Cookie Policy

What a cookie is

A cookie is a small text file a website asks your browser to store and to send back with later requests. Most of ours contain a random string and nothing else. That string lets the site recognize the same browser twice: to remember a setting you chose, or to count one reader once rather than thirty times. On its own a cookie says nothing about who you are. Joined with records held by companies whose business is joining records, it can say a great deal, and that is why this page exists.

Two relatives of the cookie are treated identically here. Local storage is a browser feature that holds a bit more data than a cookie and never leaves your device unless a script sends it. Pixels are tiny images or scripts whose only job is to register that a page or an ad was loaded. Everything below about cookies applies to both.

Cookies Riverdale Standard sets itself

We set a handful of first-party cookies, meaning cookies under the riverdalestandard.com domain that only we can read.

• A preference cookie that remembers choices such as your consent settings, so we do not ask you again on every page.
• A session cookie that keeps the site working while you move between pages, including for anyone who signs in to submit content.
• An analytics cookie that lets our measurement tool tell a returning browser from a new one. It contains a random identifier, not your name, and we configure the tool not to build a profile of you.
• A security cookie used to distinguish human visitors from automated traffic when the site is under load or attack.

None of these is used to show you advertising based on your interests. None is shared with anyone.

Cookies set by others

Advertising on this site is partly filled through third-party networks. When an ad loads, the network that served it may set a cookie under its own domain, and it may read that cookie on other sites that use the same network. This is how interest-based advertising works, and it is the only part of this site’s cookie use that involves tracking across sites. Embedded content, such as a video player or a social media post included in a story, may also set cookies from the embedding service when it loads. We embed such content only when it is part of the story.

We do not control what those companies do with the cookies they set. Their own policies apply. What we control is whether the code that sets them loads at all, and where the law requires your consent first, it does not load until you give it.

The four categories

Where a consent banner appears, it sorts cookies into categories, and it is worth knowing what each means.

• Strictly necessary: the site does not work without them. Session and security cookies fall here. They cannot be switched off through the banner, though you can block them in your browser at the cost of some site functions.
• Preferences: they remember settings you chose. Turning them off means the site forgets your choices between visits.
• Analytics: they let us count readers and see which stories are read. Turning them off does not stop the site working; it makes our counts less accurate.
• Advertising: they let ad networks select ads based on your browsing and measure whether ads were seen. Turning them off does not remove ads; it makes them generic.

How to refuse or remove cookies

If a consent banner is shown to you, its settings control every non-essential cookie on the site, and you can reopen it from the link in the footer at any time. Every major browser also lets you view, delete and block cookies, either for all sites or for particular ones, and lets you clear local storage. The browser’s help pages explain where the controls are; they move between versions, so we do not reproduce them here.

We honor the Global Privacy Control signal, which recent browsers and extensions can send automatically. When we receive it we treat it as a refusal of advertising and analytics cookies without your having to open the banner.

Blocking all cookies will make some parts of the site behave oddly. Consent choices will not be remembered, so the banner will reappear. Embedded content may not load. Reading articles will still work, because reading is what the site is for.

How long they last

Session cookies expire when you close the browser. Our preference and analytics cookies last for months, so that a reader who comes back after the county commission’s next meeting is not treated as a stranger. Third-party advertising cookies have lifetimes set by the network that placed them, typically from days to a little over a year. Any cookie can be deleted at any time through your browser.

Changes

If we add a category of cookie, change a provider, or begin using cookies for a purpose not described here, this page is updated first and the consent banner is reset so you are asked again. Questions about cookies go to support@riverdalestandard.com with PRIVACY in the subject line.