Cookies
This page explains which cookies WikiPlant uses, what they measure and how to change your choice. There are no advertising cookies on this site.
Nothing is sent before you choose
No measurement script and no cookie is loaded when you arrive, and nothing at all is requested from Google. Until you select "Accept all", your visit is not announced to anyone outside this site. If you ignore the banner, close it or select "Refuse all", nothing is ever sent and nothing is placed on your device. Advertising storage is refused permanently and is never granted, whatever you answer.
What we measure
Once you accept, we use Google Analytics 4 to understand how the site is used: which pages are visited, roughly where visitors come from and how long a visit lasts. Only the path of a page is sent, never the query string, so nothing that an address might carry about you reaches Google. No email address, no account identifier, no name and no message content is ever sent. IP addresses are anonymised, and advertising features and ad personalisation are switched off.
The actions we count
Five things are counted besides page views: a listing published, a contact button pressed, a search made by town, an account created, and a search made in the plant library. The first four are a bare number with nothing attached to it, so the town you searched for is not sent, nor is the listing, nor who did any of it. The plant search is the exception: the plant name you typed is counted anonymously, in lower case and cut to 40 characters, with the number of results, so we can see which plants are being looked for and which are missing. A search holding an "@" or more than three digits is thrown away instead of counted. None of it says who used the site.
The cookies used
| Name | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
_ga |
Distinguishes one visitor from another so repeat visits are not counted twice. | 13 months |
_ga_* |
Keeps the state of the visit for the measured site. | 13 months |
How long it is kept
The measurement data held by Google is deleted automatically 14 months after your last visit. The analytics cookie in your browser expires after 13 months, and your answer to the banner is kept in your browser for 6 months, after which we ask again.
Changing your mind
To change your answer, use the "Cookie preferences" link at the bottom of any page. Going from accept to refuse takes effect immediately: the measurement stops on the page you are on and the cookies listed above are deleted straight away, without waiting for a reload.
Google's own policy
Google processes the data collected by this tool. Its privacy policy explains what it does with it.