Cookie Policy

We set no cookies of our own — the one thing we store in your browser is a localStorage key holding your ad-consent choice. Google's cookies appear only after you click Accept. And there is one technology that our banner does not control, which is why it is on this page.

Last reviewed:

What Counts as a Cookie Here

A cookie is a small piece of text a website asks the browser to store and send back on later requests. Browsers have sibling mechanisms that do the same remembering job — localStorage, sessionStorage, and pixel tags or beacons — and Google's own documentation treats them as one family: "Similar technologies, including unique identifiers used to identify an app or device, pixel tags, and local storage, can perform the same function." So this page lists all of them, not only the ones that happen to be cookies.

What We Store in Your Browser

NameMechanismPurposeLifetime
sfc_cookie_consent_v1localStorage (not a cookie)Remembers whether you accepted or declined advertising. Three states: unset, accepted, declined.No expiry of its own — it stays until you reset it below or clear site data. That is what distinguishes localStorage from sessionStorage, which is cleared when the page session ends.
(none)CookieFootyCalc sets no first-party cookies. Our pages are static files served by Cloudflare Pages; there is no session, no cart, and no login.—

You can verify this claim in about ten seconds — see the worked example at the bottom of this page.

Third-Party Cookies (Only After You Click Accept)

If you click Accept, we load the Google AdSense script for publisher ca-pub-8351396994491171. Google and its partners may then set cookies. The names and lifetimes below are quoted from Google's own cookie documentation rather than from our guesses, and they are what Google publishes as of the date on this page.

NameProviderPurpose (per Google)Lifetime (per Google)
IDE, idGoogle (doubleclick.net)Used to show Google ads on non-Google sites; IDE personalises ads, id remembers that you turned personalisation off.13 months in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK; 24 months everywhere else
NIDGooglePreferences and safer browsing.Expires 6 months from a user's last use
_Secure-ENIDGoogleThe sign-in/session counterpart Google sets instead of, or alongside, NID depending on your choices.13 months
__gadsGoogle, on the site you visitEnables sites to show Google ads; used for measuring and frequency capping.13 months

We previously listed a cookie called _gpi here. We could not find it in Google's own documentation, so we removed the row rather than keep an unverified name on a legal page. Cookie sets change without notice to us: the authoritative list is Google's own page, linked below.

Technologies That Are Not Cookies — Including One You Cannot Consent-Gate

Manage Your Consent

Two ways to change your choice:

  1. Use the button below. It clears the saved value and reloads, so the banner asks you again.
  2. Or delete the entry yourself in your browser's storage settings. USAGov publishes browser-by-browser steps for blocking or clearing cookies if you would rather do it at the browser level for every site.

The button calls the same code path we ship: CookieConsent.reset() removes the sfc_cookie_consent_v1 key from localStorage. It is not a decorative control.

Opt Out of Personalized Advertising

These are Google's and the industry self-regulatory routes; they work independently of our banner:

Changes to This Policy

When we add, change, or remove a cookie, storage key, or third-party script, we update this page and the Last reviewed date at the top, and the change is recorded in our per-page audit ledger. We used to promise a site-wide banner for 30 days after a material change; we do not have that mechanism, so we deleted the promise instead of keeping it. Watch this page's date if the precision matters to you.

Worked Example: Check This Table Yourself

Open any FootyCalc page and run these four checks — they take about a minute and they test every claim on this page:

  1. Do we set a cookie? DevTools → Application → Cookies → select this site. It should be empty. Or type document.cookie in the console: it returns an empty string, because the consent value goes to localStorage, not to a cookie.
  2. What is in storage? DevTools → Application → Local storage → this site. You will see exactly one row for our site: sfc_cookie_consent_v1, with value (null) before you choose, then accepted or declined.
  3. Does declining actually stop the ad cookies? Click Decline, reload, and open the Network panel. Filter for googlesyndication. Zero requests. Click Accept, reload, and the same filter shows the AdSense scripts — measured on our own calculator page: 5 distinct external hosts appear once you accept.
  4. Is the beacon really there even without consent? View source (Ctrl+U) and search for cloudflareinsights. You will find the beacon tag before you ever see the banner — that is the honest limitation described above.

Sources and How to Check This Page