Cookie policy
Which cookies this site writes in your browser, what each one does, how long it lasts, and how to give or withdraw consent for the ones that need it. The table below is the complete list: nothing is set that is not written here.
Last updated: 1 Sept 2026
What a cookie is
A cookie is a small text file a site places in your browser, which the browser then sends back with every subsequent request. It is how a site recognises you between one page and the next: without it, a site could not even remember which language you are reading it in.
Italian law (Art. 122 of Legislative Decree 196/2003, implementing Art. 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive) draws one distinction, and it decides everything:
- technical cookies, without which the service you asked for does not work, do not require your consent;
- everything else — measurement, profiling, advertising — cannot be written until you say yes.
On this site the second category contains exactly one thing: readership statistics. And until you answer the banner, nothing is loaded: it is not that the cookies are there and go unused — Google's script is never even requested from the network.
1. Technical cookies — always on, no consent required
| Name | Set by | What it does | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
PRISMA_EDIZIONE | prisma-magazine.com | Remembers whether you are reading the Italian or the English edition. Without it, every visit would go back to guessing from your browser. | 12 months |
prisma_jwt | prisma-magazine.com | Keeps an account holder signed in. It is HttpOnly: no script on the page can read it. Written only after sign-in, deleted on sign-out. | 30 days |
__prerender_bypass | prisma-magazine.com | Lets the newsroom preview an article before publication. It is never written for a reader. | Session |
__cf_bm and similar | Cloudflare | Tell human traffic from automated traffic and protect the site from attacks. Set by the perimeter security service, not by us. | Up to 30 minutes |
2. Measurement cookies — only with your consent
We use Google Analytics 4 to know which articles get read and which pages people arrive from. It serves our decisions about what to write, not any attempt to recognise individuals: we do not use the data for personalised advertising and we do not join it to your account.
| Name | Set by | What it does | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
_ga | Google (third party) | Assigns a random identifier to the browser, to tell a new visit from a returning one. | 24 months |
_ga_T74V8BT7WM | Google (third party) | Keeps session state for this particular measurement property. | 24 months |
Property identifier: G-T74V8BT7WM. We spell it out so you can check it against what you find in your browser: a measurement cookie carrying any other identifier is not ours.
Transfers outside the European Union. Google Analytics is operated by Google Ireland Limited; some processing may take place at Google LLC in the United States. The transfer relies on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework adequacy decision (Decision (EU) 2023/1795) and on standard contractual clauses (Decision (EU) 2021/914). IP addresses are processed in anonymised form.
Roles. For data collected through Analytics, Google acts as a processor on our behalf. Its own notice is at policies.google.com/privacy.
3. Things stored in your browser that are NOT cookies
Some preferences are kept in localStorage, a browser store which — unlike a cookie — is never sent to our server and tells us nothing about you. We list them anyway, because you will find them in your browser tools alongside the cookies and you are entitled to know what they are.
| Key | What it holds |
|---|---|
prisma-tema | Whether you chose the light or dark theme. |
prisma-font-scale | Whether you enlarged the text. |
prisma-a11y-font | Whether you turned on the high-legibility typeface. |
prisma-consenso-cookie | Your answer to the banner, with its date. It lives here rather than in a cookie: a banner that wrote a cookie to remember a refusal would be writing the very thing you just refused. |
4. Giving, refusing and withdrawing consent
On your first visit a bar appears at the foot of the page with two buttons, «Accept» and «Refuse». They are identical in size and appearance: refusing costs exactly as much as accepting, and there is no close cross to leave without answering — a cross would be ambiguous, and ambiguity in a consent always resolves in favour of whoever is measuring.
Until you answer, nothing is loaded. Silence counts as no.
To change your mind — either way, at any time — use «Cookie preferences» at the foot of every page. It clears your previous answer and brings the bar back.
If you refuse, the site works exactly as before: nothing here is reserved for those who accept, and you will not be asked again on every page.
5. Clearing cookies from your browser
You can delete cookies already stored, or block them entirely, from your browser settings (typically Settings → Privacy and security → Cookies and site data). Note that blocking technical cookies too will break some functions: the site will no longer remember your chosen edition, and your sign-in will not stay open.
6. Data controller
Prisma-Cultura S.r.l. Società Benefit — Viale Europa, 135 – 50126 Firenze (FI), Italy — VAT no. 07191420483 For any request about cookies or your data: privacy@prisma-magazine.com
The full picture — purposes, legal bases, retention, recipients and your rights — is in the Privacy notice.
This English version is provided for convenience. The controller is an Italian company and the supervisory authority is the Italian one: in the event of any divergence, the Italian text governs.