Cookie Policy

1. What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files placed on your device when you visit a website. They are widely used to make websites work, to improve the user experience, and to provide information to website operators about how their sites are being used.

Cookies can be "session cookies" — which are deleted when you close your browser — or "persistent cookies", which remain on your device for a set period or until you delete them. They can be set by the website you are visiting ("first-party cookies") or by third-party services that the site uses.

We keep the use of cookies on Experience History to a minimum. We do not use cookies for advertising, profiling, or any purpose other than analytics and basic site operation.

2. Cookies we use

Experience History itself does not set any strictly necessary cookies. We do not require you to log in, and there is no shopping cart or other session-based functionality that requires cookies to function.

We use Google Analytics to understand how visitors use the site. Google Analytics places the following cookies:

Cookie name	Purpose	Duration
_ga	Distinguishes unique users by assigning a randomly generated number. Used to calculate visitor, session, and campaign data for analytics reports.	2 years
_ga_XXXXXXXX	Used by Google Analytics 4 to persist session state.	2 years
_gid	Distinguishes users. Stores and updates a unique value for each page visited.	24 hours

All IP addresses are anonymised before being stored by Google Analytics. We do not use Analytics data to identify individual users.

3. Third-party cookies

Some functionality on Experience History involves third-party services that may set their own cookies independently of us:

• OpenStreetMap — our interactive map loads map tiles from OpenStreetMap servers. These requests are standard HTTP requests and OpenStreetMap does not typically set cookies, but tile requests may log your IP address in server logs. See the OpenStreetMap Foundation Privacy Policy for details.
• postcodes.io — used to convert postcodes to geographic coordinates for location-based searches. This service does not set cookies.
• Google (Analytics) — see the table above. Google's use of data is governed by the Google Privacy Policy.

We do not embed social media widgets, video players, or advertising networks that would set additional third-party cookies.

4. Managing your cookies

You can control and delete cookies through your browser settings. The links below explain how to manage cookies in the most commonly used browsers:

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Apple Safari
• Microsoft Edge

Please be aware that disabling cookies may affect the functionality of some features of the Site, including the interactive map.

To opt out of Google Analytics tracking specifically, you can install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, available for most major browsers.

5. Changes to this policy

We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time, for example if we introduce new functionality that uses additional cookies. When we do, we will update the "last updated" date at the top of this page.

6. Contact

If you have any questions about our use of cookies, please contact us at privacy@experiencehistory.co.uk.