Policy
Cookies and browser storage
Version 1 · 2 November 2026
In short
- No ads, no profiles of you, no services from other companies on our pages.
- Our cookies are technical only: they make the things you use work, such as scenario votes or your choice on the banner. A little browser storage remembers your preferences, such as your language.
- We run our own statistics: daily totals on our server, with no cookies and without storing your IP address.
- Among cookies and browser storage, only one thing needs your consent: counting whether you come back to the site. It starts switched off and only turns on if you say yes.
- You can change your mind at any time with the “Cookie preferences” link at the bottom of the site's pages.
- What cookies and browser storage are
- What we use, one by one
- Statistics without cookies
- Returning visitors: only if you say yes
- No third parties
- The banner and how to change your mind
- How to delete them from your browser
- Who is responsible and how to reach us
What cookies and browser storage are
A website can save small pieces of information in your browser so it can find them again later. Take the language you chose: next time, the site opens straight in English. There are three ways to do this:
- Cookies: a small piece of text that your browser sends back to the site that created it, along with the requests it makes to that site.
- localStorage: stays in your browser until you delete it, and is never sent to the server on its own.
- sessionStorage: like localStorage, but it disappears when you close the tab.
The law treats them all the same way. Saving or reading anything on your device needs your consent, unless it is strictly necessary to give you a service you asked for (Article 122 of the Italian Privacy Code). Tools that only do this are called technical: they don't need consent, but they must be explained. That's what this page does.
What we use, one by one
This is everything UAPgrade may save in your browser. All of it is ours: only uapgrade.com can read it.
| Name | Type | What it does | How long | Consent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
osv_v | Cookie | Recognizes your scenario proposals and votes (in the “Scenarios” section): you can see your proposal while it's still under review, you know which proposals you've already voted for, and you can't vote for your own. It is only created when you propose a scenario or vote. | 1 year | No |
uapg_red | Cookie | Keeps the session open in the Redazione (editorial desk), Fabio's private area for checking the work of the site's artificial intelligence. It only travels with Redazione requests: visitors never get it. | 12 hours | No |
uapg_consenso | Cookie | Remembers your choice on the banner, along with the version of this page and the date. | 6 months | No |
osv-lang | localStorage | Remembers the language you chose, Italian or English. | Until you clear the site's data | No |
osv-still | localStorage | Remembers whether you pressed “Stop animations” at the bottom of the page. | Until you clear the site's data | No |
osv-contrib | localStorage | Remembers your investigator name from the Investigations Unit, so you don't have to type it again. | Until you clear the site's data | No |
osv-ct-case | sessionStorage | On the “Case map”, the “A case with no official identification” box shows one case at a time: this remembers the order, so you don't see the same case again until you've seen them all. | Until you close the tab | No |
osv-visita | sessionStorage | Statistics: counts how many pages you open in one visit. It holds a random code, the number of pages, and the day and time of the last one. Only the page number (first, second…) goes to the server, never the code. | Until you close the tab; after 30 minutes of inactivity, or at midnight, the visit starts over | No: aggregated statistics (see below) |
osv-ritorno | localStorage | Statistics: tells whether your browser has been here before. Only “new” or “returning” goes to the server, at most once a day, never the code. | 13 months at most | Yes: only there if you accept (see below) |
How we decide whether consent is needed:
- Technical tools only make the site and the features you use work. These are the three cookies plus
osv-lang,osv-still,osv-contribandosv-ct-case. No consent needed. - Aggregated statistics meet the Garante's conditions explained in the next section. That's
osv-visita. No consent needed. - Everything else needs your consent. Today that's only
osv-ritorno.
If you only read, you get no cookies until you answer the banner: osv_v is only created if you propose or vote for a scenario, and uapg_consenso only when you make your choice.
For votes, besides the cookie, the server uses a fingerprint of your IP address (a code worked out from the address, never the address itself), so each connection can vote only once per proposal. How this works, and what happens on our server to proposal and vote data, is explained in the privacy notice. The rules for proposing and voting are in Terms and rules.
Statistics without cookies
To understand which parts of the site are most useful, we don't use Google Analytics or any other outside service: we run our own statistics, on our own server.
How they work
When you open a section, the page sends our server a short signal: which section, which language and, on the first page, which site you came from (just the name, for example google.com). The server also notes whether you're on a phone or a computer. Other signals tell us how long you stay on a page and how far down you scroll. We also count which outside sites you open from our links (just the site name). If the link that brought you here names a campaign (with utm parameters in the address), we count that campaign too.
The server adds each signal to the day's totals and keeps nothing else. What's left is a row of totals along the lines of: day, section, language, device type, number of views. There is no row per visitor, your IP address doesn't go into the statistics, and nobody can retrace one person's path.
Why they need no consent
The Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali) set out the rules in its guidelines on cookies and other tracking tools of 10 June 2021 (in Italian). Section 7.2 says statistics tools can be treated like technical ones, so without consent, if they meet certain conditions. Our statistics don't use cookies, but we keep them within these rules anyway. In short:
| Condition | What we do |
|---|---|
| Aggregated statistics only | We only keep daily totals: no record per visitor, no profiles. |
| One site only | The counts only cover uapgrade.com, stay on our server and are not shared with anyone. |
| Nobody can be traced back | The statistics don't store IP addresses. The visit code stays in your browser: only the page number reaches the server. |
| No cross-referencing with other data | We don't link the statistics to emails, comments, newsletter sign-ups or data from other sites. |
We do this on the basis of our legitimate interest: understanding what readers find useful and improving the site. How we use IP addresses to keep the site secure is explained in the privacy notice.
Returning visitors: only if you say yes
We'd like to know how many people come back to the site. That takes a code that stays in your browser from one visit to the next, so we ask for your consent. Among cookies and browser storage, it's the only thing we ask consent for.
- If you accept, the site saves
osv-ritornoin your browser: a random code, the date it was created and the day it was last counted. - At most once a day, the page tells our server only “new” or “returning”. The code never leaves your browser.
- On the server it only becomes a daily total: how many new and how many returning visitors.
- It lasts at most 13 months from the day it's created: visiting doesn't extend it. But it only stays while your consent is valid, which is 6 months from when you give or renew it. When your consent expires, the site deletes the code on your next visit. If your consent is still valid after 13 months, the site creates a new code.
- If you refuse, nothing is saved. If you withdraw your consent later, the site deletes it.
No third parties
Our pages load nothing from other sites: no ads, no outside statistics, no buttons or videos from other services. Even the fonts and the libraries that draw maps and charts are served by us, from our own server. So while you read, your browser doesn't connect to Google Fonts or any other service.
Links to other sites, such as the sources we cite or PayPal for donations, are plain links: those sites receive nothing until you open them. Once you do, their own cookie rules apply.
To see how the site shows up in Google searches we use Google Search Console. It puts no code and no cookies on our pages.
The banner and how to change your mind
On your first visit, a banner asks whether you want to switch on the returning-visitor count. It follows the Garante's guidelines of 10 June 2021:
- Accept and Refuse are the same size and equally visible: saying no is as easy as saying yes.
- Customize shows you each item and what it's for. No optional box is ticked in advance.
- Closing the banner with the X counts as refusing.
- The banner also links to this page.
- The site works the same whatever you choose. The aggregated statistics carry on even if you refuse, because they use no cookies and send no code to the server.
Your choice is kept for 6 months in the technical cookie uapg_consenso, along with the version of this page and the date. After 6 months we ask again. Before then, the banner only comes back if you delete the site's cookies, or if we add tools or purposes that need consent: in that case we also change the version of this page.
Changing your mind
You can change your choice whenever you like, as often as you like: the site's footer has a Cookie preferences link that reopens the choices. Withdrawing consent is as easy as giving it.
The link isn't on these policy pages, which use no scripts and save nothing in your browser: you'll find it back on the site.
How to delete them from your browser
You can delete everything the site has saved in your browser at any time:
- From the settings: open your browser's settings, look for “cookies” or “site data” (usually in the privacy section), find uapgrade.com and delete its data. This removes cookies and browser storage together.
- From the address bar: in many browsers, tapping the icon to the left of the address gives you an option for the site's cookies and data.
- With private browsing (incognito): when you close the window, the browser deletes everything by itself.
The sessionStorage items, osv-ct-case and osv-visita, disappear anyway when you close the tab.
Deleting the site's data also deletes your banner choice, so we'll ask again on your next visit. You can also block cookies and browser storage: you can still read the site, but it won't remember your language and other preferences, won't recognize your scenario proposals, and will ask for your banner choice on every visit.
Menu names vary a little from browser to browser. If you can't find them, search for “clear cookies” plus the name of your browser.
Who is responsible and how to reach us
The person who decides how data is used (the data controller) is Fabio Guzzon, Italy. For questions about this page, cookies or your data, write to redazione@uapgrade.com.
How we handle personal data, what rights you have and how to complain to the Italian Data Protection Authority is explained in the privacy notice.
If we change our cookies or browser storage, we update this page with a new version and date, shown at the top.