zero ads on this page Last updated: 16 July 2026
The honest summary
Tech Knows You itself sets no tracking cookies. The cookies that matter come from Google's advertising services, which power the four ad slots on the landing page only — and they operate in personalised mode only if you say yes in the consent banner. That banner is the entire point of this page.
1. What we store ourselves
techknowsyou:consent(localStorage, not a cookie) — remembers whether you accepted or declined the banner. Stays in your browser; never sent to us.
That's the complete first-party list. No analytics cookies, no fingerprinting, no pixels of ours, on any page.
2. Cookies set by Google advertising
When the landing-page ad grid loads with your consent, Google AdSense and its associated services may set cookies and use similar technologies for purposes including:
- Ad delivery and measurement — serving ads, frequency-capping, and performance
(e.g.
_gads,_gpi); - Personalisation — selecting ads based on interest categories associated with your browser
(e.g.
IDEon doubleclick.net), only where you consented; - Fraud prevention and security — detecting invalid traffic.
The exact set varies by region and consent. Google documents them at policies.google.com/technologies/cookies. These load on the landing page only; every other page on this site carries no ad code at all.
3. How consent works here
We use Google Consent Mode v2. Before you choose, all consent signals
(ad_storage, ad_user_data, ad_personalization,
analytics_storage) default to denied.
- Accept — signals update to “granted” and personalised ads can load in the Exhibit.
- Decline — signals stay denied; ad slots may show non-personalised content or our styled empty frames instead.
For EEA/UK/Switzerland visitors this is operated alongside a Google-certified consent management platform (CMP), which becomes the consent surface there.
4. Changing your mind
To withdraw or change consent: change your cookie choice — one click; it forgets your stored answer and the banner asks again on the landing page. (Clearing this site's data in your browser does the same thing the long way.) Control ad personalisation across Google at My Ad Center — our essay Why am I seeing this ad? is a guided tour — and opt out of many third-party ad cookies at youronlinechoices.eu.
5. Blocking cookies entirely
You can block all cookies, or run an ad blocker. The Site still works — the counter counts, the essays read — and the Exhibit sits empty, which is its own kind of statement. There is a whole essay about whether you should.
6. Questions
Anything unclear: [email protected]. See also our privacy policy.