Cookie policy

Cookie Policy

Last updated: 5 September 2026. This policy replaces the Cookie Policy published in 2018, which described advertising technologies this site does not use.

Website:https://annabrides.com

Operator: ANNABRIDES LTD, company number 17430138, registered in England and Wales, registered office 124-128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom. Email: support@annabrides.com.

This policy explains what is stored in your browser when you use annabrides.com, what each thing is for, and how to control it. It forms part of our Privacy Policy, and section 9 of that policy explains the lawful basis for each group.

In short

• Some storage is necessary: it keeps you signed in, keeps the site secure and remembers your settings. It cannot be switched off, because the site does not work without it.
• One thing is not necessary: Google Analytics 4. We use it to see how the site is found and used, and to measure our own advertising.
• In the UK and the EEA nothing but the necessary group is set until you say yes in the banner shown on your first visit. Refusing takes one click, exactly like accepting, and nothing on the site is withheld if you refuse.
• You can change your mind at any time through Cookie settings in the footer of every page.
• Two other Google services run here and set no tracking cookies: the web fonts the pages are typeset in, and Google Sign-In if you choose it. Section 4 says what each one does see.
• We do not show advertising on this site. There is no advertising network in it, no AdSense, no ad exchange, and no advertising cookie set by anybody selling ad space. We do not sell or rent personal data.

1. What a cookie is, and what else we mean here

A cookie is a small file a website asks your browser to keep and to send back on your next visit. Browsers also offer two other stores that work the same way for this purpose: local storage, which survives until it is cleared, and session storage, which is emptied when you close the tab. This policy covers all three, and the word "cookie" below means any of them unless the entry says otherwise.

A cookie set by annabrides.com is called first-party. A cookie set by another company whose code runs on the page is called third-party. Only one third party on this site sets anything that can be refused, and it is named in section 3; the two others, which set no tracking cookies at all, are named in section 4 so that the list is complete.

2. Necessary storage (always on)

Used on the basis of our legitimate interest in providing and securing the service. Switching it off is not possible; blocking it in your browser will sign you out and may break parts of the site.

• Sign-in token and account details — first party, local storage. Keeps you signed in between pages and visits, so you are not asked for your password on every screen. Kept until you sign out or clear your browser storage.
• Session and security cookies — first party. Tie a request to the right account, protect against forged and replayed requests, and support rate limiting and abuse prevention. Kept for the session, or up to 12 months.
• ab-theme — first party, local storage. Remembers whether you chose the light or the dark appearance. Kept until cleared.
• ab-ads-consent — first party, local storage. Remembers the choice you made about section 3. Without it we would have to ask you on every visit. Kept until cleared.
• Interface preferences — first party, local storage: notification sounds, on-screen notices you have already dismissed, the language of the verification screens. Stops the site asking you the same thing twice. Kept until cleared.
• ab-touch-sent, ab-touch-ga — first party, session storage. Record that this tab has already been counted once, so a page refresh does not count as a second visit. Emptied when the tab is closed.

3. Analytics and advertising measurement (your choice)

We load Google Analytics 4 — Google's gtag.js — and nothing else. It tells us how many people come to the site, which pages they read, which country they are in, and which of our own advertisements brought them. We use it to decide what to write and where to advertise.

• _ga, _ga_<property id> — set by Google through a first-party cookie. Tell one browser apart from another so that visits can be counted without counting the same browser twice. Kept up to 2 years.
• _gcl_au and similar conversion-linking cookies — set by Google. Link a registration or a purchase back to the advertisement it came from, so that we can tell which advertising works. Set only when you have allowed this group. Kept up to 90 days.
• Click identifiers in the address you arrive on (gclid, gbraid, wbraid, fbclid) — added by the advertising platform to the link itself, not set by us. We store them with the visit record on our own servers, and only when you have allowed this group.

Google Ireland Limited and Google LLC process this data under Google's own terms, and where Google uses it for its own purposes it does so as an independent controller. This can mean a transfer of data outside the UK and the EEA; the safeguards are described in our Privacy Policy.

What we do not do. We do not sell advertising space here, so no advertising network is embedded in the site. We do not use AdSense, an ad exchange, or a third-party advertising cookie set in order to show you an advertisement on this site. We do not build advertising profiles of members, we do not use analytics data to decide what any individual is shown on the site, and we do not sell or rent personal data to anybody.

4. The other two Google services, and what they do not do

Neither of these sets a cookie that tracks you, neither is used for advertising, and neither is affected by your answer in section 3. They are listed because a policy that names only what is convenient is not a complete list.

• Web fonts. The pages are typeset in Roboto and Lora, and the browser fetches those font files from Google’s font servers (fonts.googleapis.com, fonts.gstatic.com) on the first page you open. No cookie is set by that request, and Google states it does not use it for advertising — but the request itself does tell Google your IP address, your browser and which page asked. It happens before you answer anything, because a page has to be typeset to be readable, and it happens on every website that uses the same service.
• Google Sign-In (accounts.google.com) runs only if you choose to sign in with Google rather than with an email address and a password. It is your Google account signing you in, under Google’s own terms, and it uses cookies on Google’s domains, not on ours. If you never press that button it never loads.
• Links to Google Play, in the pages about the Android application, are ordinary links. Nothing loads from the store until you follow one.

5. Our own record of how you arrived

Separately from Google, and on our own servers, we record for each visit the page you landed on, the site that referred you and the campaign parameters we ourselves put in our own advertisements. This is how we know which advertisement led to a registration. It is first-party, it is not shared for advertising, and it does not identify you by name. The click identifiers listed at the end of section 3 are added to that record only when section 3 allows it.

6. How to say no, and how to change your mind

• The banner. If you are in the UK or the EEA, the site asks on your first visit and sets nothing from section 3 until you answer. Decline and Accept are the same size, in the same place, one click each.
• Cookie settings. The link is in the footer of every page, on every device, whether or not you saw a banner. It reopens the same choice and takes effect immediately.
• Your browser. Every browser can block or delete cookies for a single site or for all sites; the instructions are in its own help. Blocking everything will sign you out of this site and keep signing you out.
• Google's own opt-out. Google publishes a browser add-on that stops Google Analytics on every site you visit.

Your choice is stored in the browser you made it in. It does not travel to your other devices, and clearing your browser storage clears it, after which you will be asked again.

Refusing costs you nothing here. Every page, every profile, every letter and every price behaves exactly the same either way.

7. The mobile application

The AnnaBrides Android application is not a browser and does not use cookies. What it stores on your device, and what Google Play knows about a purchase made in it, are covered by our Privacy Policy and by the app subscription terms.

8. Changes to this policy

If we add anything to section 3, or another third party to section 4, we will list it here before it starts running, and, where the law requires your permission, we will ask for it first.

9. Contact

Questions about this policy, or about anything stored in your browser by this site: support@annabrides.com. Your rights over personal data, and how to exercise them, are set out in our Privacy Policy.