Cookies

Acttuary sets no advertising cookies and loads no advertising pixels. We use necessary sign-in technology, a small amount of local or session storage for specific site features, one cookie that records which partner recommended us if you follow a partner’s referral link and agree when we ask, and two Google Analytics cookies that count how the pages here are used. If one of our Google ads brought you here, we also ask whether we may tell Google if your visit ends in a sign-up or a sale, and nothing about that is kept or sent unless you say yes. All of it is described here.

The two analytics cookies are set when you arrive, and one tap turns them off. UK law allows that without asking you first where the only purpose is statistics about how a site is used, collected to improve it, and where you are told plainly and given a simple way to object: that is the exception in the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations as amended by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, in force since 5 February 2026. So a short notice at the foot of the first page you open, or of the next one if a partner’s link had us asking you about the referral cookie there, or about a Google ad, says what they are for, with a “Turn analytics off” beside the “OK”, and the button in the Analytics section below does the same thing at any time afterwards. Everything else on this page is either necessary to something you asked for or, in the case of the referral cookie and the Google ad question, asked for before a single thing is written.

What is set on your device

• Sign-in cookies. If you create or use an account, Clerk sets first-party cookies required to authenticate you, maintain your session and protect the sign-in process. These are used only when necessary to provide account and security functionality. They appear once you sign in and go when you sign out.
• The names those cookies currently use. They may include cookies beginning __session, __client, __refresh or __clerk. The exact set depends on your browser and on where you are in the sign-in flow.
• What Clerk keeps in local storage. Clerk may also store configuration information locally in your browser, under __clerk_environment, so its sign-in interface can function correctly. This does not contain a record of which Acttuary content you have viewed.
• One key of ours, for the tab you are in. We write acttuary-within-site to session storage on lesson pages. It holds the value 1, meaning this tab has already visited the site, which is what shows the small “back to where you were” control after you click a defined term. No identifier, no record of what you read; it goes when you close the tab.
• A second, only while you are sitting an exam. While an exam paper is open we write acttuary-exam-answers to session storage: the reference of the paper, the list of questions it drew, the answers you have typed so far, and the working you have done in the exam’s own tools, each filed under the question it belongs to. A phone reloads a tab at the smallest excuse, and this is what brings you back to your own answers and workings rather than to empty boxes. It holds nothing about whether an answer is right: marking happens on our server after you submit. It is deleted the moment the paper is marked, and it never leaves your device.
• A third, if you hide one line on the tracker. The graduate scheme tracker shows readers who are not signed in a single line about tracking their own applications, with a way to hide it. If you hide it we write acttuary-tracker-prompt to session storage, holding the value 1, which means this tab has been told. That is the whole of it: no identifier, no record of which schemes you looked at, nothing sent to us, and it goes when you close the tab. The cost of keeping it out of longer-lived storage is that a new tab shows the line once more, which is the side to fail on.
• A fourth, if you use the exam sitting planner. The exam sitting planner works out an order for the IFoA exams in your own browser. So that you are not made to fill the form in twice, we write acttuary.exam-planner.v1 to local storage: the month you said you would start, whether you are aiming at Associate or Fellow, how many subjects you plan to enter in one session, the resit allowance you chose, the order you picked, whether you are already an IFoA member, and which subjects you ticked as already done. It is the form and nothing else. There is no identifier for you in it, and none of it is sent to us: the planner does its arithmetic in your browser. Because it is local storage it survives closing the tab, and it stays until you clear site data for acttuary.com in your browser.
• A fifth, if you use the exam cost calculator. The IFoA exam cost calculator does the same thing for money, and keeps your plan the same way, under acttuary:ifoa-cost-plan in local storage: whether you are costing Associate or Fellow, the subjects you expect an exemption for, the specialist subjects you chose, how many you plan to enter in one session, the resit share and the subscription rate you picked, how you plan to pay for tuition, and the share of each cost you expect an employer to cover. That is a plan you typed, not a record of you, nothing in it is sent to us, and it stays until you clear site data for acttuary.com in your browser.
• A sixth, so one thing is not counted twice. When you create an account, pay for something, or hold a session time, we count that once in our own statistics. Reloading the page you land on afterwards would otherwise count it again, so we write acttuary-ga-conversions to session storage: a short list of what this tab has already counted, each entry being the word for the step and, where there is one, the reference of the order or booking it belongs to. There is no identifier for you in it, it holds nothing about what you read, it is never sent to us or to Google, and it goes when you close the tab.
• A referral cookie, only if you agree to it. Some student societies and other partners share a link of the form acttuary.com/r/THEIR-CODE. Following one sets nothing by itself. It brings you to the site carrying that partner’s code, and a small strip at the foot of the page asks whether we may keep it. Only if you say yes do we set a first-party cookie called aff_ref, for 90 days, which holds that partner’s code and nothing else. There is no identifier for you in it. It is read only on our own server, and only at the moment you start a payment, so that the partner who recommended us is paid their commission. It does not change what you pay, it is not used to build a profile, and it is not shared with anyone. If you say no, or close the strip, nothing at all is stored, and because we keep no record of that answer we have nothing to remember you by. Clearing your cookies removes it if you did say yes.
• Analytics cookies, set when you arrive, off in one tap. Google Analytics sets two first-party cookies on acttuary.com: _ga, which Google says is “used to distinguish users”, and _ga_L0GMKEK6P2, which is “used to persist session state”. Google’s stated lifetime for both is two years, renewed each time you visit. What they are for is counting how the pages here are used, so we can tell which of them help people get hired, and they are for nothing else. Neither holds your name or your email address, and neither is used to show you an advertisement. Pressing “Turn analytics off”, on the notice or in the Analytics section below, deletes both on the spot.
• A note of what you chose, once you have used the notice. Pressing either button, on the notice or here, writes two things to your browser’s local storage under acttuary-analytics-consent: the word denied if you turned analytics off, or granted if you pressed OK, and the date you did it. That entry is what makes a refusal stick and what stops the notice appearing on every page, which is why it is written whichever button you press. The date is there so it can expire: six months after you pressed it the notice appears once more, and until then it does not. It says nothing else about you, it is never sent to us or to Google, and if you never touch the notice nothing is written at all.
• Campaign tags in a link, which store nothing at all. Some of our own links carry words like utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign in the address, so that we can tell a visit from a post we wrote from a visit from a search. If you then buy something in that same visit, those words travel with the payment so we know which link earned it. Carrying them costs no cookie and no storage of any kind: the words are held in the page’s own memory while the tab is open, and they are gone the moment you reload, open a new tab or close it. There is nothing to clear, and coming back tomorrow carries none of it. They are not an identifier, they say nothing about you, and they are the same words for everybody who followed the same link.
• A Google ad click, only if you agree, for the tab you are in. When somebody clicks one of our Google ads, Google adds its own reference for that click to the address, a word called gclid. If you arrive that way, a small strip at the foot of the page asks whether we may tell Google if your visit ends in a sign-up or a sale. Only if you say yes do we write acttuary-ad-click to session storage: that click reference and the time you agreed, so it survives the trip through the sign-in pages if you need to sign in before paying. It goes when you close the tab. If you say no, or leave the question unanswered, nothing is written, and a no takes the reference out of the address. What happens after a yes is set out under “If a Google ad brought you here” below.
• The bot check on the sign-in form. Clerk’s sign-in and sign-up forms can embed a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge in a frame served by Cloudflare. Whatever that frame needs is stored against Cloudflare’s own domain under their notice, not against acttuary.com, and it is there to tell a person from a script.
• Nothing else of ours. That referral cookie, the two analytics cookies, the note of what you chose on the analytics notice, the four session-storage keys above, the Google ad click if you agreed to it, and the two forms the planner and the calculator keep in local storage are the whole of what we write. Your lesson progress, quiz scores and certificates live in your account on our server, which is why they follow you between computers. The Python and R exercises download a WebAssembly interpreter from a public CDN when you press Run; that runtime sets no cookie and writes nothing to local or session storage.

Analytics

Two things count visits here, and neither of them is an advertising tool. Both receive the address of the page you are looking at, which is why neither is loaded at all on the three pages whose address is private: your booking page, the CV upload page and a free-access link somebody has sent you. Nothing about those three pages leaves your browser. The same is true of our own admin screens, because the address of one of those can contain a customer’s email address, and that is not a statistic about how the site is used. And the same is true of a certificate’s verification page, /verify/ followed by a reference: that address is one person’s credential, the person reading it is usually somebody they sent it to rather than the holder, and neither of those is a statistic either. Your own dashboard is counted, because it is a page of the site like any other, but only ever as /app: anything after the question mark, including the reference of an order you have just paid for, is removed before the address is sent.

Plausible produces aggregate statistics and is cookieless. It sets no analytics cookie and writes no analytics identifier to your device, in this or any other state.

Google Analytics 4 gives us the fuller picture: which pages people read, what they came from, and which of the things we write are worth writing. It sets the two cookies described above when you arrive, and everything it is told is set out below.

Why we do not ask you first. The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, as amended by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 and in force in this form since 5 February 2026, allow storage on your device without prior consent where its sole purpose is collecting statistical information about how the service or website is used, with a view to improving it, as long as you are given clear and comprehensive information about that purpose and a simple, free means of objecting. Counting how these pages are used, so we can tell which of them help people get hired and write more of those, is that sole purpose. This section is that information. The button below, and the “Turn analytics off” on the notice, are that objection: one tap, no account, no form, no second page. The referral cookie is not statistics, so it is still asked for before anything is written.

What is switched off, and where you can check it. Statistics for this site is the only purpose these cookies are allowed to have, so the things that would give them another are switched off. Four of those are switched off by this site’s own code, in the first script on every page, which you can read in the page source: the three advertising permissions Google’s tag asks for are refused and are never granted whatever you choose about analytics cookies; Google signals data collection, which is the setting that would join a visit here to a signed-in Google account elsewhere, is refused; ad personalisation is refused; and the identifiers advertising uses are stripped out of anything that does go. We send no User-ID either: we never hand Google an identifier of our own for you, so the statistics are about pages rather than about people. The rest are settings in our Google Analytics account, and we say which is which rather than presenting a screen in somebody else’s product as something this page can show you. Data retention is set to the shortest period the account offers, two months, after which the event-level records go and only the totals remain. The two data-sharing settings that would let Google use what it collects here for its own purposes rather than only for our reports are off: “Google products and services” and “Modeling contributions and business insights”.

What travels. Each page you open sends Google the address of that page and the address you came from, together with the ordinary technical facts any site you load is handed. Google’s own script notes a few things about the page without being asked to: how far down it you scrolled, a click that takes you to another website, a file you download, the fact that you started or sent a form, and how long the page was in front of you. Two more are counted on purpose, because they are the only numbers here we can check against our own records: that an account was created, and that a session time was held. A third, that an order was paid for, is written into the site and is not switched on: the page you are sent back to after paying is not handed the reference it would need, so nothing is sent for it and nothing about it reaches Google. Each of those carries what it counts and nothing else. One carries a single word for what happened; the other carries that word and the price of the session that was held. None of them carries your name, your email address, or any identifier for you, so what Google is told is that one of those things happened and never who did it. The private addresses above are reduced to the bare domain before any of them is sent, so if one of them is where you came from, that is all Google is told, and your own dashboard is sent as its own address with everything after the question mark removed. Google says such a request “may include the following information: user agent, screen resolution, IP address”, and that “Google Analytics does not store or log IP addresses”. The two cookies let it tell a returning browser from a new one and follow one visit from page to page, which is what makes a count of pages a count rather than a guess. Neither holds your name or your email address, and none of it changes what you pay or what you are shown.

If you turn them off. Both cookies are deleted straight away. If you press the button before the counting script has finished loading, which is the likeliest moment for anybody who came here to press it, your objection is moved in front of the first thing that script was going to send, so the cookies are never written rather than written and then deleted. Every page you open afterwards checks the jar again and clears anything it finds, so nothing is left behind either way. Nothing is written to your device after that, and nothing on your device is read: in Google’s own words for that setting, the tag “will not read or write first-party analytics cookies” and “no Analytics cookies are set, accessed, or read from the device”. What continues is what Google calls a cookieless ping, which counts a page without anything joining it to any other page; the ping itself “may include the following information: user agent, screen resolution, IP address”. If you would rather nothing at all was sent, a browser setting or a tracker-blocking extension stops it, and you can object to us directly at hello@acttuary.com.

How you are told, and how you object. A short notice at the foot of the first page you open says what the cookies are for, with two buttons of exactly the same size: “Turn analytics off” and “OK”. Turning them off takes effect immediately and deletes both cookies; OK puts the notice away and changes nothing. There is one exception to “first page”, and it is so that you are never shown two notices at once: if you arrived on a partner’s referral link, that page is already asking you about a different cookie, so this notice waits for the next page you open, and the link to this page is in the footer of both. The same goes for the page a Google ad brings you to, which is asking you about that ad. There is no third option hidden anywhere, and nothing dismisses the notice except one of those two buttons. Whichever you press is kept for six months from the day you pressed it, and the notice does not appear again before then. You never have to wait for it: the button below turns analytics off, and back on, whenever you like. When the six months runs out the notice appears once more and, if you had turned analytics off, the cookies start again from that point unless you turn them off again. Clearing site data for acttuary.com removes the cookies and the note of your answer together, which has the same effect.

Storing these two cookies needs no permission from you because of the exception described above, and the telling and the one-tap objection are the conditions that come with it. Using what they measure is processing of personal data, and our lawful basis for that is our legitimate interest in understanding how the site is used so we can improve it; the same basis covers the cookieless counting and Plausible. Google acts as our processor for this, and is named with everyone else who handles anything in the privacy policy.

If a Google ad brought you here

We pay Google to show ads for Acttuary, and we would like to know which of them lead to somebody signing up or buying something, so we can stop paying for the ones that do not. Google can only tell us that if we tell Google when one of those follows one of its clicks, and that means sending Google something about you, so we ask first.

What you are asked. If the address you arrived at carries Google’s click reference, a strip at the foot of that page asks whether we may tell Google if your visit ends in a sign-up or a sale. “No thanks” and “Yes, tell Google” are the same size, and pressing Escape is a no. Either answer takes the reference out of the address. The strip does not load anything from Google: no Google advertising script runs on acttuary.com, whichever you choose.

What happens after a yes. The reference is kept in this tab, as described above. If you start a payment it travels with that payment to Stripe. If you create an account in that tab within a few minutes of arriving there, we copy it onto your account’s record, where only our server can read it, and a daily job removes it 14 days after the account was made. Once a day Google Ads collects, from our server, a list of the click references that made an account, started a checkout or paid, with the time and, for a payment, what was paid and the currency. It never includes your name, your email address or anything else from your account. Google already knows which ad the reference belongs to, which is how it can tell us that the ad worked; what it does with that on its side is governed by its own advertising terms and privacy policy.

Changing your mind. Closing the tab removes the stored reference, and if you had not made an account or started a payment, nothing has been sent. If you had, it stays on the list Google collects for 14 days; write to us at hello@acttuary.com and we will take yours off it for the rest of that time. What Google has already collected we cannot recall. A no, or no answer, means nothing is stored and nothing is sent, and nothing on the site works differently.

When you pay

Checkout and billing management happen on Stripe’s own pages, and no Stripe script runs on acttuary.com. Stripe uses its own technologies on its own domain for payment security and fraud prevention, and is responsible for them; their notice is on the page you land on.

What we don’t use

• No advertising or retargeting pixels.
• No cross-site tracking, with one exception you are asked about first: if a Google ad brought you here and you say yes, we tell Google when that visit ends in a sign-up or a sale.
• No session-recording or heatmap tools.
• No advertising profiles.
• No advertising permission for Google’s tag. All three it asks for are refused in the first script on every page and are never granted, whatever you choose about analytics cookies; the identifiers advertising uses are stripped out of anything that does go; and this site loads none of Google’s advertising domains.
• No Google signals, which is the setting that would join a visit here to a signed-in Google account elsewhere, and no ad personalisation. Both are refused by this site’s own code, in that same script, on every page.
• No User-ID. We never hand Google an identifier of our own for you, so the statistics are about pages rather than about people.
• No third-party fonts loaded for tracking purposes.

Consent

Everything else described above is used for account and security functionality, or for the site features you have asked for. We use no profiling technology. Two things here do need your permission and neither happens until you give it: the referral cookie, asked for by a small strip at the foot of the page a partner’s link brings you to, and telling Google that a visit one of its ads brought here ended in a sign-up or a sale, asked for by a strip on the page that ad brings you to. Neither strip stores anything while it waits for an answer, and being ignored is never read as a yes.

The referral cookie is the one thing here that is not necessary to anything you asked for, so it is asked for instead. Following a partner’s link stores nothing; a strip at the foot of the page you land on tells you whose code it is and what keeping it would store, and only your yes sets the cookie. Saying no stores nothing at all, we keep no record that you said it, and you can remove the cookie afterwards by clearing cookies for this site. Nothing on Acttuary stops working whichever you choose, and the price is the same either way.

The analytics cookies do not work that way round, and the difference is worth saying plainly. They are set when you arrive, because the law does not require permission for storage whose only purpose is statistics about how a site is used, collected to improve it, provided you are told clearly and can object simply. You are told by the notice on the first page you open and by the Analytics section above, and you can object with one tap in either place. The three advertising permissions Google’s tag asks for are refused either way, and nothing on Acttuary works differently whichever you choose.

We do also want to know how customers find us, which is the usual reason a site sets a tracking cookie without asking. We do not do that. We ask instead: there is one optional question on the payment page, “How did you hear about us?”, and answering it is entirely up to you. That answer is stored against the payment on our own server, not on your device, and leaving it blank changes nothing about your purchase. The one case where we do ask to connect a visit to where it came from is a Google ad, and that is the question described above.

If our use of cookies or similar technologies changes, we will update this page and introduce a consent mechanism before using anything that requires one. Questions: hello@acttuary.com.