How Do We Use Cookies on Our Public Health Site?
A plain-language look at the small files that keep this site working and how you stay in control of them.
Last updated: October 10, 2024
About Cookies
A cookie is a small text file a website saves on your device when you visit. It does not run programs or carry viruses. Its job is to remember things — that you closed a banner, that you started reading a testing resource page, that you set a preference and would rather not set it again on every click.
Cookies come in two lifetimes. Session cookies last only while your browser is open and disappear the moment you close the tab. Persistent cookies stick around for a set period, which is how a site can recognize a returning visitor without asking the same questions twice.
That's the whole mechanism. Nothing dramatic, but worth understanding before you decide what to allow.
Cookies We Use
We keep our cookie use lean, and we group what we use into three categories.
Essential cookies
These make the site function. They remember your cookie consent choice so the banner doesn't reappear on every page, and they support basic navigation. Without them, core features simply won't work as intended.
Analytics cookies
These help us understand traffic in aggregate — which articles people read, where pages load slowly, what isn't being found. We use that to improve the resources we publish, not to identify you personally.
Advertising cookies
We do not currently use these. We may introduce them in the future to support personalized content, and if we do, we will update this policy before they go live.
Third-Party Cookies
Some cookies are set by services other than us. Here is the honest picture of where things stand.
Analytics and advertising providers may be involved down the road. Both are flagged as future implementations rather than something running today, and any such partner would operate under its own privacy terms in addition to ours.
One third-party service is active now: our content delivery network. A CDN stores copies of our pages on servers closer to you so the site loads faster, and it may set cookies for performance and security reasons as part of that work.
Controlling Cookies
You hold the final say. Every major browser lets you block cookies, delete existing ones, or warn you before any are stored. The settings usually live under "Privacy" or "Cookies" in your browser's preferences, and the steps differ slightly between Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge.
There is a trade-off to weigh. If you block essential cookies, parts of the site may stop behaving correctly — the consent banner might keep returning, and some features could break. Disabling analytics cookies, on the other hand, costs you nothing as a visitor; it only means we see less about how the page performed.
For people who rely on this site for sensitive information, that control matters, and we'd rather you understand the consequences than guess at them. You can review our full Privacy Policy for how we handle data beyond cookies.
Policy Changes
We revise this policy when our practices change — most likely when analytics or advertising features move from "future" to active. The current revision date sits at the top of this page, so a quick glance tells you whether anything has shifted since your last visit.
When we make a meaningful update, we'll surface it through the cookie notice on the site rather than expecting you to check back on your own. Because some of the services described here are planned rather than running, a few details will firm up only once those features ship.
Questions about any of this? Reach out through our Contact Us page and we'll walk you through it.