Cookie Notice
Nothing optional runs until you say so. Optional scripts on this site are loaded in a form the browser cannot execute, and are only converted into live scripts after you accept the relevant category. This is not a banner that records your preference while the tracking happens anyway.
What cookies are
Cookies are small text files a website stores in your browser. Similar technologies such as local storage do the same job. We use the word "cookies" throughout to cover all of them.
The four categories we use
These are the same four categories HID uses on hidglobal.com, so the choices read the same way on both sites.
Essential
Necessary for the site to function and cannot be switched off. They do not store anything that identifies you personally. On this site there is exactly one: the cookie that remembers the choice you make here, so we do not ask again on every page.
Performance
Turn on Google Analytics, which gives us more detail about how people move through the assessment than our own counting does. We only ever look at it in aggregate.
Note what this toggle does and does not cover. It governs Google Analytics. It does not govern the basic counting we do ourselves, which sets nothing on your device and therefore is not a cookie choice at all — that is explained in the next section, and it has its own off switch.
Functional
Enable enhanced features and personalisation, such as embedded content from other services. Nothing on this tool needs them today.
Marketing
Set by advertising partners to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. We use LinkedIn and the Google Display Network for this, both to understand which campaigns bring people to the assessment and to show you HID adverts elsewhere afterwards.
How our tags are managed
We use Google Tag Manager to organise the tags above. Tag Manager is a container: it does not set cookies itself, but it is what loads Google Analytics and the LinkedIn tag.
We do not load Tag Manager at all until you accept at least one optional category. This matters more than it sounds. Simply requesting the Tag Manager file would tell Google your IP address before you had agreed to anything, so the common approach of loading it immediately and telling it to behave was not good enough for the promise we make at the top of this page. On top of that, we use Google Consent Mode so that individual tags inside the container also receive and respect your choices.
Measurement that does not use cookies
We count how this assessment is used — how many people arrive, how far they get, which question they abandon. That happens for every visitor, whatever you choose above, so we should explain why it is not one of the toggles.
Cookie rules are about storing things on your device. That is what the law governs and it is what a cookie banner is for. Our counting stores nothing on your device: no cookie, no local storage, nothing that survives you closing the tab. There is no item on your computer for us to ask permission about, so putting it behind a consent toggle would be inventing a question rather than answering one.
What we do instead is work it out on our own server. When your browser tells us something happened, we use your IP address and browser description to derive your country and a scrambled identifier, then throw the IP address away without recording it. The scrambling key changes daily and is destroyed two days later, so past visits stop being recognisable — including to us. The Privacy Notice sets out the mechanics in full.
The table below gains no rows because of this. We said above that a row is added here in the same change that adds a cookie. This measurement adds none, because it sets none — and that is the clearest test of whether the claim on this page is true.
If you would rather not be counted, switch on Global Privacy Control in your browser. We check for it on every request and record nothing when it is there. That is more than the law asks of us, and it is the honest answer to "how do I opt out of something that has no cookie to delete".
Cookies used on this site
This list is short because the tool genuinely sets very little. A row is added here in the same change that adds the cookie — we do not list cookies we might use one day.
| Name | Category | Provider | Purpose | Expires |
|---|---|---|---|---|
hid_consent |
Essential | This site (first party) | Stores which cookie categories you accepted, when you chose, and which version of this notice was in force, so the banner is not shown to you again. | 180 days |
_ga |
Performance | Google Analytics | Tells returning visits apart so our visitor counts are not inflated. | 2 years |
_ga_* |
Performance | Google Analytics | Keeps track of your current session. | 2 years |
_gcl_au |
Marketing | Measures which adverts led to a completed assessment. | 90 days | |
_gcl_aw |
Marketing | Set when you arrive from a Google advert, to link your visit to that advert. | 90 days | |
IDE |
Marketing | Google — doubleclick.net | Builds an advertising profile of your interests so that HID adverts can be shown to you on other websites in the Google Display Network. | 13 months |
test_cookie |
Marketing | Google — doubleclick.net | Checks whether your browser accepts cookies at all. | 15 minutes |
li_sugr |
Marketing | A probabilistic browser identifier used to match your visit to a LinkedIn member. | 90 days | |
bcookie |
Marketing | LinkedIn's browser identifier. | 1 year | |
lidc |
Marketing | Routes requests to the right LinkedIn data centre. | 1 day | |
UserMatchHistory |
Marketing | Synchronises advert click identifiers. | 30 days | |
AnalyticsSyncHistory |
Marketing | Records when your visit was synchronised with LinkedIn. | 30 days | |
li_gc |
Marketing | LinkedIn's own record of consent for storing non-essential cookies. | 180 days |
Only the first row is set if you reject the optional categories, or if you never make a choice. Everything below it requires you to opt in first.
The rows marked doubleclick.net and the LinkedIn rows are third-party cookies: they are stored against Google's and LinkedIn's own domains rather than ours. That distinction matters when you change your mind — see below.
Advertising and remarketing
If you accept Marketing cookies, HID can show you adverts on other websites in the Google Display Network and on LinkedIn, based on the fact that you visited this assessment. This is usually called remarketing.
To make that work, Google matches your browser to its advertising profile of you. That matching
happens in a hidden frame on this page and is the reason the IDE cookie above exists.
None of it happens unless you opt in to Marketing. We do not send your name, email
address, organisation or your assessment answers to any advertising provider — they receive
the fact of the visit, your IP address and standard browser information, and nothing from the
form.
Our own measurement described above appears nowhere in this table, because it sets nothing that could be listed in it.
Changing your mind
Use Cookie Settings, available here and in the footer of every page, at any time. Withdrawing is exactly as easy as accepting.
Two honest limitations, because a promise we cannot keep is worse than none:
Once a script has run, it cannot be un-run. When you switch a category off, we delete the cookies we can reach and reload the page, which stops anything further from that category. Anything already sent before you changed your mind has already been sent. This is why the default is off and why we ask before loading anything.
We cannot delete another company's cookies. The IDE cookie and the
LinkedIn cookies in the table are stored against Google's and LinkedIn's own domains. Browsers
deliberately prevent this website from touching them, so switching Marketing off stops any further
data being sent but does not remove cookies already set. To clear those, use your browser's cookie
settings, or the providers' own controls:
- Google advert settings and opt-out: myadcenter.google.com
- LinkedIn advertising preferences: linkedin.com/psettings/advertising
- Industry-wide opt-outs: YourAdChoices (US) and Your Online Choices (EU/UK)
Your choice is stored per browser and per device, so you will need to set it again on a different browser. Clearing your cookies also clears the record of your choice, and you will be asked again.
This site and hidglobal.com are separate
HID's main website runs its own cookie tool at hidglobal.com, with its own cookie policy. Browsers keep cookies separate for each website, so a choice you make here does not carry across to hidglobal.com, and a choice you made there does not carry across to here. If you want the same settings on both, please set them in both places.
Global Privacy Control
If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we switch Performance and Marketing cookies off automatically and treat it as a valid opt-out of sale and sharing under California law. You do not have to do anything else. You can still turn a category on deliberately if you want to; we record that as a considered override rather than ignoring your signal.
The signal also switches off the cookieless measurement described above, which it does not strictly oblige us to do — that measurement is neither a sale nor a share. We treat the signal as meaning what it plainly says rather than only what it legally compels.
We do not act on the older "Do Not Track" header. It was withdrawn from browsers and has no agreed meaning.
Controlling cookies in your browser
You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings, and set your browser to warn you before accepting them. Blocking essential cookies will mean this site asks for your cookie choice on every page, because the record of your choice is itself a cookie.
aboutcookies.org has instructions for each major browser.
More information
See our Privacy Notice for what we do with personal information generally, or contact brad@rightontheline.com.