Cookie Policy. The small files we use, and why.

What Cookies Are

A “cookie” is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store on your device when you visit. The file typically contains a unique identifier, the name of the website that set it, an expiry date, and a small amount of additional data — for example, a preference flag or a session token.

Cookies do many useful things. They remember that you are logged in across page views. They remember your language and theme preferences. They tell the website that you have already accepted (or declined) a cookie banner. They help analytics tools count distinct visitors rather than treating every page load as a new person. And, on advertising-supported sites, they help ad networks measure performance and avoid showing you the same ad fifty times in a row.

Cookies are only one of several similar technologies. Web sites also use local storage and session storage in the browser, pixel tags embedded in pages, device identifiers on mobile platforms, and server-side identifiers tied to logged-in sessions. In this policy, when we say “cookies”, we mean all of these similar technologies together unless we specify otherwise.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies on Aditya Gupta Official for the following purposes:

• Operating the Site. Some cookies are essential to render pages, load static assets, manage caches, and handle abuse-prevention checks. The Site will not function correctly without these.
• Remembering preferences. Where you have set a preference — for example, dismissed a notification banner — a cookie helps us avoid showing the same notification on every page.
• Analytics. Cookies set by our analytics tool help us understand how readers move through the Site in aggregate. This data tells us which articles are useful, which lessons need a clearer chart, and which calculators are most often consulted.
• Advertising. Cookies set by Google AdSense and a small set of approved advertising networks help those networks serve relevant ads, measure ad performance, and limit how often a specific ad is shown to a specific reader.
• Affiliate attribution. When you click an affiliate link, the destination merchant may set a cookie that lets the merchant attribute any subsequent qualifying purchase back to our referral. These cookies are set by the merchant, not by us.

Categories of Cookies

Cookies are typically grouped into four categories based on the function they serve. Each category corresponds to a clear purpose and a different level of consent expectation.

Strictly Necessary cookies are essential to deliver the Site and the services you have requested. They cannot be turned off through site-level controls because the Site would not work without them. Examples include session identifiers, security-token cookies, load-balancer affinity cookies, and the cookie that remembers your choice on the cookie banner itself.

Performance and Analytics cookies collect aggregate data about how readers use the Site — which pages are visited, how long readers spend on each page, which articles they click through to. These cookies do not identify you personally; they assign a pseudonymous identifier to your browser so that repeat visits within a window can be counted as the same visitor.

Functional and Preference cookies remember choices you have made — for example, dismissing a banner — so we can give you a smoother repeat experience.

Advertising and Targeting cookies are set by Google AdSense and approved partners. They support relevant ad selection, frequency capping, and measurement. They may also be used in aggregate to build interest profiles by the advertising platforms.

Specific Cookies Used

Below is a representative list of the cookies most commonly set on the Site, the party that sets them, the category they belong to, and the typical duration. The exact list may vary slightly over time as third-party platforms revise their tooling.

Cookies set on merchant websites you reach via affiliate links — for example, the Amazon associate-tag cookie that helps attribute purchases — are governed by the merchant’s own cookie policy, not by ours.

Third-Party Cookies

Several of the cookies described above are set by third-party services we use to operate the Site. These third parties have their own privacy and cookie policies, and they remain solely responsible for the data they collect through their cookies.

• Google Analytics — Used for aggregate traffic analytics. Google’s privacy practices for Analytics are described at policies.google.com/privacy.
• Google AdSense — Used to serve display advertising. AdSense’s cookie and personalisation controls are at policies.google.com/technologies/ads.
• Approved advertising networks — Subject to the same disclosure requirements as Google AdSense and the same consent requirements at the cookie banner.
• Hosting and CDN provider — May set strictly-necessary cookies for traffic-routing and abuse-prevention purposes.

How to Manage Cookies

You have multiple controls available to manage cookies, and each one operates at a different level of granularity.

Cookie banner on the Site. The first time you visit the Site, you will see a cookie banner that lets you accept all non-essential cookies, reject all non-essential cookies, or open settings to choose category-by-category. Your choice is stored in the ag_cookie_consent cookie and respected on subsequent visits. You can re-open the banner at any time through the link in the footer.

Browser settings. Every modern browser includes built-in controls that let you block all cookies, block third-party cookies only, delete existing cookies, or set per-site exceptions. The location of these controls varies by browser:

• Google Chrome — Settings > Privacy and security > Cookies and other site data.
• Mozilla Firefox — Settings > Privacy & Security > Cookies and Site Data.
• Apple Safari — Preferences > Privacy > Manage Website Data.
• Microsoft Edge — Settings > Cookies and site permissions > Cookies and site data.

Blocking all cookies will affect the usability of most websites you visit, not only ours. The Site, in particular, may not render certain pages correctly if strictly necessary cookies are blocked.

Google Ads Settings. If you do not want Google to personalise the ads it serves to you across the web, visit adssettings.google.com and turn off Ad Personalisation. You will still see ads, but they will not be tailored to your inferred interests.

YourAdChoices. The Digital Advertising Alliance maintains an opt-out tool at youradchoices.com that lets you opt out of personalised advertising across many participating networks at once.

Mobile Identifiers

If you access the Site through a mobile browser, mobile-specific identifiers such as Apple’s IDFA or Google’s Advertising ID may be used by advertising networks for cross-app measurement. These identifiers can be reset or disabled in your device settings:

• iOS — Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking, and Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising.
• Android — Settings > Google > Ads.

The Site itself does not have a mobile app and does not directly use device-level identifiers; we mention them here for completeness because the advertising networks we rely on may.

Do Not Track Signals

Some browsers transmit a “Do Not Track” (DNT) signal as part of the HTTP headers on every request. There is no industry consensus on how websites should respond to DNT signals, and Indian law currently does not specify any required response. Where our analytics or advertising partners independently support DNT, their response to the signal will apply to data collected through their cookies. Our own cookies — those in the Strictly Necessary and Functional categories — continue to function regardless of the DNT signal because they are required for the Site to work as expected.

Consent and Withdrawal

Where the law requires consent for setting cookies in a category, that consent is captured through the cookie banner described above. By accepting the banner, you provide consent for all categories you have not specifically excluded. By using “Settings” on the banner, you can grant consent on a category-by-category basis.

You may withdraw consent at any time. The simplest way to do so is to re-open the cookie settings using the link in the footer, change your selection, and save. Withdrawal of consent does not affect cookies already set on your device before withdrawal — to remove those, use the browser controls described above.

Children and Cookies

We do not use cookies to profile, behaviourally advertise to, or otherwise target children below the age of 18. Where required by law, we apply enhanced restrictions on advertising and tracking for users we have reason to believe are minors. The advertising networks we rely on are responsible for applying their own age-related restrictions and we expect them to do so.

Cross-Border Transfers

The data captured through cookies may be processed by service providers based outside India (for example, Google’s analytics and advertising infrastructure). Cross-border transfers are subject to the framework permitted under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 and are described more fully in our Privacy Policy.

Updates to This Policy

We may revise this Cookie Policy from time to time to reflect new cookies, new categories, or new regulatory guidance. The “Last updated” date at the top of the page indicates the most recent revision. Material changes will be highlighted with a prominent notice on the Site for a reasonable period.

Contact

If you have a question about this Cookie Policy or about a specific cookie set on the Site, please email contact@adityaguptaofficial.com or use the structured form on our Contact page.