Cookies
Four things, and what each is for
Most shops open with a banner because they have dozens of these, most of them belonging to somebody else. We have four. None of them belongs to an advertiser, and none of them follows you to another website.
What we do not have
No Google Analytics. No Meta pixel. No advertising or tracking scripts of any kind. Nothing on this site reports your visit to a third party, and nothing builds a profile of you across the internet. That is not a promise for a policy page: it is checked by a test that fails if any of those scripts is ever added.
The three cookies
hestia_account
Set when you sign in, so the next page knows it is still you. It holds a random token and nothing else, and it cannot be read by any script on the page. It lasts a day, or thirty days if you tick “remember me”. Signing out deletes it.
Necessary. Without it, signing in would not stay signed in.
hestia_sid
Set the first time you click through to a retailer. It is a random number with no name attached, and it lets us see that several clicks came from the same visit rather than from several people. That matters for two things: reconciling commission with a retailer, and being able to tell a brand how many people went to look, which is the argument for stocking them. It lasts a year.
This one is measurement rather than something you asked for. If you would rather we did not, email hello@athestia.com and we will take your records out.
hestia_admin
The same as the first, for the people who run the shop. You will never have this one unless you work here.
Necessary, and not set for shoppers.
The one thing that is not a cookie
The newsletter invitation that appears after twenty seconds remembers that you closed it, so it does not ask again for ninety days. If you subscribe, it never asks again. That is kept in your browser’s own storage rather than in a cookie, it never leaves your computer, and clearing your browsing data removes it.
Turning them off
Every browser can block or clear cookies for a single site. Blocking ours means you will not be able to stay signed in, and the invitation may reappear. Nothing else about the shop changes: browsing, searching and clicking through to a retailer all work without them.
Anything else
What we hold about you, why, and how to get it back or deleted is in the privacy notice. For anything not answered there, email hello@athestia.com.