Legal information
Cookie Policy
academia.sh writes no cookie to your browser without your consent. There is exactly one family of cookies on this site: the Google Analytics cookies used to measure visits. They are written only if you press “Accept” in the consent banner; decline and not a single request is sent to Google. This page explains what is stored, when, and why.
What a cookie is
A cookie is a small piece of text that a site stores in your browser and that is sent back to the server with every request. Being returned to the server is what makes a cookie distinctive: it lets a site recognise you between visits and follow your behaviour across pages. That is also why regulations require consent banners for them.
academia.sh has no need for a session cookie, because it has no account system and no session management. The site sells nothing either, so there is no payment-provider cookie or script. Advertising cookies are never used, under any circumstances.
Measurement cookies — only with your consent
To see how much each lesson is read, we use Google Analytics 4. The point of the measurement is not to recognise individual readers but to see which subjects work and where the content falls short.
If you consent, the following cookies are written to your browser:
| Cookie | Set by | Purpose | Contents | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
_ga |
Google Analytics (first party, on the academia.sh domain) |
Count repeat visits as a single browser | A randomly generated client identifier | 2 years |
_ga_C0N0Q5V3GT |
Google Analytics (first party) | Hold the session state and counter | Session identifier and timestamps | 2 years |
These cookies hold no name, no email address and nothing that identifies you directly; what they carry is a randomly generated browser number. Even so, that number and the address, referrer and browser information sent along with it count as personal data — which is why we ask.
If you decline: Google’s measurement script (gtag.js) is never downloaded. No cookie
is written, no request reaches Google, and nothing about your browser is transmitted. The
site keeps working in full, with no feature withheld.
Until you choose: measurement does not run while the banner is open either. There is no implied consent: continuing to browse without dismissing the banner collects nothing.
Your measurement choice
You can change your decision at any time. Withdrawing consent stops the measurement and deletes the `_ga` cookies already written in this browser.
What is used instead
Your usage data is kept in your browser’s local storage (localStorage). Local
storage differs from a cookie on one decisive point: its contents are never sent to a
server. The records stay on your device and cannot be read by us.
| Key | Purpose | Contents | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
academia:theme |
Remember your light or dark theme preference | light or dark |
Until you delete it |
academia:progress:v1 |
Remember which lessons you marked as completed | A list of lesson addresses | Until you delete it |
academia:activity:v1 |
Compute the streak and weekly pace | Lessons per day and recently read lesson titles | 400 days, then pruned |
academia:plan:v1 |
Remember your study plan | Goal, weekly pace, lesson order | Until you delete it |
academia:prefs:v1 |
Remember which notices you dismissed | Dismissed notice identifiers | Until you delete it |
academia:goals:v1 |
Remember which curricula you joined and which roadmaps you follow | Curriculum and roadmap addresses | Until you delete it |
academia:consent:v1 |
Remember whether you allowed measurement | granted or denied, and the date of the choice |
Until you delete it |
Every record is created only by an action of yours: changing the theme, marking a lesson as completed, creating a study plan, joining a curriculum, following a roadmap, or pressing a button in the consent banner. None of them contains personal data.
The consent record is deliberately kept in local storage rather than in a cookie: writing a cookie without consent in order to ask for consent would be incoherent. It is also excluded from the data export, because consent belongs to the browser you gave it in and cannot be carried to another device.
When you create a study plan, your browser downloads the goal’s lesson list as a JSON
file from academia.sh; that request goes to no third party and carries no cookie.
How to delete them
For the measurement cookies, the shortest route is the Withdraw consent button above:
the moment consent is withdrawn, measurement stops and every cookie starting with _ga
is deleted from this browser.
To remove everything at once, clear the site data for academia.sh in your browser
settings. In most browsers this option sits under “Site data”, “Storage”, or “Cookies and
site data”. The “Delete my data” button in your dashboard also erases
all local records together with your measurement consent.
After deletion:
- The theme preference returns to your operating system’s light or dark setting.
- The consent banner asks again, because the record of your choice is gone too.
- Your lesson progress marks are lost and cannot be recovered. These records exist only in your browser, so there is no server-side backup.
If you use a browser setting that blocks local storage entirely, the site remains fully readable; only the theme preference, the progress marks and your measurement choice will not persist — and since the choice cannot be stored, measurement does not run.
To switch Google Analytics off across every site you visit, you can install Google’s browser add-on.
Third parties
The site contains no advertising network, embedded social media content, or external font service. Fonts, mathematical typesetting, and the search index are served from our own domain.
Once you consent, the only third party your browser contacts is Google (Google Ireland Limited / Google LLC). For this measurement Google acts as a data processor, and the data collected is processed on Google’s servers outside Türkiye. See the Privacy Policy and the KVKK Information Notice for the details.
None of the data collected for measurement is used for advertising: the advertising
categories (ad_storage, ad_user_data, ad_personalization) are permanently denied and
stay denied even when you consent. Google Signals and advertising-identifier matching are
not used.
How the consent banner works
The banner appears the first time you open the site and asks a single question. The two buttons are the same size, in the same place, with the same weight: nothing in the design favours “Accept” over “Decline”. Ignoring the banner is also a refusal — measurement does not run until a choice is made.
Your decision is stored in this browser and is not asked again. To change your mind, use the controls above; it is one click in either direction.
Changes
This policy may be updated. Should any further cookie or tracking technology ever be added to the site, this page will be updated before that change takes effect.
That rule applies to the paid tier as well: the moment a payment provider or an account system goes live — both of which typically write cookies — this page is updated in the same release, not afterwards.