Cookie Policy
What a cookie actually is
A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store, so that the next request your browser makes carries something the site can recognise. On its own, a cookie is a random string with a name on it. It becomes meaningful only through what a site, or an advertising network, does with the recognition. This page explains what alpesmotoracing.com does with it, in plain language, because a cookie policy you need a lawyer to read is not informing anyone.
The cookies we set ourselves
Our own cookies are few and boring, which is how we like it.
- Consent memory. When you make a choice on the consent banner, a cookie records that choice so the banner does not ambush you on every page. Deleting it brings the banner back.
- Preferences. If the site offers a display preference, such as a theme, a cookie or similar browser storage remembers it. It stores your setting and nothing else.
- Security and load management. Our hosting and content delivery layer may set technical cookies to distinguish humans from abusive automated traffic and to route requests sensibly. These are strictly functional.
None of these track you across other websites, and none of them are of any use to anyone but you and us.
Analytics cookies
We use analytics to see which stories get read and how the site performs: whether the race report format works, whether a guide is still being found a year later, whether a page is slow on mobile. Analytics cookies let repeat visits be counted as one reader rather than five. We read this data in aggregate and do not use it to identify you. Where consent rules apply, analytics respects the choice you made on the banner.
Advertising cookies, honestly
Display advertising funds this site, and this is the category where cookies stop being boring, so it deserves the straight version. Ad networks we work with may set third-party cookies or use similar technologies to measure that an ad was shown, cap how often you see the same one, detect fraud, and, if you consented, personalise which ads you see based on interests inferred across sites. That cross-site inference is done by the networks, not by us; we do not hand them your identity, and we do not receive individual profiles back. What we receive is money that pays the editors, which is the whole arrangement.
If the idea of personalised ads bothers you, decline them in the consent banner. You will see ads either way, because the site has to eat, but non-personalised ads are contextual: you see motorcycle-adjacent advertising because you are on a motorcycle site, not because of who a network thinks you are.
Affiliate links
Some links to gear and products are affiliate links. Following one may set a cookie on the retailer’s domain so the retailer knows the visit came from us, and we earn a commission if you buy. That cookie belongs to the retailer and lives under the retailer’s policy. It does not report your browsing back to us; we see aggregate commission statements, not shopping histories. Every page containing affiliate links says so, per our ownership and funding disclosure.
Embedded content
Race coverage sometimes benefits from an embedded video or social media post, and embeds behave as if you visited the platform they come from: the platform may set its own cookies under its own policy the moment the embed loads. We keep embeds to cases where they genuinely add something, and where practical we use privacy-conscious embed modes that delay any contact with the platform until you interact.
Your controls
- The consent banner is the primary control for everything non-essential, and you can reopen it at any time to change your mind. Withdrawing consent is as easy as giving it, as it should be.
- Your browser can block third-party cookies entirely, clear cookies on exit, or refuse them per site. The site will keep working; at worst a preference resets.
- Industry opt-outs run by advertising self-regulation bodies let you opt out of personalisation across many networks at once, and they work independently of us.
What we will never do is punish a refusal. No nagging walls, no deliberately broken pages for readers who declined tracking. Decline and read on.
Changes
If the set of cookies we use changes in any meaningful way, this page changes with it, and a change that requires new consent will trigger the banner rather than being smuggled in. Questions about anything here: support@alpesmotoracing.com with PRIVACY in the subject, and our privacy policy covers the wider data picture.
