Cookie Policy

This site sets no cookies. Not a first-party cookie, not a third-party cookie, not an analytics cookie. Open the storage panel of your browser’s developer tools on any page here and the cookie list for this domain is empty.

The processing that delivering a page does involve is described in the Privacy Policy, which also names the controller responsible for it.

The one thing stored on your device

The theme control in the header cycles through three states: system, light, and dark. In the system state nothing is stored and the page follows your operating system’s prefers-color-scheme setting. Choosing light or dark writes one localStorage entry, under the key elephantphp-theme, whose value is the single word light or dark. Choosing system again removes the entry.

That value is the whole of it. It holds no identifier, no session id, and no timestamp, so two visitors who both picked dark have byte-identical entries and neither entry distinguishes one from the other. It also never leaves your browser: no request on this site sends it anywhere. A visitor who never touches the control has nothing stored by this site at all.

Why there is no consent banner

ePrivacy Directive Art. 5(3), as implemented across the EU, requires consent before a site stores information on your device or gains access to information already stored there. It exempts storage or access that is strictly necessary to provide a service you explicitly requested.

Both halves of the theme feature sit inside that exemption. The write happens only when you click the control, which is the explicit request itself. The read happens on page load, and reading is access under Art. 5(3) even though nothing new is stored — but it is the read that makes the preference survive to the next page. Without it, the theme would be forgotten at every navigation and the thing you asked for would not exist. Nothing is left over: the key is read for no purpose other than painting the page in the theme you chose.

A banner asking permission to remember a preference you set by hand a moment earlier would ask a second time for something you already did explicitly. That is why this site shows none — not because consent is inconvenient, but because this particular storage is exempt from needing it.

Clearing it

Click the theme control until it reads system, which removes the key. Or clear site data for elephantphp.com in your browser settings, which removes it along with anything else the browser holds for this domain. Neither breaks anything: with no key present, the page follows your operating system’s setting.

If this ever changes

The position on this page holds only while the site stays as it is. Adding anything that stores data on your device on a third party’s behalf — a comment system, an embedded video player, an ad network, an analytics product that is not cookieless — would put that storage outside the strictly-necessary exemption and require a consent mechanism that runs before the resource loads.

The rule the site works to is that this page is updated in the same change that adds such a resource, or the resource does not ship. This page therefore describes the site you are on now, not an intention about it.