Privacy

Your account

If you create an account, we keep your name, your email address and a scrambled (hashed) copy of your password, or, if you sign in with Google or GitHub, the details those services share with us for that. We use them to let you sign in and to run your account.

When you sign in, your browser keeps a session cookie so that you stay signed in as you move around the site. It is removed when you sign out.

Cookies and browser storage

We use Google Analytics to measure visits to the site: which pages are viewed, and how. It sets cookies whose names start with _ga.

When another site sends you here, a cookie called vidert_ref keeps that site's name until you close your browser, so that if you sign up we can count where new members came from. It holds nothing else.

Your browser also keeps a few settings for this site, such as whether the sidebar is collapsed, and a random id that our search service, Algolia, uses to count which search results are clicked.

Tests of the site's design

Now and then we show visitors one of two versions of part of a page, to see which works better. So that you keep seeing the same version, your browser keeps a random id in a cookie called xp_id for a year, with xp_v (30 minutes) and xp_s (a year), which note the versions you've seen. They hold nothing about you, and we don't use your IP address for this. We count which version you saw and whether you clicked or signed up, in our own statistics, not Google's.

You can opt out. You'll then always see the usual version, and nothing is counted. Your choice is kept in a cookie called xp_optout for a year, on this browser.