Cookies, plainly explained
A cookie is a small piece of storage a site — or a third party the site loads code from — leaves in your browser, usually so something can be remembered between visits or measured across a session. This page covers the two kinds this site actually uses, and one thing that isn't a cookie but is worth knowing about anyway.
Essential cookies
These run the site itself. The main one remembers whether you've already answered the cookie banner at the bottom of the screen, stored locally under the key mbn_consent, so the banner doesn't reappear on every page load. Essential storage like this doesn't track you across other websites and can't be switched off without breaking that one piece of site behavior.
Advertising and measurement cookies
Microsoft Advertising's UET tag sets cookies used to measure whether a visit that started from a Bing or Microsoft ad led to something — reading an explainer, subscribing to the newsletter. These load in a consent-denied state by default, meaning they're restricted in what they can store or send until you actively accept the cookie banner; declining, or ignoring the banner, keeps that restriction in place. Details on what Microsoft does with that data are in the Microsoft Privacy Statement.
Not a cookie, but related: web fonts
Page text is rendered using a typeface loaded directly from Google's font-hosting servers rather than stored locally on this site. That request necessarily reaches Google and includes your IP address, the way any request to any server does — but it isn't a cookie and isn't part of the advertising system described above.
Use the Accept or Decline buttons on the cookie banner the first time you see it. To change your mind later, use the button below to clear the stored choice and see the banner again, adjust your browser's own cookie settings, or use Microsoft's own opt-out controls linked in its Privacy Statement.
Questions about this policy: [email protected]
Microsoft Privacy Statement — go.microsoft.com/fwlink?LinkId=517636