Privacy and Cookies

The short version

5G6GLab is a technical blog. There are no accounts, no newsletter, no comment system and no forms — nothing on this site asks you for your name, your email address or any other personal detail. The only thing measured is which pages get read, and only if you agree to it.

Analytics, and only with consent

This site uses Google Analytics 4 to count page views and see which articles are read. It runs under Google Consent Mode v2 with every storage signal denied by default, which means:

• Until you choose Sure, go ahead, Google Analytics sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser.
• If you choose No thanks, it stays that way, and any analytics cookies already set are deleted.
• Your choice is remembered in your browser so the banner asks once.
• Closing or ignoring the banner is not treated as agreement. Nothing is stored until you actually choose.

When you do agree, Google Analytics sets the cookies _ga and _ga_<id>. They hold a randomly generated identifier so repeat visits can be counted as one visitor, along with the page addresses you viewed, a rough location derived from your IP address, and your browser and device type. IP anonymisation is switched on. The data goes to Google, which acts as the processor; their handling is covered by Google’s privacy policy. No advertising signals are ever enabled, because this site carries no ads.

One extra event is recorded, again only after consent: when you follow a link to the companion practice site, the article you came from and the activity you chose are sent to Analytics. That answers one question — which articles lead people to practise — and nothing about you personally.

Changing or withdrawing consent

Select Cookie settings at the bottom of any page. The banner returns, and choosing No thanks switches analytics off and deletes the analytics cookies immediately. Withdrawing is as easy as agreeing, and you can do it as often as you like.

What this site stores in your browser regardless

Two small items are kept in your browser’s local storage. Neither is a tracking cookie, neither is sent to any server, and both stay on your device:

• Your theme — whether you chose light or dark, so the site does not flash the wrong one on your next visit.
• Your consent choice — so the banner does not ask again. Ironically this one has to be stored in order to respect a refusal.

Other services that see a request

Loading any web page means your browser contacts the servers that hold it, and those servers see your IP address. On this site that means:

• Netlify, which hosts the site and keeps standard server logs.
• abacus.jasoncameron.dev, a small visitor-counter service used for the count shown on the site. It is called on page load, it sets no cookies, and it receives no more than the request itself — but it does see your IP address, like any server you connect to.

Fonts are served from this site rather than from Google Fonts, so loading a page does not tell Google anything. Diagrams and images are served from here too. There are no advertising networks, no social media trackers and no embedded third-party widgets.

If you email

The contact and topic-request links open your own email program with a message addressed to 5g6glab@gmail.com. That email, and anything you put in it, sits in an inbox like any other email. It is used to answer you and to decide what to write about. Nothing is added to a mailing list, because there is no mailing list.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you may ask what data exists about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and object to its processing. In practice this site holds nothing that identifies you: analytics data is pseudonymous and sits in Google Analytics, and anything else is an email you chose to send. To ask about either, write to 5g6glab@gmail.com. You can also complain to your national data protection authority.

You can remove the analytics cookies yourself at any time by clearing site data in your browser, or by choosing No thanks in Cookie settings, which does it for you.

Changes to this page

If what the site collects changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top moves. There is no version history worth keeping — the practices described here are deliberately minimal.