Cookie Policy

What a cookie is

A cookie is a small text file a website asks your browser to keep and send back on subsequent requests. It lets a site recognise a returning browser. Similar technologies such as local storage and tracking pixels do comparable jobs by different means, and everything on this page applies to those as well.

What this site uses

Oton Technology uses a small number of cookies and similar technologies, in three categories.

• Strictly necessary. These make the site work. They handle load balancing, security, and remembering preferences you have set such as a consent choice. The site cannot function properly without them and they cannot be switched off from within the site.
• Analytics. These help us understand which articles are read, how people arrive, and where pages perform badly. They are used in aggregate to inform what we cover and to find technical faults.
• Advertising. Advertising networks may set cookies to measure delivery, to cap how often the same advertisement is shown to the same browser, and in some cases to select advertisements based on browsing activity. These are set by those networks, not by us.

Third parties

Some cookies on this site are set by other companies whose services appear on our pages, including advertising networks and embedded content such as video players or social posts. When you load a page containing an embed, that provider can see the request and may set its own cookies under its own policy. We do not control those cookies and cannot delete them for you, but you can control them in your browser.

Controlling cookies

Every major browser lets you see the cookies stored, delete them, and block them, either entirely or for particular sites. Private or incognito windows discard cookies when closed. Many browsers also offer tracking protection that blocks known advertising and analytics domains outright.

Blocking all cookies will break parts of most websites, including this one. Blocking third party cookies specifically is usually a good balance and generally leaves reading unaffected.

Advertising networks commonly offer their own opt out mechanisms, and industry bodies operate consolidated opt out pages covering many networks at once. Note that opting out of personalised advertising does not remove advertising. It changes how it is selected.

Consent

Where the law applicable to your location requires consent before non essential cookies are set, that consent is requested before they are set, and it can be changed or withdrawn later through the same mechanism. Strictly necessary cookies do not require consent and are used regardless of that choice.