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.

What are my cookie options?

While this is not a comprehensive list, below are some of the things that you can do to limit use of cookies and other locally stored data technologies on your device. While cookies and other locally stored data technologies may not be necessary to use our sites, some features may not function properly if you disable them.

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.

Turning off the browser's cookies will prevent tracking pixels from tracking your specific activity. A tracking pixel may still record an anonymous visit from your IP address, but unique information will not be recorded. If you do not want to receive tracking pixels, you will need to disable HTML images in your browser-based email client, and that may affect your ability to view images in other emails that you receive.

Where can I find more information?

Please read through our Privacy Policy for more information. If you have any further questions, contact privacy wikimedia.org .