The short version: nothing measures you unless you agree to it. We use Google Analytics to see which pages get read, and it stays switched off until you accept. There is no advertising pixel on this site at all.
What a cookie is
A cookie is a small file a website asks your browser to keep. Some are needed for a site to work at all, remembering that you are signed in, for example. Others exist to follow you between sites and build a profile for advertising. The two get talked about as one thing; they are not.
What we use
Google Analytics, through Google Tag Manager, and only if you accept the performance category. It tells us which pages are read and where people give up. No advertising cookies, and nothing that follows you onto other websites.
Your browser and our host may still handle ordinary technical data needed to serve a page to you, your IP address in a server log, for instance. That is how the web works rather than a choice we have made, and it is covered in the privacy notice.
What the banner actually controls
Under UK law consent is required for anything that is not strictly necessary, and analytics is not strictly necessary. So Google Analytics loads in a mode where it stores nothing and identifies nobody until you accept the performance category. Accept it and it starts measuring. Refuse it and it never does.
Your answer is stored on your own device and nowhere else. If we ever add an advertising pixel it will load only for people whose stored answer already allows the targeting category, and if the categories themselves change, the old answer is discarded and you are asked again rather than having an old answer applied to a new question.
The Leak Score
The score checks public information about your business using Google services on our servers, not in your browser. Those checks happen server-side, so they do not place cookies on your device. What we do with the details you type in is covered in the privacy notice.
Links out
Buttons that open WhatsApp hand you over to WhatsApp, and their own terms and cookies apply from that point. We have no control over, and no visibility of, what another company stores once you leave this site.
Controlling cookies yourself
Every browser lets you block or delete cookies for any site, including this one. Doing so will not break anything here. The only thing it stops is the analytics, and you can do the same from the banner above.
Questions
Email joe@simplechange.co.uk and you will get a straight answer.