The one thing we store
When you dismiss the notice bar, a single value is written into your browser's local storage to record that you did. It contains no identifier, nothing about you and nothing about which pages you read. Clear your browser storage and it is gone, and the bar will appear again on your next visit.
What we deliberately do not use
There is no analytics on this site. No visitor counting service, no heat mapping, no session recording, no advertising network, no retargeting tag and no social media button that reports your visit back to a platform. We did not remove those things for a privacy campaign; we never wanted the data.
Fonts, images and anything loaded from elsewhere
Type and images are served from the same place as the pages, so your browser does not announce your visit to a third party while a page loads. It makes the site slightly plainer and considerably quieter.
Server logs are not cookies
The web server records requests the way every web server does, including an internet address and the page asked for. Those records are kept briefly and read only when something has broken. They are not used to build any profile and they are not cookies.
Turning it off
Choosing not to store anything on the notice bar is honoured: nothing is written and the bar simply closes for the current visit. Blocking local storage in your browser settings has the same effect, and the site works normally either way.
If this changes
If we ever add something that stores more, this page is where it will be described before it is switched on, in the same plain terms. We cannot imagine wanting to, but a notice that promises never is a notice nobody should believe.