What a cookie is
A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store and hand back on later requests, which is how sites recognise a returning visitor or keep you signed in. Similar techniques — local storage, session storage, tracking pixels and browser fingerprinting — do comparable jobs by different means.
This site sets no cookies
vanguarddigital.online sets no cookies of its own, and permits no third party to set a cookie through it. That is a complete statement, not a summary. Specifically, there are none of the following anywhere on this site:
- no analytics or measurement cookies, and no analytics service of any kind;
- no advertising, retargeting or conversion cookies, and no advertising tags or pixels;
- no session identifiers, because there is nothing here to sign in to;
- no preference cookies, because there is no setting to remember;
- no social media embeds, share buttons or video players, all of which would bring their own;
- no A/B testing, heatmap, session recording or chat tools.
Because nothing is stored on your device, there is nothing to ask your permission for, which is why you will not see a consent banner here. A banner on a site that sets no cookies would be a false statement about what the site does, and we would rather the absence of one told you something true.
What happens instead
Two things, both unavoidable in serving a web page.
Server logs. Our hosting provider records an ordinary log line for each request: the IP address, the date and time, the page requested, the response status and the browser's user agent. These are used for security and fault diagnosis and are kept for up to 30 days. They are described in full in the privacy policy.
Fonts. Pages here load a font stylesheet from Google Fonts. Making that request means Google receives the IP address of your browser, as any server does when it is asked for a file. Google does not set a cookie when serving fonts. Google's handling of the information it receives is described in its own privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy. This is the only external host any page on this site contacts.
No local storage, and no fingerprinting
The one script this site loads is our own, is unminified and readable at /assets/main.js, and does three things: it closes the navigation menu, it makes the question panels behave properly with a keyboard, and it builds an in-page contents list from the headings. It writes nothing to local storage or session storage, uses no IndexedDB, and performs no fingerprinting — no canvas reading, no font enumeration, no device profiling. Nothing about your visit persists between pages or between sessions.
What happens when you follow a paid link
Some pages carry links marked as paid, which lead to an advertising network and then to the advertiser's own site. We set nothing before, during or after that click, and no click is recorded here. Once you leave this site, the destination's own cookie and privacy practices apply, and they are that company's to explain — worth reading, since they will differ substantially from this page. How the arrangement works is set out in the affiliate disclosure.
Controlling cookies anyway
Nothing here requires it, but every major browser lets you see, block and delete cookies, usually under a privacy or site-data section of its settings. You can block third-party cookies generally, clear everything on exit, or inspect what a specific site has stored. Doing any of that will not affect this site, because there is nothing of ours to block — which also makes this a convenient place to check that your settings behave as you expect.
If this ever changes
If a cookie or any comparable technology is introduced to this site in future, three things happen before it goes live: this page is rewritten to name the specific cookie, its purpose and its lifetime; the privacy policy is updated to match; and a working consent mechanism is put in place, so that nothing is set on your device before you agree to it. The effective date at the top of this page changes at the same time. We will not list a cookie here that does not exist, and we will not set one that is not listed here.
Related pages: Privacy Policy, Terms.