What this site keeps

No account is required to read. If advertising is turned on, Google may set a cookie. You can say no to the personalized version.

Reading the site

Pages are public. A normal visit loads the article, the fonts, and whatever your browser already does for any site (such as a temporary connection log on the host). We do not ask you to create an account to read.

The contact form

Notes you submit on the Contact page are saved in local storage on your device, in this browser only. They are not sent to a server. Clearing the list on that page, or clearing site data in your browser, deletes them. Do not put passwords or full account numbers in a note.

Tools and the Sunday note

Calculators run in the page. The grocery, electric, and raise numbers are not sent to a server. The no-spend week and the Sunday note email are saved in local storage on this device. Clearing site data deletes them. The note is not added to a mailing list.

Search

Search runs in the page against the articles already loaded. The query is put in the address bar so you can revisit it. It is not a profile of what you read.

Advertising

The Practical Brief is built to carry display ads, sold through Google AdSense, so the guides can stay free. Ads are off until a publisher ID is connected. When they are on, Google and its partners may use a cookie to remember that you visited this site and to choose an ad. That is their cookie, not an account we keep.

Before the ad script loads, the site asks you to choose personalized ads or plain ads. Plain ads still pay the site, but Google is told not to use your visit history to pick them. You can change the choice by clearing this site’s data in your browser, and you can opt out of Google’s personalized ads at adssettings.google.com or industry pages at aboutads.info and networkadvertising.org.

We do not sell a list of readers. We do not have one. Some US state laws treat a cookie that helps an ad network as “sharing.” Use the opt-out links above if you do not want that. Visitors in Europe should also get Google’s own consent message once the publisher turns that on inside AdSense. That message is the one ad networks expect, and it controls the same cookies.

How placements and commissions are labeled is on the ad disclosure.

Contact

Questions about this policy go through the contact page.