This article describes the cookies your forum sets on your visitors' and members' browsers, so you can tell your visitors about them. Privacy laws in the European Union, the United Kingdom and Switzerland require you to explain the purpose of each cookie, how long it lasts, and who sets it. We therefore describe each cookie by what it does rather than by its internal name. Every cookie listed here is set by Website Toolbox on your forum's own domain, as a first-party cookie.
Cookies the forum sets
Security and anti-abuse cookies
The forum also sets a small group of security cookies. They mark a session that was identified as spam or that has not yet passed the human-verification check, mark a browser that has passed that check, and identify administrator and staff sessions so that staff-only behavior can be applied. These cookies last at most 12 months. They are described by category instead of by name because publishing the exact names would make it easier to avoid the protections they implement. Regulators treat cookies of this kind as strictly necessary for security.
Third parties in the admin area
The Website Toolbox admin area, and the Website Toolbox platform pages served under your forum's domain (such as your /privacy and /tos pages), are part of our own website and load our own measurement and support tools. Google Analytics and Google advertising tags measure how those pages are used. The admin dashboard, start page and statistics page also load the Meta advertising pixel, and some accounts show the Website Toolbox support chat. These services set their own cookies on your browser while those pages are open; Google and Meta document their own cookie names and durations in their published cookie policies. Your forum's own discussion pages (threads, posts, profiles and login) set no analytics or advertising cookies.
Optional services and consent
The cookies listed above support the forum itself: signing in, read state, visitor preferences and security. They do not include advertising cookies, and Website Toolbox does not set analytics or advertising cookies on your forum's discussion pages. If you add an optional service to your forum, such as analytics or advertising, that service sets its own cookies and you must ask your visitors for consent before it runs. When a visitor is challenged by bot protection, Google reCAPTCHA runs to tell humans apart from bots and Google may set its own cookie under Google's own policies.
No cookie set by the forum lasts longer than 12 months.