What this site keeps in your browser
Four things, all of them settings you made yourself, all of them on your own machine. No cookies, no account, and nothing fetched from anybody else's server.
The short answer
This site has no login for readers, no database and no record of you. It sets no cookie: not on the front page, not on a course page, not on a clause page.
What it does keep is four small entries in your own browser's storage, so the page looks the way you left it and remembers which chapters you have finished. None of them is sent anywhere. Nothing on this site can read them except the pages of this site, in this browser.
That is also why there is no button here that says “Accept”. Nothing is being asked of you, because there is nothing to switch off — turn these off and the colour picker, the style picker and the chapter ticks stop working.
The four things it keeps
These are the real keys, exactly as they are written. You can see them yourself in your browser's developer tools, under Local Storage for this site.
| The key | What it is for | How long it lasts |
|---|---|---|
theme |
Which of the four colour schemes you picked in the bar at the top — Night, Paper, Blueprint or Terminal. Written only when you change that picker. | Until you clear it. See below. |
style |
Classic or Easy: how big the type runs and how much space each block gets. Written only when you change that picker. | Until you clear it. See below. |
sos-read: and a course namefor example sos-read:standards-overview |
One entry per course you have read in. It holds the list of chapters whose questions you have all answered, which is what puts the tick beside a chapter. Written when you finish answering a chapter's questions. There is one entry per course, so a reader of three courses has three. | Until you clear it. See below. |
sos-notice |
That you pressed “I see” on the short notice about this page, so you are not shown it again on every visit. Written when you press that button. | Until you clear it. See below. |
How long they last, honestly
They last until you remove them. Browser storage of this kind carries no expiry date, and nothing on this site deletes it — so saying “thirty days” here would be a promise the code does not keep.
They also last per browser and per machine. The same site opened in a different browser, or on your phone, knows nothing about what you did here.
How to get rid of them
- Clear this site's data. Every browser has it under privacy or site settings, usually as “cookies and site data” for one site. It removes all four at once.
- Or open the site in a private window. Nothing is kept when you close it. The pickers and the ticks still work while the window is open.
- Or turn JavaScript off for this site. Then nothing is written at all — every one of the four is written by the page's own script, and the site is still readable without it.
What it does not keep
- This site sets no cookie. Not one, on any page. There is one cookie your browser may send to this address without this site ever having set it: if you are signed in to whatthespec.net, that site's login cookie covers this address too, because this school is served under the same name. Nothing a reader can open looks at it. It is read in one place only — the operator's own drafting area, which answers “not here” to everybody else.
- No test result. Your score in a final test is worked out inside the page and is gone the moment you reload it. It is never stored and never sent.
- No account, no name, no address you typed. There is nothing to sign up for and no form that goes anywhere.
- No identifier. None of the four holds a number or a code that would tell your browser apart from anybody else's, and nothing anywhere is filed under one.
Nothing is fetched from another server
Every part of a page on this site comes from this site: the stylesheet, the script, the four typefaces, the favicon, and every figure out of a standards document.
That matters because your browser has to hand over your address to any server it asks for a file. There is no font service here, no map, no video frame and no analytics — so no other company learns that you opened this page.
What still has to be written here
Three lines on this page are the operator's to write, not a session's, and they are not written yet.
- Placeholder — who runs this site and how to reach him.
- Placeholder — what the web server's own log records about a visit, and for how long it is kept.
- Placeholder — the legal basis and your rights under it.
The four keys above were read out of this site's own script on 4 August 2026, and the “no cookie” line was checked against the live site on the same day.