Cookie policy & preferences

This policy lists the cookies, local storage, IndexedDB, and cache storage used by the service as shipped. It is general information, not legal advice for your own site.

What this page controls, and what it does not

The switches on this page govern analytics: Google Analytics itself, and the Google advertising signals that Consent Mode sends with it. They do not govern Mediavine’s advertising. Mediavine’s Journey script is part of the HTML of every page here, so it loads on every visit, and Mediavine runs its own consent prompt where prior consent is required. Your advertising choices are made there. You can reopen that prompt from the preferences panel at the bottom of this page, under Advertising (Mediavine), whenever Mediavine is collecting an answer from you; where it is not, the panel says so rather than showing a button that would do nothing.

Where you are changes when things run

If you appear to be in the EU, the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, nothing non-essential runs until you choose: analytics and the advertising signals both start switched off, and Mediavine’s own prompt is what asks about advertising. Everywhere else they start switched on and you can switch them off in one click on this page, which is linked from the footer of every page. Nothing interrupts you on arrival, and the choice is remembered on this browser.

We work out which applies from your browser’s timezone setting. That keeps the check entirely on your device: we do not look your IP address up against a location service, and no request leaves your browser to make this decision. It is an approximation: a VPN or a manually-set timezone will change the answer, so if you would rather be treated as opt-in wherever you are, switch both categories off below and we will remember it.

If your browser sends Global Privacy Control, we treat that as switching both categories off, regardless of where you appear to be.

What we use

• Essential, first-party storage remembers your theme, consent choice, optional local drafts, selected assets, test collection, and page-feedback choice. These records stay on this device and are never used for advertising. Consent and theme are required for the chosen experience; other records are created only when you use the feature. When you install or visit the site as a Progressive Web App, the browser may also keep a small offline app-shell cache (pages like home and help) via the site service worker, this is ordinary browser HTTP caching, not a tracker, and it never caches downloads, ads, or analytics scripts.
• Analytics: Google Analytics 4. While this category is off it runs in Consent Mode with no cookies; while it is on, it sets standard GA cookies (such as _ga and _ga_*) to measure usage. You can switch it off here at any time.
• Advertising signals, the Google advertising signals Consent Mode sends with Analytics (ad_storage, ad_user_data, ad_personalization). The switch below turns those on and off. It does not control Mediavine: the Journey script tag is in the HTML of every page on this site, so it loads on every visit, and Mediavine’s own consent prompt decides what it may store or read. Ads are only placed where a page offers an ad position, and legal, consent, security, and accessibility pages offer none.

There is also a separate switch, shared by the Novus sites on novusstreamsolutions.com. Opening any of them with ?nss_ads=off in the address sets the nss_ads_optout cookie listed below, and ?nss_ads=on removes it. Being exact about what it does on this site: at present, nothing. Every advertising unit here is now placed by Mediavine, whose script tag is part of the page’s HTML and cannot be called back once it has begun downloading, and the older ad units the cookie used to suppress have been retired. Because that cookie is scoped to novusstreamsolutions.com rather than to this site alone, setting it once applies to every Novus site under that domain in one go, and it does still stop the other Novus sites there asking an ad network for an ad. Sonic Weaver, which now lives on its own domain at sonicweaver.com, is outside that scope: the cookie never reaches it, so it does not turn ads off there. We built it to exclude our own browsing and automated testing from the ad account, and it is yours to use as well. It is not a replacement for the switches below or for Mediavine’s own prompt: it is not remembered per category, and clearing your cookies clears it.

Cookies & storage we may set

Essential first-party storage is available to the relevant feature; analytics entries appear only while the Analytics category is on. Mediavine may set advertising cookies under names and retention periods it controls, governed by its own consent prompt rather than by the switches on this page.

See the privacy policy for the bigger picture, and the terms of use.