YanMateWhat this site stores in your browser, why, and how to refuse the parts you can refuse.
The honest summary first: YanMate sets no advertising cookies today. What it stores is what a signed-in product needs to know who you are and how you left the interface, plus one bot check — and one analytics cookie, only if you say yes to it. You are asked once, "Decline" is as easy as "Accept", and you can change your answer under Cookie settings at the foot of the site.
What is set
| What | Kind | Who sets it | How long | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Session cookie | Strictly necessary | Us | Until it expires or you sign out | Keeps you signed in. Without it every page would ask again |
| Security token | Strictly necessary | Us | The length of the request flow | Protects sign-in and account changes from being triggered by another site |
| Turnstile check | Strictly necessary | Cloudflare | Minutes | Confirms you are a person, on sign-up and other abuse-prone paths. It is a challenge, not a profile |
sidebar_state | Functional | Us | 7 days | Remembers whether you collapsed the navigation rail. It is a cookie rather than browser storage for one reason: the page is rendered on the server, and the server has to know before it draws or the rail flickers open on every load |
| Interface and draft storage | Functional | Us, in your browser's local storage | Until you clear it | Your theme, a message you typed but never sent, an unfinished character, and any hint you dismissed. Never leaves your browser |
| Sign-in form | Functional | Us, in your browser's local storage | Until you sign in, sign out or clear it | The email address and year of birth you typed into the sign-in form, so they survive a policy opened in a new tab or the trip to Google and back. If the year of birth is below our minimum age, both are deleted, and nothing about that answer is kept. What is stored never leaves your browser. The form itself sends us the year once you have typed it, to check it against the minimum age without saving it, and the address when you ask for a code |
| Analytics answer | Strictly necessary | Us, in your browser's local storage (PostHog keeps a copy as __ph_opt_in_out_<project key>) | Until you clear it | Your answer to the analytics question, so you are asked once rather than on every page. Never leaves your browser |
ph_<project key>_posthog, with ph_<project key>_posthog_cpm beside it | Analytics | PostHog, for us | 1 year | Only if you accept analytics. A random visitor id and the current visit, so we can see which pages are used and count a visit once; the second cookie only lists what the first one carries. A copy sits in your browser's storage beside them. Not set if you decline |
Strictly necessary entries cannot be switched off — the product does not work without them, and no consent banner may pretend otherwise.
Functional entries are split between two mechanisms, and the difference is
the one a cookie policy exists to make plain. sidebar_state is a cookie, so
your browser sends it to us with every request, the way every cookie works —
what it carries is the word true or false. Everything else in that group
lives in your browser's own storage and is never transmitted anywhere.
Analytics is the one row you are asked about. We measure how the product is used in three ways, and only one of them stores anything on your device:
- Browser analytics (PostHog) sets the cookie above, and only after you accept. If you decline, and until you answer, nothing is stored on your device, but PostHog still records the pages you open and what you click, anonymously: a visit is held together only by a one-way code worked out on its servers from a key that changes every day, so it cannot be linked to one on another day or to your account.
- Page-view counts (Cloudflare Web Analytics) use no cookie and store nothing.
- Product analytics on our servers come from requests you already made, and store nothing on your device.
None of it follows you to other sites. What it contains and why we are allowed to do it is in the privacy notice.
What is not set
- No advertising cookies. No ad code is loaded on any page, on any plan, for anyone.
- No cross-site tracking, no pixels, no fingerprinting, no social plug-ins that watch you.
- No cookies from a data broker, because there are none in the product.
When the free tier becomes ad-funded, that changes — with consent asked for first where the law requires it, and paid plans never loading any of it. What changes is set out below, before it happens rather than after.
Advertising cookies
The free tier is set up to be supported by Google AdSense. None of this is set today. When ads are switched on, these join the table above:
| What | Kind | Who sets it | How long | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advertising cookies | Advertising | Google, and the ad vendors Google works with | As Google sets them | Serving ads, limiting how often you see the same one, and measuring them. For personalised ads, choosing them based on your prior visits to this and other websites |
| Consent choice | Strictly necessary | Google's consent message | As Google sets it | Remembering what you chose in the consent message, so you are not asked on every page |
- Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites.
- Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and/or other sites on the Internet.
- You can opt out of personalised advertising in Google's Ads Settings, and out of some other vendors' use of cookies for it at aboutads.info.
- In the UK, the EEA and Switzerland, Google's advertising cookies are not set until you have answered the consent message, and refusing is one button on its first screen.
- None of it loads on a paid plan, or inside a chat, a call, a scene, your memory or your inbox, on any plan.
The full arrangement, including what is never shared, is in privacy.
Refusing them
- Analytics: choose "Decline" when you are asked, or change your answer at any time under Cookie settings at the foot of the site or on your privacy choices. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control, we take that as a "Decline" and do not ask. If you want us to stop measuring your account on our servers as well, that is a right you have — see the same page.
- Functional cookie and storage: clear your browser's site data for yanmate.com. You will lose your theme, your rail preference, any unsent draft and anything the sign-in form was remembering, and nothing else.
- Strictly necessary: these cannot be refused while you use the product. Blocking them in your browser will sign you out and keep you out.
Your browser can block all cookies for this site. That is your call to make, and the consequence is that sign-in stops working.