Cookies and local storage
Two preferences, no trackers, and a choice you can change at any time.
This describes how the site behaves as built. It is written to be checkable rather than comprehensive.
The short version
Merxtio sets no cookies. Not for analytics, not for advertising, not for sessions — there are no accounts to have a session for. Nothing on this site is currently tracking you, and if you rejected everything in the banner, nothing ever will be.
The site writes two items to local storage: your appearance preference, and your answer to the consent banner. Both stay on your device.
The two things we store
| Key | Type | Purpose | Expires |
|---|---|---|---|
merxtio:theme | Local storage | Remembers whether you chose light, dark or system appearance, so the site does not revert every visit. | Until you clear it |
merxtio:consent | Local storage | Your answer to the consent banner, plus the date you gave it, so we do not ask again and can show that the answer was recorded. | Until you clear it or change your mind |
The theme key holds the literal text light or dark; choosing “system” deletes it rather than storing a third value. Neither key contains an identifier, neither is sent to our servers, and neither is readable by any other site.
Why there is a banner when nothing is tracking you
A fair question, and the answer is about sequence. Under the EU and UK ePrivacy rules, consent has to be obtained before anything non-essential is stored or read. A tag that loads and then checks permission has already broken the rule, because Google Tag Manager and Analytics write cookies the moment they execute.
So the mechanism has to exist first, and the honest way to build it is to ask before there is anything to ask about — rather than switching on advertising and retrofitting a banner afterwards. Your answer is recorded now and applied to anything added later.
Storing that answer needs no consent of its own: a preference you set deliberately is the textbook case for the strictly-necessary exemption, which is fortunate, because asking permission to remember an answer would be circular.
Rejecting takes one click, in the same place as accepting.That is deliberate. Consent only counts as freely given if refusing is as easy as agreeing, and a reject buried inside a “manage preferences” screen is the pattern regulators have been fining. If you ignore the banner entirely, that counts as consenting to nothing.
What we deliberately do not load
- No analytics. No Google Analytics, no Plausible, nothing.
- No advertising trackers. Ad slots exist in the layout but are not connected to any network — see below.
- No third-party fonts. Typefaces are downloaded at build time and served from this domain, so loading a page does not tell Google you were here.
- No social embeds or share widgets. The share links are plain URLs. The official buttons from X and LinkedIn each load a script that tracks every reader whether or not they share.
- No session or login cookies. There are no accounts.
Third parties you may reach from here
Merxtio links out, including to commercial partners. Once you follow a link you are on someone else’s site under their policy, not ours, and they may well set cookies.
Affiliate links carry a parameter identifying Merxtio as the referrer so a commission can be attributed. That attribution usually works by the merchant setting a cookie on their own domain after you arrive — we cannot set it, cannot read it, and are not told who you are. How the arrangement works is set out on the partners page.
The market ticker
Prices are fetched by our server on a five-minute cycle and rendered into the page before it reaches you. Your browser never contacts the data providers, so they do not see you at all.
If this changes
Advertising and analytics are the changes most likely to make this page wrong. Both set cookies and neither is exempt from consent, so both will load only for readers who chose to allow them — and this page will list them by name, with what they store and for how long, before they go live.
The policy changes before the behavior, not after. If a category is added that you have not been asked about, the banner asks again rather than assuming your earlier answer covers it.
Changing your mind, and clearing what is stored
Cookie preferences in the footer reopens the banner from any page. Withdrawing consent has to be as easy as giving it, so it is one click and takes effect immediately.
Setting the theme back to “system” removes that item. Clearing site data in your browser removes both. Nothing breaks either way — the site follows your operating system’s appearance setting again, and asks about tracking next time you visit.
Questions
The broader picture is in the privacy policy. If anything here does not match what you observe, that is a bug worth reporting — tell us.