What Are Tracking Technologies?

When you visit most websites today, small text files get stored on your device. These files—commonly called cookies—help websites remember your preferences and understand how people interact with their content.

Think of them as digital sticky notes. Some are necessary (like remembering you're logged in), while others help us improve our platform or show relevant information based on your interests.

Beyond traditional cookies, we also use similar technologies like web beacons and local storage. They all serve the same basic purpose: making your experience smoother and helping us understand what works.

How We Use These Technologies

Specific Examples on Our Platform

When you use our budget consolidation calculator, functional cookies remember your inputs so you don't have to re-enter everything if you navigate away. Performance tracking shows us that most visitors check our Taiwan-specific financial planning resources, which tells us to create more localized content.

Marketing technologies help us show relevant program information to people interested in financial education. If you've browsed our debt management articles, you might see information about our comprehensive budgeting courses.

Your Control Options

You have several ways to manage tracking on our site. The button above lets you decline all non-essential tracking with one click. This removes analytics, marketing, and functional cookies while keeping essential ones that make the site work.

Browser-Level Controls

Every modern browser lets you block or delete cookies directly. This gives you complete control, though it might break some website features. Here's how different browsers handle it:

Mobile browsers have similar settings, usually found in the privacy or security sections. Android and iOS also offer system-level advertising controls that limit tracking across all apps.

Data Retention and Storage

Different types of cookies stick around for different lengths of time. Session cookies disappear when you close your browser. Persistent cookies last longer—anywhere from a few days to a year, depending on their purpose.

Essential cookies typically last for your browsing session or up to 30 days. Analytics cookies might persist for 13 months (a common industry standard). Marketing cookies vary but generally expire within 90 days.

We regularly review and clean up old tracking data. Performance analytics get anonymized after 26 months. Personal information tied to your account stays until you delete your account or request removal.

Third-Party Services

Like most websites, we use external services that set their own cookies. This includes analytics platforms, content delivery networks, and embedded resources. We choose partners carefully, but they operate under their own privacy policies.

For example, if we embed a financial calculator from a trusted provider, that tool might set its own cookies. Video content from external platforms includes their tracking technologies. We try to minimize these dependencies, but some improve the educational experience significantly.

When you decline non-essential cookies on our site, we disable most third-party tracking we control. Some embedded content might still include its own tracking—that's why browser-level blocking provides the most comprehensive control.

Changes to This Policy

We update this page when we add new tracking technologies or change how we use existing ones. The "Last Updated" date at the top shows when we last made changes.

Significant changes get announced through email to registered users. We won't start tracking significantly more data without updating this page and giving you new control options.