Cookie Policy

1. What Are Cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your device when you visit a website. They are widely used to make websites work efficiently and to provide information to site owners. Cookies can be "session" cookies (which expire when you close your browser) or "persistent" cookies (which remain on your device for a set period).

2. Cookies and Storage We Use

Here is a complete list of cookies and browser storage items used by our Site. Items marked "analytics/advertising" are subject to your consent choice: in regions where opt-in consent is required they are not set until you accept, and elsewhere they are enabled by default until you opt out via "Cookie Settings."

The five localStorage entries above stay on your device and are read only when you send us an enquiry or book a call. At that moment they are transmitted together with the contact details you enter, so the enquiry we receive names both you and the channel you came from. If you withdraw your consent, the advertising identifiers (athena_meta_click, athena_tiktok_click) are deleted from your device immediately and are no longer sent with anything - all four ad-click entries, not only the Meta and TikTok ones.

The four ad-click entries also hold a short, one-way fingerprint of up to the last 100 click identifiers seen on this device, each with the date it was seen. A fingerprint cannot be turned back into an identifier and is never transmitted - it stays on your device and serves one purpose: so that an old advertising link, opened again from a bookmark months later, cannot be counted as a new click. Because that is the whole point, these fingerprints can outlive the 90 days that apply to the click identifier itself: the identifier is deleted on schedule, the fingerprint of it may remain until it is pushed out by newer ones. We do not claim this makes the data anonymous - a fingerprint is a reduced form, not an erased one - only that it is the least we can keep and still refuse a duplicate claim. Withdrawing your consent deletes the Meta and TikTok entries in full, fingerprints included - and the same now applies to the Google and ChatGPT entries.

3. Analytics and Advertising

Our Site uses two tools, and which consent model applies depends on where you are (amended September 2026). Visitors in the EU, the UK, Switzerland and the EEA, and since September 2026 also visitors in Quebec, New Jersey and Maryland, see an opt-in consent banner, and neither tool loads until they accept. The same banner is shown to anyone whose location we could not determine at all - where we do not know which rules apply, nothing is loaded until you accept. If we can tell that you are in the United States or Canada but not in which state or province, you are treated like the rest of that country. Visitors everywhere else - including the rest of the United States, Canada and Latin America - have both toolsenabled by default and can opt out at any time through "Cookie Settings" in the footer or by sending a Global Privacy Control signal.

While we cannot place you, nothing is loaded and nothing is deleted either.Click identifiers that were already stored on this device - from an earlier visit through an ad - stay where they are, unused: they are not read, not sent and not shared while the banner is showing. They are used again as soon as we know where you are and that place does not require consent first - or as soon as you accept. They are deleted as soon as you decline, send a Global Privacy Control signal, or - as long as you have not accepted anything - we learn that you are somewhere that does require consent. An acceptance you have given stands: it is not withdrawn by a place. We keep them rather than delete them because a missing location is not a decision you made, and a deletion cannot be undone:

Google Analytics 4 - a website analytics service provided by Google LLC. It sets the _ga and _ga_* first-party cookies and measures aggregate traffic, session counts, traffic sources, and the same conversion events as the Meta Pixel below (page_view, generate_lead, schedule). We have enabled IP-anonymisation and disabled Google Signals and advertising personalisation. Ad-storage and ad-user-data are enabled so that an enquiry can be attributed to the search ad it came from (Section 4). Google may still process pseudonymous data on servers in the United States; see Google's Privacy Policy.

Meta Pixel (Facebook Pixel) - an advertising and conversion-tracking tool provided by Meta Platforms, Inc. It measures the effectiveness of our advertising on Facebook and Instagram by recording four events:

• PageView - whenever you view any page on our Site
• CalendarReached (custom event) - when you complete our eligibility assessment and reach the appointment calendar
• Lead - when you send us an enquiry, or when an eligibility assessment leaves us your contact details. It requires both an email address and a phone number in international format: an enquiry that reaches us without a usable number records no "Lead", because a contact detail we cannot use is not turned into a measured conversion.
• Schedule - when your consultation booking is confirmed. A confirmed booking normally records the "Lead" as well, under the same daily identifier; where the phone number is missing or unusable, only the booking is recorded.

Amended September 2026 - two of these events are also sent from our server. In addition to the browser pixel, we transmit the "Lead" and "Schedule" events to Meta through Meta's Conversions API, so that an interrupted or blocked browser does not lose the measurement. Both copies carry the same event identifier and Meta counts them once. The server transmission carries your email address, phone number, name and country of residence in pseudonymised form, as an irreversible hash (SHA-256), plus your IP address, browser user agent, the address of the page the event happened on, and Meta's click and browser identifiers. Your country of residence is a form answer and it is the only one that travels - no ancestry, citizenship-status or free-text detail does. The server transmission follows exactly the same rule as the pixel: where opt-in applies it happens only after you accept, and everywhere else it happens by default until you opt out. If you decline - or opt out later - nothing is sent from the server either. Events already transmitted cannot be recalled.

Meta receives a pseudonymous browser identifier, your IP address, the page URL, and the event type. Meta uses this data to measure our ad campaigns and may use it to build advertising audiences (e.g. lookalike audiences). We transmit the Limited Data Use (LDU) signal with every event, browser and server alike; it instructs Meta to apply the restricted processing that United States state privacy laws require, and Meta determines from the event which state's rules apply. For more information, see Meta's Privacy Policy.

You can change your choice at any time through "Cookie Settings" in the footer (available to all visitors), by clicking "Decline" where the consent banner is shown, or by enabling the Global Privacy Control signal in your browser, which we honour as an opt-out. If consent is off, neither Google Analytics nor the Meta Pixel is loaded and no event is sent from our server either.

4. Third-Party Cookies

The Meta Pixel and Google Analytics cookies described in Section 2 are first-party cookies (stored on athena-genealogy.com) but share data with Meta Platforms, Inc. and Google LLC respectively. Beyond these, our Site does not set any other third-party cookies. We do not use:

• Google Tag Manager
• Google Ads remarketing or audience-building tags
• TikTok Pixel
• LinkedIn Insight Tag
• Any other retargeting cookies

We do measure Google Ads conversions: when you arrive from one of our search ads, the Google tag stores the click identifier in the _gcl_* first-party cookies described in Section 2, so that a later enquiry can be attributed to that ad. This is measurement only - we have not enabled advertising personalisation, and we do not build remarketing audiences or show you follow-up ads based on your visit.

Our Site loads a custom font from Framer's CDN. This is a standard web request that does not involve tracking cookies, though the CDN server may log your IP address as part of standard web server operations.

Our contact form uses Cloudflare Turnstile for spam protection. The Turnstile script loads only when you interact with the contact form; Cloudflare, Inc. may process your IP address and technical browser signals to distinguish humans from bots. Turnstile is a security service and is not used for advertising.

5. Social Media Links

Our Site contains links to external social media profiles (Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube). These are standard hyperlinks - we do not embed social media widgets, share buttons, or tracking pixels from these platforms. Clicking a social link will take you to the respective platform, which has its own cookie and privacy policies.

6. Managing Your Preferences

You can manage your analytics preference at any time by:

• Clicking "Cookie Settings" in our website footer to open the preference dialog
• Clearing your browser's localStorage for this site

Several of the entries above are stored in localStorage rather than as traditional cookies, so standard browser cookie-clearing functions may not remove them. Clearing site data for this domain removes all of them; use the "Cookie Settings" dialog for the most reliable control over your analytics and advertising preference.

We also honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser signal: if your browser sends GPC, we treat it as a decline - and since September 2026 it also overrides a consent you gave earlier, because the signal is the later statement (CCPA, 11 CCR section 7025(c)(3)). Your stored choice is not erased; it applies again if you switch the signal off. Clicking "Accept" while the signal is on therefore changes nothing, and the banner says so instead of closing silently.

7. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated "Last Updated" date. We encourage you to review this page periodically.

8. Contact Us

If you have questions about our use of cookies: