Cookie Policy

Consent banners exist because of non-essential cookies — advertising, profiling, cross-site tracking. This site has none of those, so there is nothing to ask permission for. Everything it stores is either needed to keep you signed in or a preference you set yourself.

Before you sign in there are none. Browsing, reading and searching set nothing — no analytics cookie, no session, nothing to consent to.

Signing in sets three, by name:

• better-auth.session_token — the session itself. This is what keeps you signed in between pages; without it the site can't tell your requests from anyone else's. Strictly necessary.
• better-auth.session_data — a signed copy of your session, cached for five minutes so that most page loads don't need a database lookup. It is worth knowing what is in it: your name, email address, role and avatar URL, plus the session's own record — including the IP address and browser you signed in from. It is signed, so it can't be altered, but it is readable by anything that can read your cookies. Strictly necessary.
• better-auth.dont_remember — records that you did not tick “remember me”, so the session expires in seven days rather than thirty. Strictly necessary.

Signing in with Google or GitHub also sets a short-lived value during the redirect, to stop the sign-in being forged. It is gone within minutes.

That is the complete list. There are no advertising, analytics or cross-site cookies, because there is nothing here that would set one.

Two things are kept in your browser's local storage rather than in cookies, meaning they never travel to the server at all:

• Theme preference — whether you chose light or dark. Written only once you actually choose; leaving it on “system” stores nothing.
• Series reading progress — which parts of a series you've read, if you're not signed in. Signed-in readers get this from their account instead. Clearing site data resets the progress bar and nothing else.

Aggregate traffic is measured with Vercel Analytics, which is cookieless and does not identify individual visitors. Post view counts are counted on this site using a hashed, non-reversible visitor marker — the Privacy Policy explains exactly how, because “we count views” is usually where a policy stops being specific.

Your browser can block or clear any of it. Blocking the session cookies means you won't be able to stay signed in; everything else on the site will work exactly as before.