Cookie Policy
Why this page exists
This page explains what cookies TIMES OF CANNABIS uses, what each kind is for, and how you can refuse them. It supplements our privacy policy, which describes our broader approach to reader data. The short version is consistent with everything else we publish about privacy: we use few cookies, none of them are hidden, and reading the news here never requires you to accept tracking.
What a cookie is
A cookie is a small piece of text that a website asks your browser to store and return with future requests. It lets a site remember something between page loads: a preference, a session, or an identifier. Related technologies such as local storage and pixels serve similar purposes, and when we say cookies on this page, we include those. A cookie is not a program and cannot read your files; its significance lies entirely in what is stored and who can read it.
The categories we use
Strictly necessary
These make the site work at all: security tokens, load balancing, and the cookie that records your cookie choices themselves. They contain no advertising identifiers and are not used to track reading habits. Because the site cannot function without them, they do not require consent, but we keep them minimal.
Preferences
These remember choices you make, such as a display setting, so you do not have to make them again on every visit. They exist for your convenience and identify a browser, not a person.
Analytics
These help us count readers and understand which coverage is read, in aggregate. We configure analytics to minimize identifiability, and we do not use analytics data to build individual reading profiles. Given the subject we cover, we consider that a matter of reader safety as much as of compliance.
Advertising
Advertising pays for the journalism, as our ownership and funding page explains. Some ad partners set cookies to serve, cap, and measure advertisements. These are third-party cookies governed by the partners’ own policies. Where the law requires consent before such cookies are set, we ask for it first, and refusing them leaves every article on this site fully readable.
Third-party content
Some articles embed material hosted elsewhere, such as video or social media posts. When such an embed loads, the host platform may set its own cookies under its own policy. Where practical, we use privacy-respecting embed modes that delay any third-party contact until you choose to interact with the content.
Your choices
- Our consent controls. Where a consent banner is presented, you can accept or decline non-essential categories, and you can revisit that choice at any time through the cookie settings link on the site.
- Browser settings. Every major browser lets you block third-party cookies, clear stored cookies, or refuse cookies entirely. Instructions live in your browser’s help pages. Blocking all cookies may break the strictly necessary functions described above, but it will not stop you reading.
- Private browsing. Reading this site in a private or incognito window discards cookies when the window closes. For readers in places where interest in this subject is sensitive, that is a reasonable habit, and we will never design the site to punish it.
- Platform opt-outs. Many advertising networks offer their own opt-out mechanisms, and industry opt-out pages allow you to decline interest-based advertising from many partners at once.
Signals from your browser
Where a recognized preference signal such as Global Privacy Control applies under the law of your jurisdiction, we honor it as that law requires. We do not use techniques designed to regenerate identifiers after you delete them, and we regard such techniques as incompatible with running a publication that asks for its readers’ trust.
Changes
If the set of cookies we use changes materially, we will update this page and note the revision date. Questions about anything here can go to support@timesofcannabis.com with the subject line PRIVACY.
