Cookie policy
This site sets no tracking cookie and no advertising cookie. Here is every cookie it does set.
What a cookie is
A small file a site asks your browser to keep and send back on your next request. Most sites use them to recognise you across visits and to build an advertising profile. This one does not. Consent is required for a cookie that measures or advertises; it is not required for one that is strictly necessary to serve the page you asked for, or that records a preference you set yourself. Every cookie below is one of those two, so strictly speaking there is no consent this site is obliged to ask for. It asks anyway, in a bar at the foot of the page on a first visit, with three plain choices and no layered questionnaire: deny all, only necessary, or accept all. Only necessary refuses the theme cookie; deny all refuses it and clears it if it is already there. Neither touches the language cookie, because taking away the language you are reading in would not be a privacy improvement. This policy covers shipcertify.com only — the customer portal at portal.shipcertify.com is a separate application, with its own cookies and its own notice.
Every cookie this site sets
Four names, three purposes, and no advertising identifier among them. NEXT_LOCALE holds the language code of the page you are reading. The internationalisation layer writes it on a page request when what it holds does not match the language of the page you asked for; it carries SameSite=Lax and no expiry date, so your browser discards it when you close it. It does not choose a language for you — the language comes from the address of the page, and this site never redirects you on your browser’s language setting. It is read so that an error page can be served in the language you were already reading. sc_theme is set only when you pick a theme; it holds the single word night or day, is kept for one year, and is read before the page paints so it does not flash the wrong theme at you. A theme chosen before that cookie existed is still read once from browser storage under the key shipcertify:theme. sc_admin and sc_admin_hint are set only when a member of our own staff signs in to manage the photographs on this site: sc_admin is a signed session token that script cannot read, sc_admin_hint is readable by script and grants nothing, both expire eight hours after sign-in, and both are deleted at sign-out. Neither is ever set for a visitor and neither touches an enquiry. None of the four is sent to a third party, none identifies a visitor, and none is used to build a profile.
Analytics
This site counts its own visits, using its own software, and stores the records in its own database. There is no analytics service, no tag manager, no advertising pixel and no third-party script on any page. The fonts are served from our own server, not from a font network. The only request a page makes to another company is the anti-spam check on the quote form, and only where that check is configured and you have started filling the form in. The counting that happens for every visit sets nothing on your device: no cookie, no identifier, and no way to recognise two pages as the same visit. If you choose Accept all, one further item is stored — sc_sid, a random reference in your browser’s session storage. It is not a cookie: session storage is emptied by your browser when you close the tab, so the reference lasts for one visit and cannot link that visit to another. It exists so the pages of a single visit can be read in order, and it is never joined to your name or to a quote request. Choosing Only necessary or Deny all means it is never created, and clearing your choice removes it. What is recorded, what is deliberately not, how long each lasts and the lawful basis for each are set out in full under “How visits to this site are counted” in the privacy policy.
Your control
Your answer to the bar at the foot of the page is remembered for six months and then asked again, because a consent is a statement about a moment rather than a permanent one. To change it sooner, clear site data for shipcertify.com and the bar returns on your next visit. You can also clear site data at any time, or block cookies for shipcertify.com altogether, and the site still works: a page is served in the language that is in its address either way. What you lose is the theme you chose — the site then follows your operating system’s light or dark setting — and, if you are one of our own staff, the sign-in for the photograph editor. Nothing else about you is kept in your browser, so nothing else is lost. Clearing your browser does not reach an enquiry you have already sent: that is email, it is covered by the privacy policy, and you can ask us to erase it by writing to compliance@shipcertify.com. A question about this page goes to the same address and is answered within five working days. The page itself is updated in the same deployment as any change to what the site stores, and reviewed in full at least once every twelve months.
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