Cookie Policy
Last updated: 2026-11-05
Pending counsel review. This document is an initial good-faith template prepared by the operator and has not yet been reviewed by external counsel. Legal entity, address, and contact details are accurate; specific obligations and remedies may be revised after legal review.
This Cookie Policy explains the cookies and similar technologies that WorldClockTools uses, why we use them, and how you can control them. It supplements our Privacy Policy.
1. Categories
- Strictly necessary — required for the Service to work (theme preference, your watchlist, the consent record itself, locale switching). These do not require your consent under ePrivacy Directive Art. 5(3) or equivalent.
- Analytics — Google Analytics 4 and PostHog. These load only after you grant consent (or, in opt-out regions, unless you opt out / send a Global Privacy Control signal).
- Marketing — currently none. We do not run ad pixels or social-media trackers.
2. The full list
| Name | Type | Party | Purpose | Duration | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| theme | localStorage | First-party | Remembers light/dark mode preference. | Until cleared by you | Strictly necessary |
| wct-consent-v1 | localStorage | First-party | Records your consent decision (categories, timestamp). | 12 months, then re-prompted | Strictly necessary |
| worldtime-watchlist-v1 | localStorage | First-party | Stores your saved cities for the watchlist feature. | Until cleared by you | Strictly necessary |
| worldtime-watchlist-demo-seeded | localStorage | First-party | Marks that you've been shown sample watchlist data once. | Until cleared by you | Strictly necessary |
| worldtime.meeting-planner.v2 | localStorage | First-party | Saves your recurring meeting-planner team configuration. | Until cleared by you | Strictly necessary |
| worldtime-cities, worldtime-24h, worldclocktools.recent-cities, worldclocktools.recent.*, calendarCountry, wct.weekStart, wct.pomodoro.v1, wct.age-calculator.dob, wct.pwa.install-dismissed-until | localStorage | First-party | Tool settings you choose: world-clock cities and 12/24-hour format, recently viewed cities and tool inputs, calendar country, week start, timer state, the date of birth you enter in the age calculator, and whether you dismissed the install prompt. | Until cleared by you | Strictly necessary |
| wct.push.* | localStorage | First-party | Remembers which countdown reminders you turned on in this browser, and their lead time. | Until cleared by you | Strictly necessary |
| wct.tracked.* | sessionStorage | First-party | A flag (no identifier) that prevents the same analytics event being counted twice in one visit. It is currently written even when analytics are off; nothing is sent unless you have allowed analytics. | Until you close the tab | Functional |
| wct_watchlist, wct_categories | Cookie | First-party | Written only when you use "Track this" on a countdown page: the countdowns you follow, and a count of the event categories you follow. They contain no identifier, and our pages do not read them on the server. | 1 year | Strictly necessary |
| NEXT_LOCALE | Cookie | First-party | Remembers your language choice when you explicitly switch. | 1 year | Strictly necessary |
| _ga, _ga_* | Cookie | Google LLC | Google Analytics 4 — distinct visitor and session identifiers. | Up to 2 years (Google default) | Analytics (consent required) |
| ph_*, ph_phc_* | Cookie + localStorage | PostHog Inc. | PostHog product analytics — distinct user / session identifiers. | Up to 12 months | Analytics (consent required) |
3. PostHog scope
When it is allowed to load, our PostHog integration captures:
- Page views (URL, referrer, viewport, browser language).
- Named product events, such as a countdown being viewed, an outbound link click, scroll depth (25/50/75/100%) and clicks on internal links.
- Page-performance timings (how fast pages load and respond).
- Uncaught JavaScript errors (for reliability monitoring).
- PostHog's standard automatic capture of clicks on links, buttons and form controls (it records which element was clicked, not text you type into fields).
PostHog surveys are disabled in our code (the surveys script is not loaded). If we add a new kind of analytics processing, this policy and the consent banner will be updated and existing visitors will be re-prompted before it begins.
4. Managing your preferences
You can change or withdraw analytics consent at any time using the link below or in the footer.
You can also block cookies in your browser settings. Note that blocking the "Strictly necessary" items will break basic features (theme, watchlist).
We honour the Global Privacy Control (Sec-GPC: 1) signal as a universal opt-out of analytics where it is sent by your browser.
5. Contact
Questions: privacy@worldclocktools.com.