Cookie Policy

1. Introduction

This policy explains what the WorldOpt Institute’s website keeps in your browser, and when it contacts any other company. It was written from measurement: every page reachable from the site’s own links was loaded in a clean browser, recording every cookie, storage entry and outgoing request; each item below was then triggered and measured.

In short. Browsing sets no cookies at all. Three things are asked about separately — counting your visits, the YouTube player and the Vimeo player — and allowing one does not allow another. A refusal is stored just as a consent is, so that you are not asked again, and all three can be changed on the cookie preferences page.

This policy covers ordinary visiting of the public site, not the sign-in page at /wp-login.php or the area behind it; opening that page, which anyone can, sets one WordPress cookie, wordpress_test_cookie, whose whole content is the text “WP Cookie check”. Data you send us yourself is covered by our Privacy Policy.

2. Cookies, local storage and session storage

A cookie is a small file your browser keeps for a site and sends back with every later request; a first-party cookie comes from the site you are on, a third-party one from another company. Local storage and session storage hold notes only your browser reads, the first until deleted, the second until you close the tab.

No cookie this website itself sets is a marketing or tracking cookie, and the site uses no advertising, profiling or tracking pixels. The only statistics cookies are the two Google Analytics ones in 3.2, and they exist only if you allow them; the one third-party cookie, in section 4, is Cloudflare’s, for Vimeo.

3. What this website stores in your browser

Each item is named as it appears in your browser.

3.1 Until you answer, nothing is stored

Opening pages, following links and using the menu set no cookie and write nothing to local or session storage; across the whole site not one request to another company’s server was recorded, since every script, style, font and image comes from the website’s own address.

3.2 If you allow your visits to be counted

On a first visit a bar appears at the foot of the page, headed May we count your visit?, with Allow and No thanks. It takes no keyboard focus of its own, and nothing reaches Google and no analytics cookie exists until you press Allow. No thanks is recorded too, so the bar does not come back; Escape counts as No thanks, but only while your focus is inside the bar.

Press Allow and the site loads Google’s measurement script from www.googletagmanager.com and sends measurements to region1.google-analytics.com/g/collect. That script sets two cookies:

Names: _ga and _ga_VDXDM5Q075, the second ending in the identifier of the institute’s measurement property.
Type and properties: first-party, set by Google’s script in your browser and placed on .worldopt.org, the registrable domain rather than the address in your address bar; path /, SameSite Lax, not marked Secure or HttpOnly, so scripts in the page can read them.
Content: a randomly generated number that tells one browser from another, with times from your visit.
Lifetime: 400 days, measured here. Google’s own setting, not one we choose.
What is sent to Google: the address and title of the page you are on, the screen size your browser reports, its language, version and platform, and the identifier in the cookies above. Not your name, and nothing you type into a form.
Purpose: to count how many people read which page, and how they arrived.

The site asks Google not to use the data for advertising and switches Google Signals off; both instructions were in the outgoing request. What Google then does with your IP address is set out in its own policy, not something this site can measure.

All three of your answers are kept in one record.

Name: worldopt_wp_consent — a first-party cookie, copied into local storage under the same name.
Content: a short note in JSON saying which of the three services you allowed or refused, and when. Measured here (the time is in UTC): {"v":1,"analytics":false,"updated":"2026-09-20T22:43:26.341Z","youtube":false,"vimeo":false}. No identifier, and no record of what you read.
Lifetime: 365 days. Path /, SameSite Lax, and marked Secure, so it never travels unencrypted.
When it is created: only when you decide — answering the counting question either way, choosing Always allow on a film, or pressing Save preferences. A refusal is stored exactly as a consent is: the example above is a real one, saved with all three boxes cleared.
Purpose: so that you are not asked again on every page, and so that a service stops at once, in this and any other open tab, when you withdraw it. A refusal does not lock a film away: press Play again and you are asked again.

Like every cookie it travels to this website’s own server with each request; no code there reads or records it. When you change a choice the site also writes a momentary message into local storage under worldopt_wp_consent:sync, so other tabs learn of the change, and removes it at once.

3.4 Your accessibility settings

An accessibility panel adjusts text size, contrast, link underlining and motion, and switches on a reading guide, keeping your settings for next time.

Name: worldopt:accessibility:v1 — local storage, not a cookie.
Content: the settings themselves, as a short note in JSON.
Lifetime: until you press Reset preferences in the panel, or clear this website’s site data. Switching a setting back off does not remove the record — it saves that setting as off.
Sent to a server: never.

The panel’s Read page button reads the page aloud with a voice from your browser; nothing is stored and nothing is sent anywhere.

3.5 Pausing a film

Some pages show a film that starts by itself. Press Pause film and the site remembers that for the rest of your visit, so it does not start again on later pages.

Name: worldopt:film-paused — session storage, not a cookie.
Content: a single character, recording whether you paused or resumed.
Lifetime: until you close the browser tab. Never sent to a server.

4. Outside companies, and when they are contacted

Browsing contacts no one but this website’s own server. Four places outside it can be reached from these pages, each only after something you do.

Google Analytics. Only after you press Allow; the addresses and what is sent are in section 3.2. Google receives your IP address, as does any server your browser contacts.
YouTube. Films are embedded from www.youtube-nocookie.com, YouTube’s address for players that set no cookie until someone interacts with them. Once it loads it also fetches the film, its images and its fonts from other Google servers — googlevideo.com, i.ytimg.com, ggpht.com, gstatic.com, fonts.gstatic.com, google.com and googleapis.com; the exact set depends on the film. The player set no cookie then, but that is YouTube’s behaviour on the day, not a promise we can make.
Vimeo, and Cloudflare with it. Films are embedded from player.vimeo.com, with Do Not Track requested. Once the player loads, Vimeo does set a cookie: measured here, __cf_bm on vimeo.com, lasting about half an hour. It is a Cloudflare cookie: the player is delivered through Cloudflare, which your browser therefore also contacts (challenges.cloudflare.com).
PayPal. The Donate page carries an ordinary link to a checkout hosted by PayPal. Nothing from PayPal is loaded into our pages, and no request reaches it until you follow that link.

Before you press Play on YouTube or Play on Vimeo there is no connection to either service: the page shows a plain panel with the film’s title and that button, and deliberately no still picture, since fetching one would already contact them.

How often you are asked depends on what you use. The counting question comes once, in the bar at the foot of the page. A film asks once per service, and only if you press Play on YouTube or Play on Vimeo: the prompt offers Load once, Always allow and Cancel, and only Always allow stores anything. Load once plays that film alone, so the next film from the same service asks again; after Always allow, films from that service load without asking.

All of it can be reviewed, changed or withdrawn at any time on the cookie preferences page, which carries three controls — Counting visits (Google Analytics), YouTube and Vimeo, each showing its setting as allowed, blocked or not decided. Tick or clear the boxes and press Save preferences; saving records your choice either way, refusal included. Reset to not decided deletes everything this site has stored about your choices: the consent cookie, its local-storage copy and both Google Analytics cookies.

Both were measured here: saving with the counting box cleared left the setting at blocked, deleted both _ga cookies and sent nothing to Google on the next page; Reset to not decided left no cookie from this site at all, and the counting bar returned. A player running in another open tab is removed too.

Saving a preference needs JavaScript; with it off, neither the measurement script nor any player can load at all.

6. Deleting cookies and site data in your browser

You can delete everything described here yourself, at any time: every browser can delete cookies and site data for one website and can be set to refuse them, usually under Settings, then Privacy. That removes whatever of section 3 is still there. The Cloudflare cookie a Vimeo player leaves behind belongs to vimeo.com, not to this site, so clearing this website’s data does not remove it; it expires by itself after about half an hour. The site then simply asks again next time.

7. Your rights over personal data

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, data protection law gives you the rights listed below. Nothing on this page is legal advice.

To know why your personal data is needed, what will happen to it, and how long it will be kept.
To see the personal data we hold about you.
To have it corrected, completed, blocked or deleted.
To withdraw a consent you have given, and have the data deleted.
To receive your data and transfer it to another controller.
To object to the processing, which we respect unless there are justified grounds.

Of the items in section 3, everything except the counting stays in your browser and never reaches us; the counting goes to Google only if you agreed to it, and does not name you. For data you have sent us, use the contact details below; you may also complain to a supervisory authority, if one exists where you live.

8. Contact details

For questions about this Cookie Policy, please contact us:

WorldOpt Institute
Suite 100-1266
758 Kapahulu Ave.
Honolulu, Hawaiʻi 96816
United States

Email: info@worldopt.org
Phone: +1 (808) 306-4386

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