Almost no cookies. Really.

A cookie is a small piece of text a website stores in your browser. Cookies can be used for essential functions (remembering you're logged in), preferences (remembering your dark-mode setting), analytics (counting visitors), or advertising (tracking you across sites for targeted ads).

GPADLAB uses cookies in only one of those categories — analytics — and only from a single source.

None. Our site code does not create any first-party cookies. GPADLAB has no user accounts, no login system, no preference persistence, and no shopping cart. There is nothing GPADLAB itself needs a cookie to remember.

GPADLAB uses three analytics services. Only one of them uses cookies:

• Plausible Analytics — cookieless by design. Uses no cookies, no fingerprinting, and no cross-site identifiers. Fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and PECR out of the box.
• Cloudflare Web Analytics — server-side. Measurements happen on Cloudflare's edge, not through cookies or client-side tracking scripts.
• Google Analytics 4 — sets a single first-party cookie (_ga) that identifies your browser for aggregate visitor counting. IP anonymization is enabled on our GA4 configuration, and the cookie expires after a short retention period.

When you visit GPADLAB, Google Analytics 4 sets a cookie named _ga in your browser. Its purpose is to distinguish one visitor from another for aggregate reporting — so we can see 'the DualSense review had 100 unique visitors this week' without identifying who those visitors were.

With IP anonymization enabled (as it is on GPADLAB), the last octet of your IP address is dropped before being processed, meaning we cannot correlate visits to a specific IP or location beyond a general region.

You have complete control over cookies in your browser:

• Chrome: Settings → Privacy and security → Cookies and other site data
• Firefox: Settings → Privacy & Security → Cookies and Site Data
• Safari: Preferences → Privacy → Manage Website Data
• Edge: Settings → Cookies and site permissions → Cookies and site data
• Opera: Settings → Advanced → Privacy & security → Site Settings → Cookies

You can also install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on (tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout), which blocks all GA cookies across every site. Or enable Do Not Track in your browser — most privacy-respecting analytics providers honor it.

Blocking the _ga cookie will not affect any GPADLAB tool or feature. Everything still works. We just won't see you in aggregate analytics.

GPADLAB does not embed third-party widgets — no social media embeds, no video players, no chat widgets, no ad networks. This means we avoid the third-party cookies those embeds typically set.

If we ever add a third-party embed in the future (for example, a YouTube video tutorial), we'll update this policy and note the cookies that embed introduces.

GPADLAB respects the 'Do Not Track' (DNT) signal in your browser. When DNT is enabled, we do not initialize Google Analytics for your session. Plausible and Cloudflare Analytics are already cookieless.

For details on all data GPADLAB collects — not just cookie-based data — see our Privacy Policy.

Questions about cookies specifically, or about anything else in this policy, should be sent to contact@gpadlab.com. We aim to respond within a few business days.