Updated: 2021-07-23

This policy aims to explain what cookies are, how they are stored and why they are used in the first place. In regards to your personal data, please see the privacy policy.

TL;DR: Overall, no cookies are stored. When I embedd videos from YouTube you will be presenteted with a cookie-consent that will last only for that page session.

I moved away from Google analytics 2021-07-17. Now I am using Matomo as my analytics software. Go team no-more-contribution-to-the-indutry-of-selling-user-data.

Now, what are Cookies?

In the scope if this policy, the term “cookies” or “cookie” will refer not only to itself, but also to similar technologies to store data on your device, such as webstorage and IndexedDB.

You have probably heard it many times before on various websites; Cookies are small text files that are stored on your device. These files are a tool for servers and clients (web browsers) to remember who you are and make your browsing experience better. Cookies makes it possible for you to do things you take for granted; e.g. logging in to your bank or your favourite socialmedia platform.

Cookies are inherently harmless since they are unable to:

  • Access data on your device
  • Install files/viruses on your device
  • Execute programs on your device

The creator of the cookies might, however, store personal data about you or your behaviour only to use that information in other contexts without your awareness or permission. That’s why cookies some times are considered a threat to your privacy.

Cookies can be divided into groups based on their character. Down below I explain a few of them:

  • Essential cookies are crucial for a website to work properly. Not all website have these, but many do. Essential cookies require no consent from you as a user due to its high necessity.

  • Non-essential cookies are everything else. A website will function just fine without these, and therefore these cookies do require an explicit consent from you as a user.

Unsure what this means?

Imagine your life.

For you to stay alive you need to eat, sleep and breathe. This is an essential cookie.

To live a meaningful life it would be great to have good friendships, a nice job and a pet. This is a non-essential cookie.

  • Session cookies are stored temporary and will be deleted as soon as you close your browser.

  • Persistent cookies are stored for a long period of time and will remain even when you close your browser. These types of cookies can either expire after a specific amount of time, or remain intact until you manually remove them.

Unsure what this means?

Imagine talking to a friend.

When you get asked “How are you doing?” and you answer “Fine, thanks. How are you?”, you would expect your friend to remember your answer and not ask same thing twice during your conversation. A week later you might however get the same question and that’s totally fine because it a new day and new things have happened. This is a typical session cookie.

No matter what day it is, or if you recently have spoken to your friend or not, you’d expect your friend to remember your name for as long as you are friends. It would be quite inconvenient if your friend had to ask for your name every time you met. This is a typical persistent cookie.

Note: If your friend is blue and named Doris, then there’s a whole other story.

  • First-party cookies comes from the same website (domain) you are visiting. These cookies are only accessible on that specific website.

  • Third-party cookies come from a website (domain) other than the one you are visting. These cookies are accessible on any website that uses the same third-party plugin.

Unsure what this means?

Imagine a friends house.

Your friend decides to install a camera surveillance system to keep an eye on who is visting. The company behind the camera surveillance is storing the recored tape on their servers and granting your friend access to what is being recorded.

Everyone who is visiting your friends house are now being monitored. Your friend and the surveillance company can easily see which room(s) everyone has been in, what they did and how long they stayed - All possible thanks to the recorded tape.

Let’s pretend that you and your friend are sitting down in your friends kitchen eating cookies. After some time the cookies are gone and you decide to leave. You walk over to the neighbour house to say hello and that house has the same camera surveillance system installed as your friend. When you arrive at the neighbour, you both decides to sit down in the kitchen to eat some more cookies. Neither your friend nor the neighbour knows that you are having lots of cookies that day but the surveillance company sure will.

At this point you are being tracked and the surveillance company will make an assumption that you like cookies. When you later that day are visiting the grocery store you will see a large sign with a special price on cookies - and look at that, isn’t the same cookies you ate earlier that day? - Yes it is. Coincidence? - I think not.

To clear things up:

  • The house is a website
  • The camera surveillance system is a third-party plugin
  • The recorded tape is a third-party cookie
  • The company owning the camera surveillance system is the company owning the third-party plugin/cookie

The point here is that third-party cookies are accessible between different websites (houses). If the story were about first-party cookies, there would be no surveillance company. Each house/website would have implemented their own surveillance system with no link between them. This means you would not have seen the sign with a special price on cookies when you were visiting the grocery store.

What cookies do I store and why?

All cookies that are used on this site is listed in the table below, followed by an explanation for each provider.

Cookie declaration

Name Provider Domain Type Expiry Purpose Used for
yt-remote-connected-devices YouTube youtube-nocookie.com (third-party) HTML Local Storage Persistent* Stores the user’s video player preferences using embedded YouTube video Marketing
yt-remote-device-id YouTube youtube-nocookie.com (third-party) HTML Local Storage Persistent* Stores the user’s video player preferences using embedded YouTube video Marketing
yt.innertube::requests YouTube youtube-cookie.com (third-party) HTML Local Storage Persistent* Unknown Unknown
yt.innertube::nextId YouTube youtube-cookie.com (third-party) HTML Local Storage Persistent* Unknown Unknown
yt-player-headers-readable YouTube youtube-cookie.com (third-party) HTML Local Storage Persistent* Unknown Unknown
yt-player-bandwidth YouTube youtube-cookie.com (third-party) HTML Local Storage Persistent* Unknown Unknown
yt-player-bandaid-host YouTube youtube-cookie.com (third-party) HTML Local Storage Persistent* Unknown Unknown

* It will only be present on pages with embedded youtube videos.

YouTube

When embedding videos, YouTube will normally store third party cookies. However, I have enabled YouTube’s “privacy-enhanced mode” to minimise the use of cookies. This means that:

  • Videos are served from Youtube’s “nocookie” domain which suppress tracking of user behaviour.
  • Your browsing on YouTube and your recommended videos won’t be affected.
  • Insted of regular cookies, data will be stored in local storage (which not necessarily is better dependeing on the usage).

I am not sure about the purpose of each item YouTube are storing, it might be tracking for all I know. Because of this I will present you with a cookie-consent every time I embedd a video, i.e your consent will expire on the next page load. The cookie-consent will look something like this:

Manage cookies

How to disable and/or remove stored cookies varies depending on browser. Below are some examples: