The short version
Nothing non-essential is set before you choose, in regions where consent is required. If you decline, ads still appear but they are non-personalised, and analytics is switched off entirely.
What is set, and by whom
Two of these are strictly necessary and cannot be turned off, because they only remember choices you made yourself.
- ssm_theme (essential)
- Remembers whether you picked the light or the night theme. First-party, 1 year, no identifier.
- ssm_locale (essential)
- Remembers your chosen content language so a link does not throw you back to English. First-party, 1 year.
- ssm.recentSearches (essential)
- Local storage, not a cookie. Your last four searches, kept in your browser, never transmitted.
- _ga, _ga_* (analytics)
- Google Analytics 4. Distinguishes sessions in aggregate. 14 months. Set only with consent.
- __gads, __gpi, IDE (advertising)
- Google AdSense ad selection, frequency capping and measurement. Up to 13 months. Personalisation requires consent.
Changing your mind
The consent link in the footer reopens the dialogue with your current choice preselected. Clearing site data in your browser also clears every cookie above, including the essential ones — the theme and language will simply revert to their defaults.
Google may also serve its own vignette between page views under Auto ads. That is Google’s format, frequency-capped by Google, and it is the only interstitial on the site — we build no pop-ups of our own over what you are reading.