Cookie policy
This page sets out what the dotsland.com website stores in your browser, why, for how long, and how to change your mind. It describes the site as it actually behaves, checked on 13 August 2026 by observing the cookies genuinely set before and after the consent banner.
What a cookie is
A cookie is a small text file that a website saves in your browser while you visit. It usually holds an identifier, a preference or a date, and the site can read it back on later visits. Local storage works on the same principle, but without an expiry date: it stays until you clear it.
Some cookies are essential. Without them the site cannot remember which language you are reading, nor that you declined everything else. The rest measure audience or connect a visit to an advert. Those are only set if you accept them.
What dotsland.com actually stores
Set as soon as you arrive
These two cookies are strictly necessary. They measure nothing, they do not follow you from site to site, and they are shared with no one.
| Name | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| pll_language | Remembers the language you are reading, French or English, so that you are served the right version of each page. | 1 year |
| dfcc_consent | Records your choices category by category, the date, the version of this policy and a random identifier. It stops the question being asked again on every page and serves as proof of the consent collected. | 180 days |
Set only if you accept the Targeted advertising category
Until you accept that category, none of the following exists: no Google script is loaded and no request is sent to Google. If you decline everything, or accept audience measurement only, the two necessary cookies above are the only ones present.
| Name | Set by | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| _gcl_au | Connects your visit to a Google Ads advert and allows its effectiveness to be measured. | 90 days | |
| _gcl_aw | Keeps the advert click identifier when you arrive from a Google advert. Absent if you do not arrive from an advert. | 90 days | |
| _dfss_gclid | dotsland.com | Keeps that same click identifier on our side, so an enquiry can be matched to the advert it came from. Absent if you do not arrive from an advert. | 90 days |
| _gcl_ls (local storage) | Same role as _gcl_au, held in the browser’s local storage rather than in a cookie. | Until you clear it |
Set only if you leave a comment
Below articles, the comment form offers a tick box to remember your details. If you tick it, and only then, WordPress sets three cookies whose names begin with comment_author. They pre-fill the form for your next comment and last about a year. Leave the box unticked and nothing is stored.
Reserved for site administration
When the site’s publisher signs in to the administration area, WordPress sets session cookies. They concern only people who hold an account and are never set on visitors’ browsers.
Audience measurement runs from our server
We use Google Analytics 4. What is unusual here is the path the data takes. The page open in your browser sends no measurement to Google. It passes the event to our own server, on dotsland.com, and that server then relays it to Google Analytics. No _ga cookie is written in your browser.
What we measure: pages viewed, where the visit came from, device type, language and country. The event we send contains neither your name nor your email address.
The Google tag loaded after you accept also reports your visit to our Google Ads account. That is what tells us which adverts bring enquiries, and it is also what sets the _gcl_au cookie.
None of this starts before you accept the Targeted advertising category. Declining, in whole or in part, leaves the site fully usable.
Legal basis
Two texts apply: the General Data Protection Regulation, known as the GDPR, and the privacy and electronic communications directive, transposed into French law at article 82 of the Data Protection Act (loi Informatique et Libertés).
The two necessary cookies, pll_language and dfcc_consent, are exempt from consent. They are strictly necessary to deliver the service you asked for and to record your refusal. We set them on the basis of our legitimate interest in running the site, under article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR.
Everything else, audience measurement and advertising included, rests on your consent, under article 6(1)(a) of the GDPR. That consent is freely given: declining takes nothing away from your reading. It is specific: you may accept one category without accepting the others. It can be withdrawn at any time, as article 7(3) of the GDPR provides.
Changing or withdrawing your consent
The button below reopens the preferences panel. Your new choices take effect immediately and replace the previous ones.
You can also delete the cookies directly from your browser’s privacy settings. Once the dfcc_consent cookie is gone, the banner reappears on your next visit.
Withdrawal does not erase measurements already recorded before you changed your mind. It stops any further collection.
How long we keep this information
Your choices stay in your browser for 180 days. After that, the question is put to you again.
Each choice is also time-stamped in a log on our server, with a random identifier, the version of this policy and the page where the choice was made. That log exists solely to prove the consent collected. It contains neither your name nor your email address.
Audience measurement events are kept in our Google Analytics property for the retention period configured there, capped at 14 months for user-level data.
Advertising cookies expire on their own after 90 days if you do not return.
Transfers outside the European Union
Google Ireland Limited and Google LLC may process this data outside the European Union, in particular in the United States. Those transfers rely on the adequacy decision adopted by the European Commission in July 2023 under the EU to US Data Privacy Framework, to which Google LLC is certified, and on standard contractual clauses.
Your rights
You have the right of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability over your data, set out in articles 15 to 22 of the GDPR.
Data controller: Sasha El Mogherbi, sole trader (entrepreneur individuel), publisher of the dotsland.com website, 54 boulevard Sérurier, 75019 Paris, France. Contact address: contact@dotsland.com.
We have not appointed a data protection officer. Your requests are handled directly by the site’s publisher, within one month.
If our answer does not satisfy you, you may refer the matter to the French supervisory authority, the Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL), 3 place de Fontenoy, TSA 80715, 75334 Paris Cedex 07, or lodge a complaint at cnil.fr.
Updates to this page
This policy is reviewed whenever a measurement or advertising tool changes. If the cookie categories change, the policy version changes with them and the banner asks for your agreement again. Version in force: 1.0, dated 13 August 2026.
For the publisher’s identity, the hosting provider and the terms of use, see the terms of use and legal notice.