Cookie Policy

A cookie is a small file a website asks your browser to keep. Most sites use them to follow you around the internet. We use one to remember that you are signed in.

What we set

• mesteel_token — your sign-in session. Set when you log in, cleared when you log out. It lasts 8 hours, or 30 days if you tick "remember me". It is marked httpOnly, so scripts on the page cannot read it.
• mes_consent — your answer to the cookie bar, so we stop asking. Set when you press Accept or Decline, lasts 12 months, and holds one word: granted or denied.
• _ga, _ga_* — Google Analytics, and only after you accept. They count a visit and tell one visit from the next. Decline, and these are never set.

That is the list. Until you answer the bar at the foot of the page, the only cookie this site sets is the sign-in one — and only once you sign in.

What we do not set

No advertising cookies. No retargeting pixels. No social media trackers. Nothing that follows you to another website — the analytics above counts pages on this one and has its advertising features switched off.

Banner advertising on this site is served by us and counted by us. An impression is recorded against the campaign, not against you, and no cookie is involved.

Turning them off

Your browser can block or delete cookies from its settings. Blocking ours means you will not be able to stay signed in — everything you can read without an account will still work.

Other people's content

Our news pages carry news from our own newsroom. Where a news item embeds something hosted elsewhere, that provider may set its own cookies, and their policy applies to it.

Questions: Contact us.