Cookie Policy

What Cookies Are and Why We Use Them

Cookies are small text files that get placed on your device when you visit a website — ours included. They're not programs, they can't run code, and they don't carry viruses. What they do is store a small amount of information that helps a site recognise your browser the next time you come back. That's the basic idea, anyway. In practice, cookies do quite a bit more than just remember you exist.

We use cookies on this site because, honestly, without them the experience would feel pretty broken. Things like remembering your display preferences, keeping track of which pages you've already read, or just making sure the site loads sensibly on repeat visits — all of that depends on cookies working quietly in the background. We don't use them to collect anything sensitive, and we're not in the business of selling data. This is a review site, not a data broker.

It's worth being upfront: some of the cookies placed when you browse here don't come from us directly. Third-party services we rely on — analytics tools, for instance — set their own cookies through our pages. We don't control exactly what those cookies do on their end, though we do try to work only with services that handle data responsibly. More on that below.

The Types of Cookies We Place

There are a few different categories at play here. Strictly necessary cookies are the ones that keep the site functioning at all — session management, security tokens, that sort of thing. Without these, pages simply wouldn't load correctly. We don't ask for consent to place these because they're genuinely required for the site to operate, and removing them isn't really a practical option.

Then there are analytical or performance cookies. These help us understand how visitors move through the site — which pages get the most attention, where people tend to drop off, how long a typical visit lasts. None of this is tied to a named individual. It's aggregated data, and the purpose is purely to help us improve what we publish. If a particular section of the site is confusing people, we'd like to know about it.

Functional cookies sit somewhere in the middle. They remember choices you've made — like a preferred language setting or whether you've dismissed a particular notice — so you don't have to repeat yourself on every visit. They're not tracking you in any meaningful sense. They're just saving you a small amount of friction. We think that's a reasonable trade-off, but you're free to disable them if you'd rather not.

Your Choices and How to Manage Cookies

You have real control here, and we want to be clear about that. Most browsers let you view, block, or delete cookies through their settings — usually somewhere under privacy or security options. The exact steps vary depending on which browser you use, but it's generally not hard to find. Blocking all cookies will affect how some parts of this site behave, and we can't fully predict every consequence of that, but it is absolutely your right to do so.

Some third-party analytics services also offer their own opt-out mechanisms, separate from browser settings. If you're particularly concerned about a specific tool, checking that provider's own documentation is probably the most reliable route. We can only speak to what we've chosen to use and why — what happens on their servers is outside our direct control, and we think it's better to say that plainly than to overstate what we can guarantee.

Updates to This Policy

This cookie policy may change from time to time. If we start using a new type of cookie, or if a third-party service we rely on changes how it operates, we'll update this page to reflect that. We won't necessarily announce every minor revision, but anything that meaningfully affects how your data is handled will be reflected here as clearly as we can manage.

The best habit, if you care about this stuff, is to check back occasionally. We're not trying to bury anything or make changes without accountability — it's more that a static policy on a living website is always going to lag slightly behind reality. We do our best to keep it accurate. If something here seems out of date or unclear, you're welcome to get in touch with us directly through the contact details available on this site.