No cookie banner needed

You may have noticed that Downread never asks you to "accept cookies". That's not an oversight: we simply don't do anything that would require your consent.

The one cookie we set

Downread sets a single, first-party cookie called authToken. Its only purpose is to keep you signed in. It is an HttpOnly cookie (page scripts can't read it), it identifies you to nobody but us, and it is never used for advertising or tracking.

Cookie consent rules (the ePrivacy Directive, implemented in Germany as §25 TDDDG) only require consent for storage that is not strictly necessary for the service you asked for. A sign-in cookie for the reader you are using is the textbook example of strictly necessary, so no consent is needed and no banner has to ask for it.

What we don't do

• No advertising cookies. We show no ads.
• No analytics. We run no Google Analytics or any other analytics provider.
• No third-party tracking. No tracking pixels, no fingerprinting, no data sales. Ever.

A cookie banner exists to collect consent for non-essential cookies. We have none, so there is nothing to consent to, and a banner would just be in your way.

The exception: third-party content you read

Feeds and articles are third-party content chosen by you, and we can't control what their publishers do:

• Feed images and tracking pixels. When you open an article, its images load directly from the original publisher's servers. Some publishers embed tiny tracking pixels in their posts, and any image request can set that publisher's own cookies. This is inherent to displaying the article you asked to read; it happens under the publisher's privacy policy, not ours.
• Embeds (YouTube, X, Instagram and similar) can also set their services' own cookies. In the EU/UK, they don't load at all until you allow that specific service; until then you see a placeholder. You can change your choice any time under Settings → External content. YouTube is always forced into its privacy-enhanced youtube-nocookie mode.
• Sign in with Google or Apple is optional and loads nothing from Google or Apple until you click the button.

The full detail, including what we store, where, and for how long, is in our Privacy Policy.