Cookie Policy
Last updated 13 September 2026
The short version
Whether this site sets any cookie is your decision, and until you make it the answer is no.
Nothing is fetched from another company and no cookie is written when you arrive. A bar at the bottom of the page asks two separate questions, and you can answer them differently:
- May we measure our advertising? Yes loads Google's conversion tag, which sets Google advertising cookies on this domain so Google can tell that an advert led to a purchase.
- May we show adverts from Google? Yes loads Google AdSense on some of our pages. AdSense sets Google's own advertising cookies, both on this domain and on Google's, and uses them to decide which adverts you are shown.
Say no to both, or ignore the bar, and the site carries on loading nothing from anywhere but itself. Say yes to one and no to the other and only the one you agreed to runs.
Three things are stored whatever you answer, and none of them is a cookie: the item that keeps you signed in, and your two answers, so you are not asked twice.
We also count visits on our own server, from the request your browser already sends. Nothing is put on your device to do it and nobody outside PanelPrep receives it. What that involves is below.
What is stored
Nothing in this table exists until the thing in the last column happens.
| Item | Kind | Set by | What it does | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|---|
sb-yptdxylmqlzgvhhhyumw-auth-token | Local storage | Us, through Supabase, who provide our sign-in | Holds your session, so you are not asked to sign in again on every page | Until you sign out or clear this site's data. Written when you sign in |
pp-measure-1 | Local storage | Us | Records whether you said yes or no to advertising measurement | Until you clear this site's data. Written when you answer |
pp-ads-1 | Local storage | Us | Records whether you said yes or no to adverts | Until you clear this site's data. Written when you answer |
pp-conv-… | Local storage | Us | Marks one purchase as already reported, so a refresh of the receipt page does not report it twice | Until you clear this site's data. Written only after a purchase, and only if you said yes to measurement |
_gcl_aw and other _gcl_* items | Cookie | Remembers which advert brought you here, so Google can attribute a purchase to it | Google documents 90 days. Written only if you said yes to measurement | |
__gads and __gpi | Cookie | AdSense. Counts and limits how often you are shown a given advert, and measures whether it was seen | Set and timed by Google. Written only if you said yes to adverts | |
Cookies on doubleclick.net, googlesyndication.com and Google's own domains | Third-party cookie | Chooses which adverts to show you, including from what Google knows of you elsewhere, and counts clicks | Set and timed by Google. Written only if you said yes to adverts |
Until 13 September 2026 your answer was stored under a single item called pp-consent. There is now one question about measurement and one about adverts, so that item no longer means anything and is deleted the next time you answer. If you gave an answer before today, you will be asked again. That is deliberate: the old answer was given to a narrower question than the one AdSense needs asked.
Local storage is not a cookie. It stays on your device, only pages on this site can read it, and unlike a cookie it is not attached to every request your browser makes. It is listed here because that distinction makes no difference to you.
The Google rows are Google's, not ours. Google decides what it sets and can change the exact list without telling us; it publishes what it uses at its page on Google's cookies. What does not change is the character of them. They are advertising cookies, they are set by scripts served from Google, and the AdSense ones exist so that Google can decide what to put in the advertising slot on our page using what it knows about you from other sites.
Where adverts appear
If you say yes to adverts, they appear only on pages that exist to be read:
- our questions page
- guides and articles
- the discussion boards
- the contact page
- these legal pages
They never appear on the front page, on the purchase page, on the receipt page, on a lesson, in the exercise lab, or during an exam or practice attempt. If you are signed in, you get no adverts anywhere on the site, on any page. Somebody who paid for the material is not shown advertising while reading it, and a timed assessment with an advert in it is not a timed assessment.
This is written into the code rather than left to whoever builds the next page. The list of pages an advert may appear on is an allow list: a page that is not on it carries no advert, and a new page carries none until somebody adds it.
What is not here
No Google Analytics. No Meta pixel. No session recording. We do not sell or share what we hold, and we do not use anything on this site to advertise to you elsewhere.
What we can no longer claim, and used to, is that nothing follows you from this site to an unrelated one. If you say yes to adverts, Google's advertising cookies do exactly that, and that is what the question is asking. Say no and there is no Google tag, no AdSense, no request to Google at all, and no cookie of any kind. That is not a setting we apply on your behalf and hope you believe; the scripts are simply never added to the page.
Saying yes to one question does not switch on the other. Measurement and adverts are stored separately and read separately by the code that acts on each.
Why there is a banner
Until 13 September 2026 there was no banner, and this page explained at some length why one was not needed. That reasoning was correct for what the site did at the time, and it stopped being correct the day we added Google's tag.
A banner is required when a site stores something on your device that is not strictly necessary for what you asked it to do. The sign-in item is exempt, because being kept signed in is the thing you asked for. An advertising cookie is not exempt, however useful it is to us. So it is asked for, and nothing about it happens before you answer.
Later the same day we decided to run AdSense, which is a wider thing than measuring our own adverts: it lets Google choose what to show you. Rather than treat the answer you had already given as covering it, we split the bar into two questions and threw the old answers away.
We do not treat silence as yes, and there is no "reject" that quietly means accept. The only way either script loads is the yes button under the question it belongs to.
Payment pages
Checkout happens on Dodo Payments, our merchant of record, on their pages under their terms. Whatever they set, they set there. Card details never reach this site. There are no adverts anywhere on the purchase path.
Turning it off
Every major browser can block or clear storage for a single site, under Settings, then Privacy. Clearing it signs you out, forgets both of your answers, and removes any Google cookie set on this domain. You will be asked the two questions again on your next visit, and no is a perfectly good answer to give twice.
To change your mind without waiting, clear this site's data and answer differently when the bar reappears.
Google also lets you turn off personalised advertising for your Google account, across every site that uses it, at Google's ad settings. That is between you and Google and it works whatever you answered here.
Our earlier store
Until 9 September 2026 this domain pointed at a storefront hosted by Payhip. That store is closed and its account deleted, so nothing of it is reachable and nothing of it sets anything now.
While it was on this domain it set Google Analytics on two properties, Google Ads conversion tags, a Meta pixel, and cookies from Stripe, PayPal and hCaptcha. If you came here before 9 September 2026, those may still be sitting in your browser under this domain. Nothing on this site reads them, and we cannot remove them for you. Clearing this site's data, under Settings then Privacy in any major browser, clears them along with the sign-in item described above.
Counting visits
Every page request is written down on our own server: the page you asked for, the time, the site you came from if you followed a link, the country and city your network reports, your IP address, and the browser identification your browser sends with every request anyway.
None of this is stored on your device, none of it is a cookie, and none of it reaches a third party. It goes into our own database, which is the same database that holds the rest of the site. It is not joined to an account, it is not used to advertise to you, and it is not sold.
It is here because a small business needs to know whether anybody came and which page they read. An IP address can identify a household, so it is deleted after 90 days. The privacy policy says the same and is the authoritative version.
Adverts and what we count
We run adverts on Google Search. When somebody clicks one, Google adds an identifier of its own making to the web address they arrive on, called a click identifier. It is Google's, not ours: Google creates it, and we only read it back out of the address.
There are two ways we measure whether those adverts lead to sales, and they are not the same in what they cost you.
On our server, for everyone. The click identifier is read out of the web address and written down on our own server, the same way visits are counted. If that click ends in a purchase it is stored with the purchase, and later we tell Google a sale happened by sending three things: its own click identifier, the time, and the amount. Google is told nothing about who you are. This puts nothing on your device, so it runs whatever you answered, and there is nothing here to clear.
In your browser, only if you agreed. Google's conversion tag, loaded from googletagmanager.com, sets the _gcl_* cookies described above and reports the purchase to Google as it happens rather than hours later. This is what the first question on the bar is asking about. If you said no it is never loaded.
The second one exists because Google's own reporting works better when the tag is present, and better reporting is what decides where we spend. That is an honest reason for asking, and it is not a reason you owe us a yes.
A click identifier attached to a purchase is kept as part of the purchase record. One attached only to a visit is deleted with that visit after 90 days.
Adverts we show
This is the other direction, and it is what the second question on the bar is about. If you agree to it, we run Google AdSense on the pages listed above. Google supplies the adverts, chooses which ones you see, and is paid by the advertiser; we are paid a share by Google. We do not choose the adverts, we are not told who you are, and we receive nothing from Google about you.
To choose an advert, Google uses its own cookies and whatever it already knows of you from elsewhere. That is the part worth understanding before you answer yes, and it is why it is asked as its own question rather than folded into the first one.
Changes
We update this page when what the site stores changes. The date at the top is the current version.