Cookie Policy

PrivacyAffairs.com uses cookies in order to be able to optimize content to visitors.

What is a cookie?

A cookie is essentially a piece of information that is being stored on a web browser in order to be able to observe a visitors behaviour on a website. Please note that cookies will only observe visitors’ behavior on the website that placed that particular cookie. For example, cookies placed by PrivacyAffairs.com can only observe the behavior of visitors on the website www.privacyaffairs.com. We will not be able to see what you do on any other website. We will never be able to see what you do on your computer. Not even while browsing PrivacyAffairs.com.

Below you will find the list of cookies and services that PrivacyAffairs.com uses:

Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that allows website owners to watch visitors’ behaviour on their websites in order to optimize their sites for better performance.

If you do not want to be tracked by Google Analytics, then you can opt out here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Hotjar: Hotjar is similar to Google Analytics but it has several extra features such as heatmaps (mouse movement behavior, buttons clicked, etc.)

You can find a full list of cookies used by Hotjar here: https://help.hotjar.com/hc/en-us/articles/115011789248-Hotjar-Cookies

Google AdWords: Google AdWords is the advertising feature offered by Google. With Google AdWords we are able to show targeted and relevant ads to web searchers. For example, you will see our ads about VPN services for searches such as “what is the best VPN” etc. This helps us ensure only those people see our ads who actually search for the specific content that we provide.

You can find more information about Google AdWords here: https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads

The above link will also show you how to opt out of seeing such ads, if you wish so.

Bing Ads: Bing Ads is similar to Google AdWords. It’s the web search advertising service offered by the Microsoft owned search engine Bing.

You can find information about Bing Ads here: https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/

Affiliate Links:

PrivacyAffairs makes money when a visitor clicks on a link going to a VPN provider and makes a purchase there. We will be paid a commission (usually a percentage) of your purchase. In order for the VPN providers to know visitors were sent by us, they give us so-called affiliate links. These links will tell the VPN providers that you have been sent by us, and that when you make a purchase, they should credit a sales commission to us.

We decided that it’s this revenue model that is the least privacy invasive to our visitors. You will never see any banners to other flashy ads on our website. We will also never post paid reviews by VPN providers and neither will we push and promote a VPN provider for the money they pay us. All VPN providers have affiliate programs where they they pay out commissions to referring websites. We’re just using one of their standard features they offer to anyone interested.

All the toplists and reviews you see on our site are completely impartial and real. You will never see any ad on our site. This is why we decided to use the affiliate model of generating revenue, as it eliminates most if not all types of traditional ads and ensures that we can write and say whatever we want on our website without any third party influence.

More about cookies

If you can delete all cookies stored on your computer directly from your web browser. You can find detailed instructions how to do this for every browser here: https://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1#!%2F%23completed

The above link will also teach you how to opt out from any additional cookies placed on your browser in the future.

Please note that if you opt out of most cookies then some websites may not work properly. Cookies have a legitimate reason to exist and the vast majority of sites use them exclusively for legitimate reasons only. While the term “web tracking” may seen scary, many times, it’s extremely useful for websites to know what visitors do on their websites (like, what content they read, what articles they do not read to the end, what buttons they click, which buttons they don’t seem to notice). Without these, most websites would not be able to know what content is liked by their readers and what features and tools offered by their sites are actually useful. Also keep in mind that all this is being conducted in an anonymous fashion; we will never know who you actually are, and as explained above, what you do anywhere outside of www.privacyaffairs.com.

Cookie	Duration	Description
CookieLawInfoConsent	1 year	CookieYes sets this cookie to record the default button state of the corresponding category and the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie.
viewed_cookie_policy	1 year	The GDPR Cookie Consent plugin sets the cookie to store whether or not the user has consented to use cookies. It does not store any personal data.
wpEmojiSettingsSupports	session	WordPress sets this cookie when a user interacts with emojis on a WordPress site. It helps determine if the user's browser can display emojis properly.

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	1 year 1 month 4 days	Google Analytics sets this cookie to calculate visitor, session and campaign data and track site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognise unique visitors.
_ga_*	1 year 1 month 4 days	Google Analytics sets this cookie to store and count page views.
_gat_UA-*	1 minute	Google Analytics sets this cookie for user behaviour tracking.
_gid	1 day	Google Analytics sets this cookie to store information on how visitors use a website while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the collected data includes the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously.
_omappvp	1 year 1 month 4 days	The _omappvp cookie is set to distinguish new and returning users and is used in conjunction with _omappvs cookie.
_omappvs	20 minutes	The _omappvs cookie, used in conjunction with the _omappvp cookies, is used to determine if the visitor has visited the website before, or if it is a new visitor.