Last updated: September 26, 2026
Cookies sound technical, but the idea is simple: they are small text files that a website saves in your browser so it can remember something the next time you visit — that you have already seen a notice, that you prefer a certain setting, or that a page you loaded earlier came from the same visit. This Cookie Policy explains which cookies Home Permit Pro uses, why we use them, which third parties set them, and how you can take control of them. It works alongside our Privacy Policy, which describes what we do with any information we collect.
We keep our cookie usage deliberately light. This site is an educational resource, not an app that needs to track you around the internet — and our cookie choices reflect that.
1. What Cookies Are (and What They Are Not)
A cookie is a small text file — usually just a few hundred characters — that a website asks your browser to store. When you return, your browser hands the cookie back to the site. Cookies are not programs, they cannot execute code, and they cannot read other files on your device. They can only hold what the site itself wrote, such as a random identifier or a preference flag.
There are two broad types by origin. First-party cookies are set by the site you are visiting — in our case, homepermitpro.com. Third-party cookies are set by a domain other than the one in your address bar, typically by advertising or analytics partners whose code runs on the page. Cookies also differ by lifespan: session cookies disappear when you close your browser, while persistent cookies survive until they expire or you delete them.
Alongside cookies, websites use similar storage technologies — browser localStorage, pixels, and software development kits — that serve comparable purposes. Where this policy says "cookies," we mean all of these together.
2. Overview of the Cookies We Use
The table below summarizes the categories of cookies and similar technologies on this site. We do not use cookies to build advertising profiles of individual readers ourselves, and we do not sell cookie data to data brokers.
| Category | What it does | Set by | Typical lifespan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strictly necessary | Security, session integrity, protection against abuse and bots | Home Permit Pro | Session to 12 months |
| Analytics | Aggregate counts of page views, referrers, and device types so we know which guides to update | Home Permit Pro / analytics provider | Up to 12 months |
| Advertising | Serving ads, limiting how often an ad repeats, measuring ad performance, and — where you have allowed it — personalizing ads | Google AdSense and its certified partners | Typically up to 13 months |
3. Strictly Necessary Cookies
These cookies keep the site functioning and safe. They support things like protecting comment forms against spam submissions, distinguishing real readers from abusive bots, and keeping the site fast under heavy traffic. Without them, parts of the site would not work correctly or would be vulnerable to abuse.
Strictly necessary cookies do not require your consent under most privacy laws because the site cannot function securely without them. Everything else on this site — analytics and advertising — would keep working in some form even if you blocked every non-essential cookie.
4. Analytics Cookies
We want to know which permit guides are actually helping people, so we look at aggregate usage: how many readers a page had, which city brought them, whether they read on a phone or a laptop, and which pages they visited next. This tells us that our fence-permit guide for Texas needs updating before it tells us anything about any individual reader.
Where our analytics tools allow it, we configure them to be privacy-conscious: data is viewed in aggregate, we do not attempt to identify individuals, and we do not merge analytics data with advertising profiles. If you block analytics cookies, you will still get the full content of the site — we simply fly a little blinder about what to improve next.
5. Advertising Cookies — Google AdSense
Home Permit Pro is free to read, and advertising keeps it that way. We display ads through Google AdSense, and this section explains exactly how that works, because advertising cookies are the ones most worth understanding.
Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies (including the DoubleClick DART cookie) enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to our site and/or other sites on the internet.
You have direct control over this:
- Opt out of personalized advertising at Google Ads Settings — this turns off ad personalization across Google services in that browser.
- Opt out of third-party vendor cookies for many ad networks at once at aboutads.info (United States) or youronlinechoices.eu (European Economic Area).
- Read how Google uses information from sites that use its services in plain language.
If you opt out of personalized advertising, you will still see ads — they will simply be based on the page you are reading rather than your browsing history. Blocking advertising cookies entirely does not remove ads either; it just makes the ads less relevant and slightly less effective at supporting the site.
In regions where the law requires it — the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom in particular — Google serves personalized ads only where the required legal basis, such as consent, is in place, and non-personalized ads elsewhere.
6. Third-Party Cookies in General
Besides Google, the other third parties that can set technologies on this site are the analytics providers described above and, occasionally, embedded content from official sources — for example, if we embed a city's informational video, that platform may set its own cookies when the embedded item loads.
We do not control third-party cookies; each vendor's own policy governs them. We do, however, choose vendors carefully and prefer ones with published, readable policies. When a third party's practices change materially, we review whether it still belongs on this site.
7. How to Control or Delete Cookies
You are in charge of cookies in your browser, and every major browser gives you the tools:
- Google Chrome: Settings → Privacy and security → Third-party cookies (or "Site settings" to manage cookies for individual sites, including clearing them).
- Mozilla Firefox: Settings → Privacy & Security → Enhanced Tracking Protection, plus "Manage Data" under Cookies and Site Data to delete what is stored.
- Safari (Mac and iPhone): Settings → Privacy → "Prevent cross-site tracking" and "Block all cookies," with per-site data management under "Manage Website Data."
- Microsoft Edge: Settings → Cookies and site permissions → Manage and delete cookies and site data.
Three practical notes. First, if you delete all cookies, you will lose saved preferences on every site, not just ours. Second, browser private/incognito modes limit cookie persistence but do not make you anonymous. Third, blocking cookies is different from blocking ads — for ad-specific opt-outs, use the links in section 5 above, which work independently of your cookie settings.
8. Cookies and Your Privacy Rights
EEA, UK, and similar jurisdictions: where consent is required for non-essential cookies, that consent must be freely given and can be withdrawn at any time — withdrawing is as easy as deleting cookies in your browser and adjusting the settings described above. For the full picture of your rights (access, correction, erasure, objection), see section 8 of our Privacy Policy.
California and other U.S. states: some state laws treat certain advertising cookies as a "sale" or "sharing" of personal information. We do not sell personal information for money, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising ourselves — but third-party ad cookies can fall under those definitions, which is why the Google Ads Settings and aboutads.info opt-out links above are the practical way to exercise a "do not sell or share" preference for advertising.
9. Do Not Track
Some browsers offer a "Do Not Track" signal, and there is no industry-wide standard for what websites must do when they receive it. Our own analytics are aggregate-only and do not build cross-site profiles, so there is little for DNT to suppress on our side. Third-party vendors respond to DNT and similar signals according to their own policies, which is why the direct opt-out links in section 5 remain the most reliable control.
10. Changes to This Cookie Policy
When we add a new analytics tool, change ad partners, or adjust how long data sticks around, we will update this page and change the "Last updated" date at the top. Material changes — a new advertising partner, a new category of cookie — will be described in plain language rather than buried in legal phrasing, so you can actually tell what changed.
11. Questions About Cookies
If anything here is unclear, or you want to know whether a specific tool runs on this site, just ask. Email info@homepermitpro.com or use our contact page — MD Saeed reads the mail personally, and cookie questions usually get a same-week answer.