Cookie usage by DeBear Software

At DeBear Software we use cookies as part of delivering our service to our users. These cookies fall in to one of two categories: those we need to make our sites work, and those that allow us to understand how our sites are used so we can make appropriate improvements. We have no need, desire or intent to abuse personal information about our users, make use of their data from other websites nor to provide to others information about their use of our site that is personally identifiablly to them.

These cookies are required because they allow us to deliver our service to you, given the technical nature of HTTP ("Hypertext Transfer Protocol") – the protcol by which internet communication is defined. This protocol is "stateless", which means a request to our server knows nothing of what may have happened before… such as if a user was previously logged in, and if so which account they were logged in with. Cookies are the mechanism by which HTTP overcomes this limitation and allows websites like ours to deliver their service.

Our cookies are locked down to our domain (so they cannot be accessed and read by other website) and with one exception do not contain any personal information about our users – they are encrypted internal references that can only be understood by our servers.

The one exception is when users make use of the "Remember Me?" feature when logging in. This stores an encrypted cookie on their computer which includes a reference to their username, though the cookie must first be decrypted for the username to be revealed (which should only occur on our servers).

Unlike the required cookies above, these cookies are not needed to make our services work but are those used by third-parties we have linked to (enabling us to understand how our services are used and make appropriate improvements). These third-parties will not hold any personally identifiable information about our users, we only send them data that is sufficiently granular to be meaningful to us and nobody else.

This functionality – and so their cookies – are optional, so users can opt out of them by unticking the box above or the tickbox that is displayed on the bottom of most pages. Doing so means we will no longer include their usage in our analytics. (The irony to us is that to prevent the use of these cookies…… we need to store this preference in one of our cookies!)