Cookies & storage

The short version

• No cookies. Not one, first-party or third-party.
• No advertising, no tracking and no third-party analytics. We count how often pages are opened and a few key steps (such as an invitation being created or shared) on our own server, as totals only. Nothing is stored on your device for this, no identifier is sent and dashboard links have their private part removed before anything is counted. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, nothing is counted at all.
• No consent banner, because everything stored is needed to do the thing you asked for. Reasoning below.

Strictly necessary storage

Each of these exists to deliver something you asked the service to do. Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations these do not need consent, but you should still know they are there.

Three of these are worth a closer look

• Your reply token. This is what lets you come back and change your reply without an account. It is a credential, so on a shared or public computer, clear your browser data when you are finished.
• An invitation password is held in session storage while you have the tab open, so you are not asked on every page. It disappears when you close the tab.
• base44_analytics_session_id: the honest one. The name is alarming and the explanation is duller than it looks, so here is the whole of it. The platform this site is built on ships an SDK that, left alone, writes a permanent random id to your browser, then reports which pages you open, where you arrived from, and how long you stayed. We have switched that reporting off, so none of it is sent. What we could not switch off is the id itself: the SDK still creates it and attaches it to requests made before you sign in, so its backend can tell one visitor's requests apart. It is not shared with anyone else, it is not used to build a profile, and it is not used to track you across other sites. We would rather explain a name that looks worse than it is than quietly leave it off this page.

Optional storage

There is none. Nothing is stored on your device for analytics, advertising, testing or personalisation, which is why there is no banner asking you to accept anything.

Why there is no consent banner

The rules on storing things on your device cover more than cookies. Local storage and session storage are caught too, and so is a “cookieless” analytics tool that writes an id to your browser. Consent is needed for anything that is not strictly necessary.

Everything in the table above is strictly necessary: without your reply id and token the invitation cannot recognise you or let you amend what you sent, without the password entry a private invitation would ask again on every page, and without the configuration values the page cannot load its own data. There is no advertising, no embedded third-party media, and no behavioural analytics. The platform's own usage tracking is switched off in the code rather than merely unused. Our own counter stores and reads nothing on your device, so these storage rules do not come into it: it sends the page name and a rough device type (phone, tablet or computer) and the server adds one to a total.

The one we will not pretend is simple is the platform id described above. It is written by the SDK that talks to our own backend, not by a tracking company, and it carries no behaviour data now that reporting is off, which is why it sits under strictly necessary rather than behind a banner. It is the closest thing on this site to a judgement call, and if you think we have called it wrong we would genuinely like to hear it.

So there is nothing to ask you about, and a banner would be friction for the sake of appearances. If we ever add anything optional, it will default to off and you will be asked first, and this page will change before it happens.

Things loaded from other companies

These are not storage, but they do mean another company sees your IP address when a page loads, so they belong on this page:

• Base44's media servers: images and the short video on the home page.

The two typefaces are served from this site, so no font request goes to Google. The media server above does not set a cookie or store anything on your device from this site. The full list of companies involved is in the privacy notice.

What we do not use

• No third-party analytics: no Google Analytics and no outside analytics service. The platform SDK ships its own usage tracking and we have turned it off. We keep our own aggregate counts of page views and key steps, with nothing stored on your device and no identifier
• No advertising, ad networks or ad pixels
• No error-tracking or session-recording tools
• No tag manager
• No payment processor: the service takes no payments and asks for no card details
• No profiling and no automated decision-making about you

Clearing it yourself

Everything here can be removed from your browser settings. Clear site data for rsvp-events.uk and it all goes. Blocking storage entirely will still let you read an invitation, but the service will stop recognising your reply, so you would need the link from your confirmation email to change it.

3 companies are involved in running the service overall. What each one sees is set out in the privacy notice.