What a cookie is
A cookie is a small piece of text that a website asks your browser to keep and hand back on the next visit. That is the whole mechanism. It exists because the web has no memory of its own: without something stored on your side, every page load looks like a stranger arriving for the first time.
Some cookies are set by the site you are looking at — those are called first-party. Others are set by a different company whose code runs on the page, usually an advertiser. Those are third-party, and they are the ones that can follow you between sites, because the same company's code runs on thousands of them. This page tells you which of ours are which.
The short version
This site is free and is paid for by advertising, so the honest summary is that the advertising cookies here are Google's, not ours. What we set ourselves is almost nothing: a theme preference, and — on exactly one tool — a sign-in session.
Our own analytics sets no cookie. Most sites that tell you they respect your privacy still drop a first-party analytics cookie. We do not. The visit counting and the site-search logging described in our privacy policy work entirely server-side, using a salted SHA-256 hash of your IP address and user-agent that is written to our database instead of the IP itself. Nothing is stored in your browser to make it work, and there is nothing about it for you to delete.
Everything stored in your browser
This is the full inventory. If something is not on this list, we did not put it there deliberately, and we would like to know about it.
| Name | Set by | Purpose | Category | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ms-theme | This site (first party) | Remembers whether you chose the light or the dark theme. Strictly speaking this is not a cookie — it is browser localStorage, which never travels with a request and is never sent to our servers. We list it anyway, because it is a thing we store on your device and you deserve the complete picture. | Functional / strictly necessary | Until you clear your browser storage |
sid | This site (first party) — CS2 skin alerts only | Keeps you signed in after you authenticate through Steam. It is signed with an HMAC so it cannot be forged, marked HttpOnly so page scripts cannot read it, SameSite=Lax so it is not sent from other sites, and Secure so it only travels over HTTPS. It exists on no other tool in the network. | Strictly necessary (that one tool) | 30 days; cleared immediately when you sign out |
_ga, _ga_<container-id> | Google Analytics 4 | Distinguishes one browser from another so visits can be counted and a session can be reconstructed from separate page views. | Measurement | Up to 2 years (set by Google) |
__gads, __gpi | Google AdSense | Serving ads, capping how often you see the same one, and measuring whether an ad performed. | Advertising | Up to 13 months (set by Google) |
IDE, test_cookie | Google DoubleClick (doubleclick.net) |
Selects ads and measures and reports on interactions with them. test_cookie
does nothing but check whether your browser accepts cookies at all.
| Advertising | Up to 13 months; test_cookie lasts minutes |
NID and other Google cookies | Preferences and security measures that Google applies across its own properties and the sites carrying its code. | Advertising / functional | Set and controlled by Google |
Why the Google rows are less precise than ours. We control the first two rows exactly, so we can state them exactly. We do not control the rest. The set of cookies Google actually places varies by your region, by what you consented to, and by whether you are signed in to a Google account — and Google changes it without asking us. We list what is normally present rather than pretend to a certainty we do not have. The authoritative, current list is Google's own: cookies used by Google advertising and how Google uses cookies.
Essential versus everything else
The distinction matters, because it decides what you can refuse without breaking anything.
- Strictly necessary —
ms-themeandsid. Neither tracks you, neither goes to a third party, and neither is used for advertising.sidis necessary only in the literal sense: without it, staying signed in to CS2 skin alerts is not possible. - Measurement — the Google Analytics cookies. Useful to us, optional for you.
- Advertising — everything from AdSense and DoubleClick. These are the ones that can build a picture of you across sites, and they are the ones the consent notice is about.
What we do not set
- No cookie for our own analytics. Explained above. Counting visits and logging site searches happens server-side with a hash.
- No tracking pixel of our own on any other website, and none from us on this one. We do not run retargeting and we do not build audience lists.
- No cookie required to use a tool. Not one of the converters, calculators, generators or image tools checks for a cookie before it will run.
- No cookie carrying anything you typed. What you put into a tool stays in the page and is discarded when you close the tab.
How to refuse or remove them
The consent notice
If you are visiting from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, the law requires your consent before non-essential cookies are set, and Google requires publishers to collect it through a certified consent management platform.
That notice is not running on this site yet. We would rather say so than describe a banner you will not see. Until it is enabled, use Google's own controls below to turn off ad personalisation. This page will be updated, with a new effective date, on the day the notice goes live.
Google's own controls
These work across every site that uses Google advertising, not just this one:
- My Ad Center — turn off personalised advertising for your Google account, and see why a particular ad was shown to you.
- Google ad settings — the same control for a browser that is not signed in to a Google account.
- Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on — stops Google Analytics collecting anything from your browser, on every site that uses it.
Industry-wide opt-outs
Both let you opt out of interest-based advertising from many networks at once. Note that they record your choice in a cookie, which means clearing your cookies also clears the opt-out — an irony worth knowing about before you wonder why it stopped working.
Global Privacy Control
Global Privacy Control is a signal your browser or an extension can send automatically to every site you visit, saying you do not want your personal information sold or shared. We and our advertising partners treat it as a valid opt-out request. It is the least effort of any option here, because you set it once and it applies everywhere.
Blocking cookies in your browser
Every major browser can block third-party cookies outright, which removes the advertising and measurement cookies on this page without you having to trust anyone's opt-out. The setting is under privacy or content settings, though the exact wording and location move between versions, so we would rather point you at the right area than give you a menu path that is wrong by the time you read it.
- Chrome and Edge — under Settings, in the privacy and security section, look for third-party cookies.
- Firefox — under Settings, in privacy and security, as part of Enhanced Tracking Protection.
- Safari — under Settings or Preferences, in the privacy tab. Safari blocks cross-site tracking by default.
All of them also offer a way to delete what is already stored, and a private or incognito window that discards everything when you close it.
Blocking everything here breaks nothing. Block every cookie on this domain and all of the tools keep working exactly as before, because none of them needs one. The single exception is signing in to CS2 skin alerts, which genuinely cannot work without its session cookie — that is what a session cookie is. Everything else is optional, and refusing it costs you nothing.
Changes to this policy
If we add or remove something that stores data in your browser, this table changes with it and the effective date at the top moves. We do not update this page on a schedule; we update it when the code changes, which is the only reason it would need updating.
Questions
For the full picture of what we record and why — including the fields our cookieless analytics writes and the rights you have over them — read the privacy policy. The rules for using the tools themselves are in the terms of use. If something here is unclear or looks wrong, tell us through the contact page.