As stated in our Privacy Policy , Wikimedia believes strongly in the values of privacy and transparency. To that end, we have created this Cookie Statement as a clear reference guide to the use of cookies on Wikimedia Sites. This Cookie Statement explains how we use cookies (and other locally stored data technologies), how we use third-party cookies, and how you can manage your cookie options. For more information on our privacy practices, please visit our Privacy Policy .

The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that hosts the Wikimedia Sites, actively collects some types of information with a variety of commonly-used technologies. These generally include tracking pixels , JavaScript , and a variety of "locally stored data" technologies, such as cookies and local storage .

For more information on this and other key terms that may be relevant, please read through our Privacy Policy Glossary .

Cookies are not required in order to read or edit the Wikimedia Sites. We use the information we receive from cookies and other locally stored data technologies to make your experience with the Wikimedia Sites safer and better, to gain a greater understanding of user preferences and interactions with the Wikimedia Sites, and to generally improve our services. Cookies are required in order to login and for your edits to be associated to a user account; without cookies, your edits will be anonymous and unassociated with an account.

These cookies help the Wikimedia Sites work and are essential in order to enable you to move around the Wikimedia site and use their features. These cookies are useful for remembering your username in the login field, maintaining your session and remembering previous actions, keeping you logged in (if selected), and more.

Here are a few examples:

Performance and Analysis:

These cookies count the number of visitors and collect information about how you use the Wikimedia Sites. This allows us to better understand your user experience on the Wikimedia Sites and helps us improve them for you and other users ? for instance, by making sure users are finding what they need easily. Other examples include:

• remembering pages visited, and actions taken on the Wikimedia sites so we can optimize the pages;

• remembering if users get error messages from web pages;

• storing your most recently read articles directly on your device, so they can be retrieved quickly;

• remembering the topics searched so that we can optimize the search results we deliver to you;

• remembering the list of articles you are following on your watchlist so that we can recommend similar articles that you may be interested in.

Third-Party:

We will never use third-party cookies on our wikis unless we get your permission to do so. These cookies would allow us to render services provided by third parties, such as "like" and "share" buttons. When a third party provides these kinds of services, they may require the use of a cookie in order to provide their services.

If you ever come across a third-party cookie transferred to your device during your access of the Wikimedia wiki sites, where you did not take any action to authorize the use and/or transfer of that cookie  (such as one that may have been mistakenly placed by another user or administrator), please report that cookie to us at privacy wikimedia.org .

A note about Wikimedia Foundation non-wiki sites:

Some non-wiki Wikimedia Foundation sites are hosted by a third-party service provider.

Sites hosted by WordPress VIP may have the WordPress Stats module enabled. Stats is a service that allows us to understand how many visitors we get to our WordPress-hosted non-wiki sites, their location by country, and which pages, posts and links are the most popular. Only the Wikimedia Foundation and the service provider, Automattic/WordPress, have access to the raw Stats data, which is retained for a maximum of 30 days. For more information about Stats, see WordPress' support page on the module .

Sites hosted by Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc., known as Discourse forums, use cookies for functionality purposes and to store preferences. Only the Wikimedia Foundation and the service provider have access to the raw data. For more information about the cookies and their retention periods, see Discourse's information about cookies . Please note that the Wikimedia Foundation has not configured its Discourse forums to use Google Analytics, serve advertisements, or process donations; Discourse cookies related to those purposes are not used in our Sites.

You can:

• remove or disable specific locally stored data on your browser's settings (you can reset your web browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent);

• use a browser that can block third-party cookies; or

• install a plug-in to block locally stored data, if one is available.