Cookies and Advertising Choices

This page explains the cookies and similar technologies we use on Fermented Pickles, what each one is for, how long it sticks around, and how you can turn the non-essential ones off. It sits alongside our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use. If you want the wider picture of how we handle your personal data, the Privacy Notice is the place to start.

We've kept it specific rather than generic. Where a cookie is set by one of our infrastructure providers rather than by us directly, we've said so.

"Cookies" is a shorthand we use for a handful of small things browsers do to remember information between page loads: actual cookies (small text files), local storage, session storage, and equivalent identifiers. From a privacy point of view they all do roughly the same job, so we've grouped them together under one name.

Cookies on Fermented Pickles fall into four groups. Only the first group is set without asking. The law allows that because the site genuinely can't work without them. You're asked about the other three on your first visit.

Strictly necessary cookies Always on

These run the basic plumbing of the service. Without them, you can't sign in, your watchlist won't load, and your privacy settings can't be applied. Because they're essential, we don't need your consent to set them, but you should know they exist.

What they do, concretely:

• Keep you signed in across pages and between visits.
• Route you to the right profile within your account when you switch.
• Remember which cookie categories you've consented to (yes, the consent itself is stored in a cookie — that's the only way it can be respected on your next visit).
• Protect against fraud, abuse, and unauthorised access.
• Carry security tokens that prevent cross-site request forgery on actions like rating a film or sending a recommendation.

Some of these are set by Supabase (our authentication and database provider) and Cloudflare (our hosting and content delivery provider) in the course of delivering the service to you. Those providers act on our instructions and aren't allowed to use the cookies for their own purposes.

Functional cookies Off by default

These remember preferences that make the site nicer to use but aren't strictly required for it to work. Your language choice, your theme, the layout adjustments you've made, the last profile you used, and similar. If you turn them off, the site still works — you'll just have to set those things again each visit.

Statistics cookies Off by default

These help us understand, in aggregate, how Fermented Pickles is performing — which features people use, where pages are slow, where things break. We don't use them to identify individual users and we don't share the data with third-party analytics networks. The analytics happen inside our own infrastructure.

Advertising cookies Off by default

We show film advertising from studios, distributors, streaming platforms, and festivals on Fermented Pickles. That's how the service stays free. These cookies measure how the ads perform — how many times an ad was shown, whether anyone clicked it, that sort of thing.

If you've also turned on personalised advertising in your settings, your viewing data is used to choose which film ads to show you. The Privacy Notice explains how that works in detail. What matters here is that no advertiser ever receives your name, email, watchlist, or anything that links the ad to you as a person. The targeting decision happens inside Fermented Pickles.

We don't use third-party ad networks. We don't allow third-party ad trackers to set cookies on your device through our service. We don't cross-site track.

Cookies have a lifespan. Some disappear as soon as you close the tab; others stick around for months so you don't have to sign in again every time. The longest-lived cookies on Fermented Pickles last 12 months. Your consent record itself also lasts 12 months, after which we ask again so the choice doesn't go stale.

If you want the exact lifespan of an individual cookie, your browser's developer tools will show you (Application → Cookies in most browsers).

You can change your cookie choices at any time. There are two ways:

• From Fermented Pickles. Use the Manage your cookie preferences button at the top of this page, or click Cookies and Advertising Choices in the footer of any page. The panel opens with your current choices already reflected, and you can adjust whatever you like. Withdrawing consent stops the further use of those cookies from that point forward — it doesn't undo anything that happened earlier under your previous consent.
• From your browser. Every browser lets you view and delete cookies, and most let you block them site-by-site or category-by-category. Doing this from your browser is more drastic — strictly necessary cookies disappear too, which will sign you out and break parts of the site until you reload and let them back in. Browser-level controls override anything you've chosen here, so if there's a conflict between the two, the browser wins.

If you're on a mobile operating system, that system may impose further limits on cookies and tracking on top of the choices you've made here. Those limits override our settings.

If we change the cookies we use, we'll update this page. Material changes — for example, adding a new category or a new provider — will be announced through the service or by email, and where the law requires it, we'll ask you to consent again.

For any question about cookies on Fermented Pickles, please write to us using the contact details in the Privacy Notice.