Cookie Policy

A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store and send back on subsequent visits. This page lists every cookie LoonieCalc itself sets, every cookie a third party may set while you visit LoonieCalc, what each one does, and how to opt out. For the broader privacy disclosure (what we do with the data, who we share it with, your rights), see the Privacy Policy.

LoonieCalc applies cookie consent to align with both the EU General Data Protection Regulation (specifically the ePrivacy Directive's Article 5(3) consent requirement, codified in member-state law) and the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act meaningful-consent doctrine. Strictly-necessary cookies do not require consent under either framework; analytics and advertising cookies do.

Strictly-necessary cookies (set on every visit)

These cookies are required for the site to function and to remain secure. They are set by Cloudflare, our hosting and CDN provider, not by LoonieCalc itself.

• __cf_bm — Cloudflare bot-management cookie. Distinguishes human visitors from automated traffic to protect the site from abuse and scraping. Session-scope (expires 30 minutes after the last request). Set on every request, regardless of consent, because it is required for the site to operate. See the Cloudflare cookies reference.
• cf_clearance — Set when Cloudflare's challenge page is shown to confirm a request did not originate from a botnet, then re-presented on subsequent requests so the challenge is not repeated within the session. Lifetime up to 30 days, security-only.

No other cookies are set by LoonieCalc on a default page view today. The site does not use first-party cookies for authentication (there are no user accounts), for personalisation (there is no per-visitor configuration), or for marketing.

Analytics cookies (only when consent is granted)

LoonieCalc uses Google Analytics 4 to measure aggregate site usage, gated by two switches that must both be on before any analytics request leaves your browser:

• The site-wide PUBLIC_ANALYTICS_ENABLED environment variable, set in Cloudflare Pages. When unset, gtag.js is never loaded on any page regardless of consent. (You can confirm the current state by opening your browser's DevTools Network tab and filtering for googletagmanager.com — no request means gtag is dark.)
• Your consent in the analytics category of the cookie banner. Even when the env var is on, gtag is only inserted into the page after you accept the analytics category. Revoking consent removes the gtag script and clears any analytics cookies that were set.

When both switches are on, the following Google-set cookies may be added:

• _ga — Google Analytics client ID. Pseudonymous. Used to distinguish users for aggregate metrics. Lifetime: 24 months. Domain-scoped to looniecalc.ca.
• _ga_<container> — GA4 session state. Lifetime: 24 months.

To opt out of Google Analytics independently of the consent banner, install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, which prevents the analytics tag from sending any data regardless of cookie state.

Advertising cookies (only when AdSense is active)

LoonieCalc plans to participate in the Google AdSense program to fund the site. AdSense ads are not currently displayed on any page; the AdSense script is not loaded. When AdSense activates, Google may set the cookies described in "Types of cookies used by Google", which include — at minimum — these:

• __gads — Google ads delivery and frequency capping. Lifetime up to 13 months.
• __gpi — Google publisher tag identifier; used by AdSense for ad measurement. Lifetime up to 13 months.
• Third-party cookies set by Google's ad partners, where the visitor has not opted out of personalised advertising via Google Ad Settings or via the EDAA YourOnlineChoices tool (EU/UK) or the NAI / DAA WebChoices tool (US/Canada).

To control which Google-served ads you see (or to disable personalised ads entirely), use Google Ad Settings. To opt out of third-party ad personalisation across most ad networks at once, use the WebChoices tool linked above.

Consent banner

On your first visit a consent banner appears in the bottom-right of the page (full-width bottom sheet on phone viewports). The banner has three categories: strictly necessary (locked on, the Cloudflare cookies above), analytics (opt-in, controls Google Analytics 4), and advertising (opt-in, controls Google AdSense when it activates). You can Accept all, Reject all, or click "Manage preferences" to toggle each category individually.

Your choice is stored in a first-party cookie called cc_cookie, set by the vanilla-cookieconsent library that runs the banner. The cookie expires after six months, after which the banner reappears so you can re-confirm or change your choice. To change your decision sooner, click the Cookie preferences link in the site footer — the preferences modal reopens with your current toggles. When you save, any analytics or advertising cookies covered by the categories you turned off are cleared automatically by the library's autoClear mechanism.

The banner is self-hosted — there is no third-party SaaS consent provider involved. The only data the banner sends anywhere is the consent choice itself, and it stays on your device.

Browser-level controls

Independently of any site-level consent banner, every modern browser allows you to block cookies by category, delete cookies for specific sites, and use private / incognito mode for cookie-free browsing. The trade-off: blocking strictly-necessary cookies will cause Cloudflare's bot-management to flag your traffic, which can introduce challenge pages.

Changes to this page

The list of cookies above will change when analytics or advertising integrations activate. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page is bumped on every change.