Last updated: 6 September 2026
This page explains what cookies networkingsignal.com uses, what each category is for, and how to switch them off. It sits alongside our privacy policy, which covers everything else we do with data.
What a cookie is
A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store on your device. On your next visit the browser sends it back, which is how a site remembers anything at all between page loads. Cookies cannot run programs, cannot read other files on your device and cannot carry a virus.
Related technologies do the same job by other means. Local storage keeps data in your browser rather than sending it with each request. A web beacon or pixel is a tiny invisible image whose only purpose is to record that a page was opened. Where this page says cookies, it covers these too.
First party and third party
A first party cookie is set by networkingsignal.com. A third party cookie is set by another company whose code runs on our pages, such as Google. We can see and control our own cookies. We cannot read the contents of a third party cookie, and we do not receive the data it collects.
The categories we use
Strictly necessary
These make the site function. WordPress sets them when you leave a comment so the form can remember your details, and when an administrator logs in. Nothing about these cookies is used for tracking or advertising, and the site cannot work properly without them.
Preferences
These remember choices you make while reading, such as whether you collapsed the table of contents on an article. They exist purely so the site behaves the way you left it.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics to count visits and see which articles get read. This tells us, in aggregate, which topics are useful and which of our guides people abandon halfway. Analytics cookies record things like the pages you viewed, roughly where in the world you are, and whether you have visited before. We do not use them to identify you and we have no interest in doing so.
Advertising
This site is funded by display advertising served through Google AdSense. Google and its partners set cookies to select which adverts to show, to limit how often you see the same one, and to measure whether an advert worked.
Where personalised advertising is enabled, those cookies may be used to show adverts based on your previous visits to this site and to other sites. Google also uses the DoubleClick DART cookie for this purpose. These cookies are set by Google, not by us, and we cannot read them.
Affiliate tracking
When you click a link to a retailer such as Amazon, that retailer sets its own cookie so it can credit the referral to us if you buy something. The cookie belongs to the retailer and is governed by the retailer’s policy. It is set only when you actually click the link, never just from reading the page. See our affiliate disclosure.
Security
Wordfence and Akismet may set cookies or record request data in order to block attacks and filter comment spam. These exist to keep the site safe and are not used for advertising.
How to control cookies
In your browser
Every major browser lets you block cookies, delete the ones already stored, block third party cookies only, or clear everything when you close the window. Look under Settings, then Privacy. Blocking all cookies including the strictly necessary ones will break commenting and may affect other parts of the site.
Advertising specifically
You can turn off personalised advertising without blocking cookies wholesale:
- Google Ads Settings controls how Google personalises adverts for you.
- aboutads.info offers an opt out across many advertising vendors at once.
- Your Online Choices is the equivalent for Europe.
Opting out does not remove adverts and does not make the site ad free. It means the adverts are chosen without reference to your browsing history, so they will be less relevant rather than absent.
Analytics specifically
Install the Google Analytics opt out browser add on to stop Google Analytics collecting your activity on any site, including this one.
Do Not Track
There is no agreed industry standard for how a site should respond to a browser Do Not Track signal, so like most publishers we do not act on it. The controls listed above do work and we recommend using those instead.
Changes
If we add or remove a service that sets cookies, we update this page and change the date at the top.
Contact
Questions about cookies go to [email protected] or through our contact page.