Last Edited / Last Revised on Monday, October 29, 2020 In Effect as of Monday, November 5, 2020 Edits / Revisions are not retroactive from the date they go into effect. Minor editing for clarity. No substantial changes.
Introduction
This document tells you what “cookies” are, which ones we and our third-party service providers use and why we use them. It also tells you what types of information (data) cookies gather about you and how you can better control the data collected about you while you’re on the internet.
Supplement, Incorporated by reference
The information on this page is a supplement to the information we provide in: “Privacy Policy & Your Privacy Rights” (“Privacy Policy”).
Along with “Copyright Policy & Infringement Claims and Counterclaims”, “FTC Compliance Notice”, “Earnings Disclosure and Disclaimer”, and “Comment Policy & Rules,” the Privacy Policy and this supplement to it are important parts of our Terms of Use and are incorporated by reference.
Definitions
- Internet Protocol (IP) address: a unique numeric or alphanumeric identifier for each computer or device on the internet
- linked PII (personally identifiable information): information linked to a specific person, such as full name, postal or email address, Social Security number, actual age or date of birth, etc.
- linkable PII: information such as an IP address, which could be linked to a specific person
- non-PII: information that isn’t linked to a specific person or device (i.e. anonymous data), such as age range or gender; country, state or zip code
- data: linked and linkable PII and any non-PII that’s been combined with either linked or linkable PII
COOKIES
HowStuffWorks.com: How Internet Cookies Work (All links on this page open in a new tab).
A cookie is a (usually very small and almost always encrypted) plain text file with an ID tag that identifies your computer/device (“computer”). It’s very common for one or more cookies to be automatically stored on your computer each time you visit a website for the first time.
Cookies can’t read anything on your hard drive; can’t execute code, which means they can’t install anything on your computer; and can’t deliver a virus. Any entity can read only the cookie(s) it stored on your computer – no others.
The information contained in a cookie could be any or all of the following: your IP address; device type; unique device ID; pages you visited; features you interacted with; what page you were on directly before coming to a site and what page you went to directly after; what browser and operating system you were using; and, possibly, your connection speed.
Tracking Cookies
A specific type of cookie used on multiple websites to gather browsing and interest information about individuals. An example:
Facebook’s share button: The first time you visit a web page that has a Facebook share button, the button – even if you don’t click it – sets a cookie on your computer or device. After that, any time you visit a page on any site that has a Facebook share button, information about the page is added to the cookie.
The better any website or business can identify what your interests are, the better it can provide you with content and services catered to your wants and needs.
DoubleClick DART Cookie
Google uses cookies to serve ads. Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve interest-based ads to individuals based on their visits to multiple sites.
We don’t have Google ads on SkinnyWalletFatWallet.com, but if we ever decide to, we’ll edit this page to let you know.
Here, you can find out how to opt out of the use of the DART cookie.
Flash Cookies
We may use locally stored objects (“LSOs”) such as flash cookies to store information relevant to a particular application, such as tracking participation in a poll, analyzing an ad’s performance or other content performance, and for performing user, website and market analytics.
We do not use flash cookies to alter your browser settings regarding your preferences for the operation of browser cookies (e.g., we don’t use flash cookies to recreate a browser cookie deleted by a user).
You can manage all uses of flash cookies on your computer through the Global Storage Settings Panel on Adobe’s settings management tool.
Cache Cookies
Cache cookies may be used to identify your computer or device as the same computer or device that visited our site in the past.
All cookies are either…
first-party cookies: set by the website you visit: or
third-party cookies: set by the website’s third-party services, such as social share buttons, ads, commenting platforms, analytics software, and email management programs
… and, all cookies are also either;
session cookies: deleted as soon as you close your browser: or
persistent cookies: remain on your computer/device either until they expire or you delete them
We use storage and tracking cookies. Some are session cookies, others are persistent cookies.
SkinnyWalletFatWallet.com, our third-party service providers and your browser set and access cookies on your computer/device.
Why we use cookies
Without using cookies, we’d have no idea what our visitors want or how best to serve them: we’d have to rely on guessing and we suspect that wouldn’t be a very effective method.
We consider every piece of information SkinnyWalletFatWallet.com collects and stores on a cookie to be vital to our ability to deliver what our users want and certain features of our website may not function properly without the use of cookies.
We very much dislike having anything but anonymous data, but it does allow us to make SkinnyWalletFatWallet.com a more helpful resource for our visitors. Let’s use IP addresses as just one example: An IP address is linkable PII because it’s tied to a specific computer, device or network. Every desktop computer, laptop, cell phone, phablet, tablet, or network has its own unique IP address.
Having the IP addresses lets us see how many of our visitors are returning visitors and how many are new. If we make a change to SkinnyWalletFatWallet.com and our visitors stop returning, we know the change was a bad decision and needs to be corrected. If we’re keeping our returning visitors, but aren’t getting many new visitors, we know we need to add something novel to attract them, or maybe promote the site to a wider audience (or both). If, after making a change, we keep our returning visitors and start attracting new visitors, we know the change is one our visitors find helpful.
Having certain other information lets us see how well SkinnyWalletFatWallet.com performs in various geographical locations, and on different platforms (computer, tablet, cell phone, etc.), operating systems and browsers. This enables us to identify and focus on those parts of SkinnyWalletFatWallet.com most in need of improved technology.
Knowing what our visitors need most and how to best deliver it to them are important to us because we want to reach and help as many people as we can.
We also use cookies to detect malicious activity and violations of our Terms of Use.
You can learn more about cookies at:
Lifehacker: Fact and Fiction: The Truth About Browser Cookies
Wikipedia: HTTP cookie
Unofficial Cookie FAQ Version 2.6 by David Whalen (old, but still relevant)
You can learn how to control or delete cookies here:
AboutCookies.org: How to control cookies
AboutCookies.org: How to delete cookies
How to manage cookies in MS Edge (as of December, 2016)
You can’t. With Edge, there’s not even a way to view the cookies. Your choices are limited to either keeping them all, or deleting them all.
We don’t use Edge. And, until Microsoft stops this ridiculous “all or nothing” method and gives users the same level of cookie control we’ve had with other browsers for years, we recommend against using Edge.
If you’re using Edge and want to delete (all) your cookies, here’s how: How to view and manage cookies in Microsoft Edge?
WARNING: Deleting all your cookies will clear settings such as “remember me”. Before you take this step, make sure you know your password & username for each site you need to log into.
Anonymous usage setting for browsers
We’ve read that one way to prevent cookies being set is to use anonymous browsing, but we have very, very limited experience with anonymous browsing, so we can’t guarantee this is true.
Two things we do know about it, and that you should be aware of: browsing anonymously doesn’t hide everything from everyone and the setting may disable your ad-ons/extensions and toolbars for that session.
How-to-Geek: How to Enable Private Browsing on Any Web Browser
INTEREST-BASED ADS
Some companies use tracking cookies or web beacons (more information on web beacons, below) to track you across multiple websites, so they can determine what products and services you might be interested in. Some of those businesses use interest-based ads. We may eventually have interest-based ads on SkinnyWalletFatWallet.com. If/when we do, we’ll edit this section to let you know.
Skinny Wallet Fat Wallet is not responsible for the content or functioning of third-party ads or for the goods or services the advertisers provide.
You can learn lots more about interest-based advertising at the following website: Network Advertising Initiative (NAI)
Opt out of interest-based advertising by NAI’s participating member companies: NAI Opt Out
Below, we’ve listed several options for opting out of interest-based ads. Unless you have an ad blocker installed, you’ll still see ads, they just won’t be catered to your interests.
Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) (U.S.)
Digital Advertising Alliance, Europe (EDDA)
https://myaccount.google.com > Personal info and privacy > Ads Settings
Some big data collection and ad networks allow you to opt out of interest-based ads.
Acxiom
BlueKai and Datalogix
Chitika
Simple ways to get rid of only the intrusive ads, or all of them:
Adblock Plus: Many sites have to rely on ad revenue to fund or help fund the content they provide to their users for free. Without enough revenue, no site can stay online. Adblock Plus is a browser plug-in for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Android. It gives you the option to (1) block ads on all websites, or (2) to whitelist (choose to not block ads from) the sites with ads you don’t find annoying and block all the others.
For Google Chrome for users, these blockers also look good:
Adguard AdBlocker or Fair AdBlocker
WEB BEACONS
A web beacon is a (usually) 1 pixel x 1 pixel (usually clear) image embedded on a web page or in an email that lets us know which of our web pages have been visited and which of our emails have been read or forwarded, as well as the IP address and what type of device each visitor used to access our site. This information helps us improve our service and provide visitors with content they want.
Certain web beacons, like those used in interest-based ads and other embedded content, can also track you across multiple websites.
We use web beacons on SkinnyWalletFatWallet.com and in our emails. Our third-party service providers use web beacons, too.
A brief explanation of web beacons: http://www.allaboutcookies.org/web-beacons/
A longer explanation of web beacons and how to disable them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_beacon
If you share or forward any content that has a tracking cookie or web beacon, data about the entity or person you shared it with or forwarded it to can also be collected.
ONLINE TRACKING / DO NOT TRACK (DNT)
Because uniform standards for complying with DNT requests have yet to be determined, website owners and third parties don’t have a “best practice” method of honoring them. Therefore, this site doesn’t currently respond to DNT requests. However, we continue to watch for progress toward uniform standards and will begin responding to DNT requests as soon as it’s feasible.
One way to possibly prevent embedded content like social share buttons and certain ads being able to track you, is to always log out of any site you’re logged onto before closing the site.
Another way to manage online tracking is to use the “Do Not Track” option in your browser, though, because of the absence of a “best practice” method of honoring the requests, the majority of sites don’t respond to them yet.
Chrome: Settings > Show advanced settings > Privacy > Do Not Track
Mobile Chrome: Settings > Privacy > Do Not Track
Firefox: Preferences > Privacy > “Tell websites I do not want to be tracked.”
Internet Explorer: > Internet Options > Advanced > “Always send Do Not Track Header”
Opera: Preferences > Advanced > Security > “Ask websites not to track me”
Safari: Preferences > Privacy > “Ask websites not to track me”
How to Enable Do Not Track in Microsoft Edge Browser
Pinterest and Twitter support Do Not Track, and allow you to customize which information they can collect about you.
For Twitter, we recommend going into your account settings and unchecking these two boxes: “Tailor Twitter based on my recent website visits” and “Tailor ads based on information shared by ad partners.”
Pinterest: Personalization and data
Yet another way to manage online tracking is to use Privacy Badger, a free browser extension provided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We use it ourselves and love it.
For your mobile devices, you may be interested in: Mobile Location Analytics (MLA) Opt Out (MLA is used to track you while you’re at facilities such as hotels, airports and stores.)
WEB STORAGE
We use web storage to store data in your web browser. Our third-party service providers may store data in your web browser, too. This data is similar to the type of data cookies store, but a much larger volume of data is able to be stored, which allows web pages, content and media to load much faster.
We use this data to improve our site.
This short video (just over 1 minute long) is old, but does a great job of explaining what a browser is: What is a browser?
You can learn more, including ways to manage web storage, in this Wikipedia article: Web storage.
SERVER LOGS
For a website to appear on the internet, it must be hosted on a server. Every server automatically records the actions it performs. Some examples of the recorded actions are providing a requested page; displaying an error or redirect message; gathering an IP address, date/time information, device type and unique device identifier; making a list of files downloaded or viewed; and reading cookies previously placed on your device by the server.
We have access to our server logs and use the information on them to improve our site. Our third-party service providers may receive, record and access information on their server logs as well.
Here, you can see an example of a server log.
HTML 5 / HTML5
HTML 5 / HTML5 is the language some Web sites are coded in. It may be used to store information on your computer or device about your browsing activities while on our site. This information may be retrieved by us. If so, it will be used to help us manage and improve our site and customize our content for our users.