cookies last months, because a reading mode that resets every morning is not a preference. Analytics identifiers commonly run to about two years from the last visit, though the reporting we keep from them lasts months.
Advertising cookies vary by the company that set them, from days for frequency capping to a year or two for interest profiles, and each partner publishes its own duration in the policy linked from the consent manager. Deleting cookies in your browser ends all of it whatever the stated lifespan, which is quicker than reading a table.
How this fits with the rest
This page covers the technology. What we collect through it, the basis for each purpose, how long that data is kept and the rights you have over it are in our privacy policy. Neither page contradicts the other on purpose.
The commercial side, including the advertising categories we refuse, is on our advertising page. If the banner does not behave the way this page says it does, write to support@worldhab.com with “cookies” in the subject line and tell us which browser you were using. That is a bug report and we treat it as one.
