COOKIE POLICY
LAST UPDATED 27 AUG 2026 · PANEL v2026-08-27
Cookies are small records a website asks your browser to keep; localStorage is the same idea without an expiry date. Most cookie policies are longer than the sites they describe. This one is short because the inventory is short. Two first party items are always set: your privacy choice and your theme. Two more are set only if you allow the ANALYTICS category, and they belong to Google Analytics. One more is set only if you allow the MARKETING category, and it records that one of our own Google ads brought you here. There is no affiliate or cross site tracking of any kind, and no personalised advertising. Verified against the site's actual network behaviour, 27 August 2026.
THE FULL INVENTORY
| NAME | KIND | SET BY | LIFETIME | PURPOSE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ngs-consent | cookie | this site | 6 months | Records the choice you make in the privacy panel: which categories you allowed or refused, when, and against which panel version. Strictly necessary; refusing everything still requires remembering that you refused. |
| ngs-theme | localStorage | this site | until you clear it | Keeps your light or dark theme between visits. A display preference you set yourself; it identifies nothing. |
| __cf_bm and similar | cookie | Cloudflare | under 1 hour | Cloudflare serves this site and can set short lived security cookies when its traffic screening triggers, to tell browsers from bots. Security, not advertising. See Cloudflare's own cookie documentation for the current list. |
| _ga | cookie | Google Analytics 4, only with your permission | up to 13 months | Tells one browser from another so a reader who comes back twice is not counted as two people. Set only after you switch ANALYTICS on. Refuse, or ignore the banner, and this cookie is never created. |
| _ga_T3VQW286BL | cookie | Google Analytics 4, only with your permission | up to 13 months | Holds the session state for this site's property: when the visit began and how many pages into it you are. Same condition as above: only with ANALYTICS switched on. |
| _gcl_au and related _gcl cookies | cookie | Google Ads, only with your permission | up to 90 days | Records that a click on one of our own Google ads led to this visit, so we can tell which ads bring readers. First party, our campaigns only, and no use is made of it for personalised advertising. Set only after you switch MARKETING on; refuse, or ignore the banner, and it is never created. |
WHAT ANALYTICS ACTUALLY RECORDS
With ANALYTICS switched on, Google Analytics 4 records which pages you read, roughly where in the world you are, what kind of device and browser you used, which site sent you, and which parts of a review you opened: which stat panels, which head to head comparisons, which filters, and clicks on the links out to a provider. That last one is why the tag is here. It is the difference between knowing a review was loaded and knowing it was useful.
It does not record your name, your email or anything you type, because there is nowhere on this site to type anything. Google's advertising features, cross device signals and ad personalisation are switched off at the property, and the property is not linked to any advertising account.
WHAT IS NOT HERE
No remarketing or audience pixels, no affiliate or referral cookies, no session replay, no heatmaps, no social widgets, no embedded video and no fingerprinting. Fonts are served from this domain, so rendering the page sends no request to a font network. Links out to Usenet providers are plain links: following one tells that provider the usual referrer information your browser sends, and nothing more from us. We record the click on our own side; we do not tag the link.
The MARKETING switch controls one thing and one thing only: the Google Ads conversion tag added on 27 August 2026, which tells us whether an ad we paid for produced a reader. It is configured for conversion measurement, with Consent Mode's ad personalisation signal denied on every page regardless of your choice, so it cannot build a remarketing audience or follow you elsewhere. It starts OFF like everything optional. Whenever the inventory changes, this table and the panel inventory are updated first and the panel asks everyone again, which is what happened when analytics was added on 18 August 2026 and again on 27 August 2026.
CHANGING YOUR MIND
PRIVACY CHOICES in the footer of every page reopens the panel. Withdrawing a category updates the stored choice, deletes that category's cookies where the browser allows it, and reloads the page so nothing already running survives. Withdrawal takes the same two clicks as acceptance took. Your choice is kept for six months, then the panel asks again; it also asks again sooner if the inventory materially changes.
GLOBAL PRIVACY CONTROL
If your browser sends the Global Privacy Control signal, the marketing category is locked OFF on this site and ACCEPT ALL will not override it. The panel tells you when it has detected the signal.
CONTACT
Questions about this policy or about your data: privacy@newsgroupservers.info. The privacy policy covers the rest of what this site does and does not collect.
Open the panel and check the switches yourself: