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Vitalis

Legal / Register 03

Cookie Policy

Most cookie policies describe a category of technology. This one is an inventory. Every cookie Vitalis is capable of setting is listed below by name, with its purpose, its lifespan and what you lose by refusing it.

Last updated

1
Cookie set today

First-party, consent only

0
Third-party trackers

None loaded on arrival

4
Optional categories

All off by default

13
Months before we re-ask

Then the record lapses

The register

Five categories / one live cookie

Three of these five categories are marked Reserved. That is not a hedge — it means the switch exists in the consent banner but no such cookie is set on this site today. We would rather name the empty shelves than imply the site is busier than it is.

  • NEC

    In use

    Necessary

    Stores the choices you make in the consent banner, plus the date you made them, so the site stops asking on every page you open.

    Cookie
    vitalis_consent
    Lifespan
    13 months

    If you refuse: Cannot be switched off. Without it there is nowhere to record a refusal, so the banner would reappear on every page load.

  • FUN

    Reserved

    Functional

    Would remember preferences you set on the site, such as whether the calculators show metric or imperial units.

    Cookie
    None
    Lifespan

    If you refuse: Nothing changes today. The tools already forget your entries the moment you close the tab, because nothing is stored.

  • ANA

    Available

    Analytics

    Loads Vercel Analytics, which counts page views in aggregate so the desks can see which guides are actually read.

    Cookie
    None (cookieless)
    Lifespan

    If you refuse: The script is never loaded. Your visit simply is not counted, and no part of the site behaves differently.

  • PRF

    Reserved

    Performance

    Would measure how fast pages load on your device and connection, so slow guides can be found and fixed.

    Cookie
    None
    Lifespan

    If you refuse: Nothing changes today. No performance measurement runs on this site in either position.

  • ADV

    Reserved

    Advertisement

    Would let an advertising partner personalise the ads shown to you and limit how often the same one repeats.

    Cookie
    None
    Lifespan

    If you refuse: Nothing changes today, because Vitalis carries no advertising and sets no advertising cookies.

What a cookie actually is

A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to keep, and hands back to that same website on your next visit. It is a memory aid, nothing more. It cannot read your hard drive, install anything, or see what you do in other tabs. What makes cookies worth regulating is not the file itself but what a site chooses to write in it — a language preference is harmless, a persistent identifier that follows you across the web is not.

The distinction that matters most is first-party versus third-party. A first-party cookie is set by the site you are looking at and can only be read by that site. A third-party cookie is set by some other company whose code is embedded in the page — an ad network, an embedded video, a social button — and can often be read wherever else that company's code appears. Vitalis sets one first-party cookie and no third-party cookies.

Vitalis is a reading site. There is no account to sign into, no basket to keep, no personalised feed to assemble. Almost every reason a publisher accumulates cookies simply does not apply here, and we have not gone looking for reasons to add them.

The calculators are the part readers most often assume must be storing something. They are not. Your height, weight, age and training days are held in the page's memory while you are using it and are gone the moment the tab closes. Nothing you type into a Vitalis tool is written to a cookie or sent to a server.

So the register lists one cookie: vitalis_consent. It is first-party, it lasts thirteen months, it is marked SameSite=Lax so it is not sent along with requests from other sites, and it is served over HTTPS with the Secure flag. Its contents are your four category switches, the date you set them, and a version number. There is no name, no email address, and no identifier that could be used to recognise you.

The version number is there so that if we ever add a category, the stored record becomes outdated on purpose and you are asked again rather than opted in by inheritance.

Analytics, and why it stays off

Vitalis uses Vercel Analytics to count page views. It tells us that a guide was read a certain number of times; it does not tell us who read it. There is no name, no email address, and no profile built from your reading.

Two things about how it is wired here are worth stating plainly. First, it is genuinely cookieless — it does not add an entry to the register above. Second, and more importantly, the script is not merely inert until you consent, it is not loaded at all. If the Analytics switch is off, nothing is requested, nothing runs, and there is nothing to opt out of afterwards.

We ask for it because it is the only signal the desks get about which guides earn their place. Refusing costs you nothing, and we would rather have an honest count than a coerced one.

Advertising: what is true today

Vitalis currently carries no advertising. No ad network code runs on these pages, no advertising cookies are set, and no advertising identifier is created for you. The Advertisement switch in the banner governs a category that is, at this moment, empty.

We are stating an intention rather than a fact when we say this: Vitalis expects to join Google AdSense in order to fund the editorial desks. It has not happened yet. When it does, Google and its partners may use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other sites, and the Advertisement switch will become the control that decides whether the ads you see here are personalised or not.

Two commitments attach to that change. This register will be updated to name the cookies before they are set, not after. And because introducing an ad partner is exactly the kind of change the version number exists for, your consent record will be reset and the question put to you again — an old "accept all" will not be treated as permission for something that did not exist when you gave it.

You can also manage personalisation directly with Google, for every site rather than just this one, through its My Ad Center settings.

Your record, right now

Read from this browser

Everything below is read out of the vitalis_consent cookie on the device you are using. It is not sent anywhere to produce this panel, and it will read differently on your phone than on your laptop, because the cookie lives in the browser rather than in an account.

Functional
Reading…
Analytics
Reading…
Performance
Reading…
Advertisement
Reading…

Checking this browser for a saved choice.

Deleting the record removes the cookie from this browser entirely. The banner will greet you as a first-time reader the next time you load a page, which is the point — a withdrawn consent should leave nothing behind.

Controls your browser already gives you

The panel above governs Vitalis. Your browser governs everything, and it outranks us — if you clear cookies or block them outright, our consent record goes with them and the banner will treat you as a new reader. That is the correct outcome, not a fault.

Every major browser lets you view the cookies a site has set, delete them individually or in bulk, and refuse them in advance. The controls sit under Settings, usually within a section named Privacy and security, in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge alike. Most also offer a private or incognito window, which discards cookies when you close it — worth knowing if you would rather read a health guide without leaving anything behind on a shared computer.

Blocking cookies entirely will not break Vitalis. The site has no feature that depends on one. The only visible consequence is that the consent banner cannot remember your answer, so it will ask again each time.

Automated privacy signals

Some browsers and extensions broadcast an automated preference, such as Global Privacy Control or the older Do Not Track header. Vitalis does not currently detect these signals, and we would rather say so than imply a capability we have not built.

In practice this changes nothing about your position. Every optional category on this site is off until you switch it on, so a reader who never touches the banner is already in the state a privacy signal would ask for. If that ever stops being true — for instance once advertising is introduced — honouring these signals automatically becomes something we would need to implement, and we will note it here when we do.

How this register changes

This page is versioned alongside the consent mechanism itself, so it cannot quietly fall out of date. Any new cookie is added to the register here before it is set, and a change that alters what you agreed to — a new category, a new partner — resets the stored record so the banner asks you again.

Corrections that do not affect your choices, such as clearer wording or a fixed link, are made with the date at the top of the page updated and nothing else disturbed. The date shown is accurate; it is not refreshed to look current.

Questions, corrections, complaints

If something on this page does not match what you observe in your browser's developer tools, we want to know — an inaccurate register is worse than none. Write to ahmadahmii0.0.9@gmail.com and include the cookie name you are seeing.

This register covers cookies specifically. For the wider picture — what happens to a newsletter address, how long anything is kept, and the rights you can exercise over it — read the Privacy Policy. The rules for using the site itself are in the Terms of Use.

Common questions

Does Vitalis use cookies to track me across other websites?
No. The only cookie Vitalis sets is first-party, meaning it can be read by this site and nothing else. There are no advertising pixels, social widgets or cross-site tracking scripts embedded in these pages, so there is no mechanism by which your reading here could follow you elsewhere.
What happens if I refuse everything?
The site works exactly as it does for anyone else. Every guide, calculator and search result is available, because none of them depend on an optional category. The only practical difference is that your visit is not counted in our aggregate page-view totals.
How long does my choice last?
Thirteen months from the date you make it. After that the record lapses and the banner asks again, which is the maximum period regulators in the EU and UK generally expect a consent record to stand.
Can I change my mind later?
At any time, and in one click. Use the controls on this page, or the Cookie settings link in the footer of every page on the site. Withdrawing consent is deliberately no harder than granting it.