Cookie policy

These keep the site working and cannot be switched off. Gold Scouts carries no advertising trackers.

• Sign-in and session storage. Only for accounts. Stored in your browser by our authentication provider so you stay signed in between visits, and used to keep requests secure.
• Your cookie choice. Stored as gs_consent_v1 so we remember whether you accepted optional analytics and do not ask again on every page.
• Interface preferences. Small values remembering things like whether a panel is open.

Random browser identifier. A random browser identifier (sq_session_id) used to measure clicks on provider contact links. It is created only after you consent to analytics and removed when you withdraw that consent.

Google Analytics 4. If you accept, Google sets cookies named _ga and _ga_* (Google's standard lifetime is two years) so we can see how many people visit, which pages and experiences are popular, and where visitors arrive from. Before you accept and after you reject, Google Consent Mode keeps analytics storage denied. However, Google's script can still load and send cookieless consent-mode signals; rejecting analytics does not stop all requests to Google.

Microsoft Clarity. If you accept, Clarity, a Microsoft service, records your session so we can replay and understand how visitors use the site: clicks, taps, scrolling, mouse movement, rage and dead clicks, page addresses and referrers, page layout and visible content, device, browser, operating system and screen size, and approximate location derived from your IP address. This data is sent to Microsoft, which may process it outside the UK and EEA. Clarity sets cookies (_clck, _clsk) that link your visits. It is not loaded at all unless you accept, and you can withdraw consent at any time from Cookie settings. We have configured Clarity's Strict masking, which hides page text and typed input from recordings; this reduces, but cannot fully guarantee against, personal data reaching Microsoft. Withdrawing Clarity consent clears its first-party cookies and automatically reloads the page to stop the running Clarity script. This action does not delete data already transmitted to Microsoft.

You can accept or decline optional analytics at any time using Cookie settings, also linked in the footer of every page. Declining does not affect any part of the site — search, browsing, contacting providers and accounts all work normally. You can also clear or block browser storage through your browser settings, though blocking the sign-in token will prevent accounts from working.

More detail on how the resulting data is used is in our privacy policy.