Cookies
A cookie is a small file a website leaves in your browser. This page says which ones mySpoils leaves, what each is for, and how long it stays.
Two things are worth knowing before the list. Nothing that tracks you loads until you say yes: refuse the banner and the analytics script never reaches the page at all. And you can change your answer whenever you like, from the Cookies link at the foot of any page.
The ones we cannot do without
These make the site work. There is no way to turn them off and still have an account.
Signing you in. Four cookies from the library that handles sign-in. One keeps you signed in and lasts 30 days from the last time you used the site. One remembers where to send you back to after signing in. One protects the sign-in form from being submitted by another site. One lasts fifteen minutes and only exists while you are signing in with Google. None of them can be read by any code running in the page.
Remembering how you left things. Whether the site is in dark or light, which layout your collection was in, whether you finished setting up, whether your collection is empty, and which language to look things up in. These last a year, except the layout ones, which last 30 days.
Not asking you the same thing twice. Whether you have dismissed the feature-wish card, for 90 days, and whether you have dismissed the check, for 30 days.
Your answer about cookies, kept for a year, so we do not ask again every time you arrive.
Dark or light is in this list rather than the next one, deliberately. It is written the moment a page draws, before anybody could have answered a banner, because the alternative is a white flash on a dark screen for everybody who has not answered yet.
Analytics, only if you say yes
We use Google Analytics to see which pages people use and where they get stuck. It writes two cookies that last two years: one named _ga and one named after our own measurement id.
If you refuse, or have not answered, the script is never added to the page and neither cookie is written. Nothing is held back until later and nothing is queued up to send if you change your mind.
If you accept and later change your mind, use the Cookies link at the foot of any page.
Things kept in your browser that are not cookies
Three preferences are stored in your browser rather than sent to us. They never leave your device.
Which years you have folded away in the timeline. Which layout your collection was in, which is the same value as the cookie above rather than a second preference. And whether you have closed the suggestion to put mySpoils on your home screen.
One honest note about the second. If you follow somebody's link to a particular layout, that becomes your saved layout, without you having pressed anything.
And one about the third. If your browser blocks storage entirely, we treat you as having already dismissed that suggestion, so you are never asked. That is the same outcome as closing it.
Other companies' content
Three things load from another company, and only when you press:
- A video, from YouTube. We use their privacy-enhanced address, which holds cookie data back until a video actually plays.
- A book preview, from Google.
- A map, from Google.
Each is a request to that company. If you are signed in to Google, it carries your Google cookies, and they can set more. You are told this where the press is, before anything loads. If you never press, none of it happens.
Pictures on a spoil, posters, covers, sleeves and logos, are fetched by your browser from whoever holds them. That is described in the Privacy Policy.
Changing your mind
The Cookies link at the foot of every page reopens the choice. Refusing after having accepted stops anything further being collected; what Google already holds is covered by their own policy.
You can also delete cookies in your browser's settings, which will sign you out and lose the preferences above.