Cookie Policy
This page explains the cookies and similar technologies used on cookingzone.org, what each category is for, and how to control them. It sits alongside the Privacy Policy, which covers personal information more broadly. Last updated September 2026.
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. It lets a site recognize the same browser across pages and visits. Cookies cannot read files on your device, cannot see other applications, and cannot execute code.
Alongside cookies, this site and its partners may use browser local storage, which holds data until it is cleared, and tracking pixels, which are tiny image or script requests that confirm a page or advert was loaded.
First-Party and Third-Party
First-party cookies are set by cookingzone.org and amount to two things: what the caching layer needs in order to serve a page, and the record of the consent choice you made. There is nothing else of ours. Third-party cookies are set by other companies whose code runs on the page, principally the advertising partners that fund this publication. We can switch third-party code on and off, but we do not operate the systems behind it.
Session and Persistent
Session cookies vanish when you close the browser. Persistent cookies survive until they expire or you delete them. On this site, persistent lifetimes run from hours or days for the caching cookies up to two years for advertising and for the consent record.
The Categories We Use
A consent tool sorts cookies into four groups. Only two of those groups exist here. The other two are described anyway, so that their emptiness is on the record rather than assumed.
Strictly Necessary
These make the site work and cannot be switched off through the consent tool. They handle security, load balancing, protection against automated abuse, and the record of the consent decision you made, which we are required to keep in order to prove it.
Functional and Preference
Empty. The site stores no language choice, no interface setting and no dismissed notice. The only thing carried from one visit to the next is your cookie decision, and that one belongs to the strictly necessary group above.
Performance and Measurement
Also empty. No cookie on this site counts readers. There is no analytics script on the pages, and nothing measures how long you keep a recipe open, how far down it you go, or where you click. What we know about readership is how many times an address was requested, and that comes from the server access log rather than from a cookie.
Advertising and Personalization
These are set by our advertising partners. They select which advert to show, prevent the same advert repeating too often, measure whether an advert was visible and for how long, and detect invalid or automated traffic. With consent, they also use interest categories inferred from browsing to choose adverts.
Refusing this category does not remove advertising. It makes it contextual, chosen from the subject of the page you are reading rather than from anything inferred about you.
Consent
On your first visit, a consent banner asks what you allow. It is provided by InMobi Choice under the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF v2.3). No advertising code runs and no advertising cookie is written before you answer, apart from the strictly necessary cookies described above.
You can change your answer at any time through the consent link in the footer of every page. Withdrawing consent stops future processing in that category, though cookies already stored need clearing from the browser as well. Your decision is recorded per browser and per device, so it needs repeating if you read us elsewhere or clear your cookies.
We honor the Global Privacy Control signal where your browser sends it, treating it as a refusal of advertising and personalization for that browser.
Managing Cookies in Your Browser
Every major browser lets you review and delete stored cookies, block third-party cookies, and clear everything when you close a window. The controls sit under privacy or site settings in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge and Opera, and under site permissions on mobile.
Blocking all cookies, including the strictly necessary ones, will affect how this and most other sites behave, and will cause the consent banner to reappear on every page because the record of your choice has nowhere to live.
Industry Opt-Out Tools
These programmes let you set advertising opt-outs across many companies at once:
- YourAdChoices, run by the Digital Advertising Alliance.
- The Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.
- Your Online Choices, for European readers.
These tools are themselves cookie-based, so clearing your cookies clears the opt-outs too.
Who Our Partners Are
The advertising slots on this site are filled programmatically, and the set of technology partners participating changes over time. The current list, with the purposes each declares and links to its own policy, is shown inside the consent tool linked from the footer. That list is the authoritative one, and we keep it there rather than here so that it stays accurate.
Changes
When the technologies on this site change, this page is updated and the date at the top is revised. Material changes to the advertising category trigger a fresh consent request. Questions go to [email protected].