Privacy and cookies
PretendPint is a reference site. It has no accounts, no forms, no advertising and no sales. The only information it collects about visitors is anonymous usage statistics through Google Analytics, and only if you agree to that when the banner asks. This page says exactly what that means and how to change your mind.
Who runs the site
Mark Porter, an individual in the United Kingdom, is responsible for this site and for any personal data it handles. Questions about this page go to [email protected].
Analytics
The site uses Google Analytics 4 to count visits and see which pages are read. That helps decide which beers to check next. Google Analytics reports pages viewed, the rough location a visit comes from (country and town, not an address), the type of device and browser, and how a visitor arrived. It is configured with Google's Consent Mode, which means:
- Until you make a choice, or if you decline, Google Analytics sets no cookies and stores no identifier for you. It may receive a cookieless signal that a page was viewed, which Google uses only to estimate totals.
- If you accept, Google Analytics sets the two cookies in the table below so that repeat visits and the pages within one visit can be counted together.
- Advertising features are switched off. The site does not send Google anything for ad targeting or personalisation, whatever you choose.
Google processes this data on our behalf and may transfer it outside the UK under its standard contractual terms. Google Analytics 4 does not log or store visitors' IP addresses. Google's own description of how it handles data is at policies.google.com.
Cookies
These are the only cookies the site sets.
| Cookie | Set by | Purpose | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
pp_consent | PretendPint | Remembers whether you accepted or declined analytics cookies, so the banner is not shown again. | 12 months |
_ga | Google Analytics | Tells Google Analytics that a visit is from the same browser as an earlier one. Set only after you accept. | 2 years |
_ga_35YSR9SFVH | Google Analytics | Keeps the current visit together as one session. Set only after you accept. | 2 years |
The site also stores nothing in your browser beyond these cookies. The search box and the filters on the beers page work entirely within the page.
Changing your choice
You can accept or decline at any time. Use the button below, or the "Cookie settings" link in the footer of every page, and the banner will appear again. Declining after accepting removes the consent and stops further analytics cookies being set; you can also delete the cookies listed above in your browser's settings.
Hosting
The site is served by Cloudflare. Like any web host, Cloudflare records the IP address and request details of each visit in server logs for security and to keep the service running, and keeps them for a short period. That happens whether or not you accept analytics cookies and is not used to identify individual readers.
If you write to the correction address, the message and any reply are kept for as long as they are needed to deal with the point raised and to keep a record of the change made. Corrections are logged on the site by beer and by what changed, never by who sent them.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask what personal data is held about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and object to its use. For this site that will almost always be nothing beyond an email you sent. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
Changes to this page
If the site starts using any other tool that collects data about visitors, this page will say so before it does. The site build date in the footer shows when the pages were last published.