PAN / Legal / Cookies

Cookies on PAN

PAN uses cookies sparingly. We do not run third-party advertising trackers and we do not sell behavioural data. The full list, with purposes, is below.

Last reviewed: May 12, 2026 · Reviewed quarterly

Summary

PAN sets a small number of cookies, all first-party. Three categories are used: essential (the site cannot operate without them), preference (they remember a choice you have made — for example, your theme), and analytics (they help us understand which articles are being read). We do not set marketing or advertising cookies, and we do not embed third-party tracking scripts in the body of articles.

PAN does not use third-party advertising trackers, social-media pixels, or behaviourally targeted ad networks. The advertising we sell — see Advertise with us — is contextual only and does not require placing trackers on your browser.

Cookies we set

Name	Type	Purpose	Lifetime
`pan.session`	essential	Maintains your session and prevents form-token reuse. Cannot be disabled.	Session
`pan.theme`	preference	Remembers your light/dark choice across visits.	1 year
`pan.bookmarks`	preference	Stores your saved articles in `localStorage`. Not transmitted to our servers.	Until cleared
`pan.consent`	essential	Records your cookie preferences so we do not have to ask again.	6 months
`_panalytics`	analytics	Aggregated, anonymised page-view counting via our self-hosted analytics. IP addresses are truncated before storage.	30 days
`pan.ab`	analytics	A small (≤4 chars) bucket identifier used to test layout variants. No personal data.	90 days

Your controls

Browser-level. You can refuse and clear cookies through your browser settings at any time. PAN will continue to function with only essential cookies enabled, though your theme choice will not persist.
Analytics opt-out. The _panalytics and pan.ab cookies will not be set if your browser sends a Sec-GPC: 1 header (Global Privacy Control) or a DNT: 1 header.
Bookmarks. Stored locally only. Clearing site data removes them. We do not back them up to our servers.

Third parties

PAN's article body content does not embed third-party scripts. The fonts used on the site are loaded from Google Fonts, which may receive your IP address as part of normal font-file delivery; no cookies are set by that request. Article images are served from our own CDN.

Changes to this policy

We review this policy quarterly. Material changes will be flagged in the PAN homepage utility bar for fourteen days following any update. The version date above will be incremented accordingly.