A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store and hand back on later visits. Some are essential plumbing, some make a site faster, and some exist to track a commercial relationship. This page explains which of those apply to audio-play.com, and what you can do about each. It sits alongside our privacy policy, which covers personal data more broadly.
Strictly necessary cookies
These are the ones the site cannot sensibly work without. They are set by WordPress, the software this site runs on, and by the security layer that filters abusive traffic.
For an ordinary reader, most WordPress cookies never appear at all. They relate to logging in and to leaving comments, and this site does not offer public accounts. If you never sign in, your browser will not be carrying a WordPress login cookie from us. Security and bot filtering may set a short lived cookie to distinguish a real browser from an automated client. These are treated as necessary and are not something you can switch off while still using the site normally.
Caching and performance cookies
To serve pages quickly, this site keeps pre built copies of them rather than rebuilding every page for every visitor. The caching layer may set a cookie so it knows whether you should be given a cached copy or a freshly generated one, and to make sure a personalized state is never accidentally served from a shared cache.
These cookies carry no marketing value and are not used to identify you. Their only job is to decide which version of a page you get.
Analytics cookies
We measure which pages are read, which links get followed and where visitors arrive from. This is how we decide what to write next and which parts of the site need fixing. Any cookie or identifier used for this purpose is there to separate one visit from another so that page counts mean something, not to build a personal profile.
We do not run advertising networks on this site, we do not host third party ad tags, and we do not sell audience data. The commercial model here is affiliate links, which is a very different mechanism and is described next.
Amazon cookies set when you follow an outbound link
This is the part most cookie pages skate over, so it gets its own section.
Audio-play.com participates in the Amazon Associates Program. Product links point to Amazon, and some of them pass through a redirect on a domain we control so the click can be counted. The moment you arrive on Amazon, Amazon sets its own cookies in your browser, under Amazon’s own domain. Those cookies are how Amazon knows the visit came from this site and how a later qualifying purchase gets attributed to us for an advertising fee.
Three things follow from that, and all three are worth being blunt about:
- We do not set those cookies, we cannot read their contents, and we cannot delete them on your behalf.
- Their lifetime, their contents and what Amazon does with them are set by Amazon, and are governed by Amazon’s own privacy notice and cookie policy rather than by anything on this page.
- Clearing cookies for audio-play.com does nothing to them. They live under Amazon’s domain, so you would need to clear cookies for Amazon.
If you would prefer not to be tracked in that way, do not use our outbound links. Note the product name and search for it on Amazon yourself, or use your browser’s private browsing mode, which discards cookies when the window closes.
Embedded content from other sites
Pages on this site may include embedded content such as a video player or a social sharing control. Embedded content behaves exactly as if you had visited the other website directly, which means the provider of that embed can set its own cookies and collect data about your interaction with it. We have no control over those cookies either.
How to manage cookies in your browser
Your browser, not this site, is where cookies are ultimately controlled. Every major browser lets you view stored cookies, delete them for a specific site, block third party cookies, block all cookies, or clear everything when you close the window. The setting usually lives under Privacy and Security in the browser’s settings, and browsers also offer a private or incognito window that keeps cookies only for the length of the session.
Two practical points. Blocking cookies outright can break parts of many websites, though this one is mostly reading material and should survive it. And blocking cookies is not the same as being invisible: server logs still record requests, as described in the privacy policy.
If you want the browser vendor’s own current instructions, search for “manage cookies” plus the name of your browser. We deliberately do not reproduce step by step instructions here, because browser menus change and stale instructions are worse than none.
Changes and questions
If the cookies used by this site change, this page is updated to match. Questions can go to [email protected] or through the contact page.