HORN REPORTER

Cookie Policy

Last updated: July 28, 2026

A cookie is a small text file a website stores in your browser. Horn Reporter uses very few of them, and none for advertising. This policy explains what we set and why. It should be read alongside our Privacy Policy.

1. Categories

Strictly necessary

These are required for the Site to work and are set whatever your other choices. They cannot be switched off.

  • Sign-in session (auth_token) — set only for editorial staff and contributors when they sign in. It keeps you signed in as you move between pages. It is HTTP-only, meaning scripts on the page cannot read it, and it expires when the session ends. Readers never receive this cookie.
  • Cookie choice — records the preferences you set in the banner so that we do not ask again on every page. Stored for one year.

Functional

Remember preferences that change how the Site behaves for you. These are optional, and are set only if you allow them.

Analytics

Measure which articles are read and how people move through the Site, so we know what is worth covering. These are optional and are set only if you allow them. We do not currently operate a third-party analytics cookie; where we measure readership we do so from server-side request logs, which are described in our Privacy Policy.

Marketing

We do not run advertising and we do not set marketing or cross-site tracking cookies. The category appears in your preferences so that the choice remains yours if that ever changes.

2. Article view counts

We count how many times an article is read. That counter is incremented on our servers and is not tied to a cookie or to any identifier for you.

3. Our record of your consent

When you make a choice in the cookie banner, we store that choice on our servers together with your IP address, your browser’s user-agent string, the categories you accepted and the date. We keep it for one year so that we can demonstrate what was consented to, and so that we stop asking you. After a year the record expires and you will be asked again.

4. Third-party content

Articles occasionally embed material hosted elsewhere — a video, a map, a social media post. Where they do, the provider of that content may set its own cookies once the embed loads, and its policies apply to those. Images, video and audio published by us are served from our own storage and set no cookies.

5. Changing your mind

You can review and change your choices at any time on the Cookie Preferences page. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings — but if you block the strictly necessary ones, signing in to the newsroom will not work.

6. Changes to this policy

If we introduce a new cookie, we will update this page and, where the cookie is not strictly necessary, ask for your consent before setting it.

7. Contact

Questions about our use of cookies can be sent to contact@hornreporter.com.