A cookie is a small piece of text sent to your browser by the websites you visit, including ours. It helps sites remember information about your visits and provides error-free interactions. You can learn more about cookies and how they are used on the internet from this guide we created on what cookies are and what they do.

We use cookies for several reasons, and we split them by their purpose, as follows:

• Necessary cookies:
  • To enable certain functions of our website, like the ability to post comments and reply to other comments.
  • To ensure the security of our website and protect it against SPAM and attacks of all kinds.
  • To inform you and collect your consent for our use of cookies, in regions where explicit consent is mandatory, like the European Union.
• To provide analytics data:
  • Google Analytics - we use this service to collect anonymized statistical data about how many people visit our site, which articles get read, where our readers come from, etc. These cookies are classified as Analytics when we request your permissions related to our cookie use. The user-level data and the events associated with cookies, and user identifiers, stored by Google Analytics for Digital Citizen, are automatically deleted from Google’s servers after 14 months. Here’s a page with more details about Google Analytics Data Retention.
• To monetize our work through advertisements and affiliate marketing:
  • Google AdSense - we use this service to monetize our work. If you check the cookies stored in your browser by our website, you see some with doubleclick, googleads or googleadservices in their domain. They’re all cookies generated by Google AdSense and the different types of ads it displays on our website. Here’s a detailed article describing how AdSense uses cookies. IMPORTANT: Please keep in mind that most of our revenue comes from display advertising. Therefore, blocking the ads displayed on Digital Citizen means we can’t generate revenue from our work and offer content for free on the internet.
  • Amazon Affiliate - most reviews and some other types of articles on Digital Citizen include links to Amazon websites. Digital Citizen has joined the Amazon Associates program, which allows us to generate a bit of revenue each time you click on the links we post and buy something from Amazon. In order to track if anything is bought using our links, cookies are used by Amazon to track your activity.
  • Other affiliate programs - we may also join affiliate programs from other companies, including software vendors, and include similar links in our articles. When we do this, and you click on those links, similar cookies are generated to keep track of whether a product is purchased and pay us the appropriate commission.
• Other types of third-party cookies:
  • Sometimes, we embed content from other websites, such as YouTube videos, OneDrive documents, social media posts, etc. When you access that content, additional third-party cookies are stored in your web browser to ensure that you can interact with it and use it appropriately.
  • We often refer to interesting or useful content from other websites. If you click on links that take you from Digital Citizen to other sites, those sites will generate a new set of cookies that we don’t control and are not responsible for.

Keep in mind that Digital Citizen functions in a similar fashion to most websites, and cookies are a regular and necessary occurrence on the internet.

You have the right to decide whether to accept or reject cookies. You can also set your web browser to accept or refuse cookies or simply block only third-party cookies. If you choose to reject cookies, you may still use our website, though some functions on it may not work as expected.

When you first visit our website, if you’re based in a country from the European Union, a resident of a state in the USA that requires explicit consent, or a resident of some other region with similar legislation, you are prompted to give your consent about our use of cookies. You can accept all our cookies or choose those you want to accept. This prompt also lists all the cookies that may be stored in your web browser, who created them, their purpose, etc.

Do Not Track: Most web browsers have a Do Not Track (DNT) feature that lets websites know you don’t want to be tracked. Unfortunately, Digital Citizen does not respond to DNT signals.