Cookie Policy

What Are Cookies?

Cookies are small text files a website stores in your browser. Local storage and session storage are similar places in your browser where a site can keep settings; unlike cookies, they are never sent to our servers, and session storage is cleared when you close the tab.

The Cookies We Set

All of them are strictly necessary for something you asked for, so none needs your consent, and none is used for advertising or to follow you across other sites.

Signing in (authjs.session-token): keeps you signed in, for up to 30 days. While you sign in, a few short-lived companions (authjs.csrf-token, authjs.callback-url, and for Google or GitHub sign-in authjs.state, authjs.pkce.code_verifier and authjs.nonce) protect the sign-in and remember where to return you.

Email sign-in link (moana_magic_link): set when you press Sign in on the page the link in our sign-in email opens, so that the link signs in only a browser that pressed that button — never one sent to the link by another site or by a link someone else handed you. It holds a fingerprint of that one link and nothing about you, is sent back only to the sign-in step, and lasts ten minutes.

Signed-in hint (mm_signed_in): the value 1 and nothing else — no identity. It lets our public pages show the right header without asking our servers whether you are signed in. Lasts 30 days, and is removed when you sign out.

Last visit to a shared album (moana_last_visit): set when you open an album someone shared with you, so that when you open it again, the photos added since your last visit are marked as new. It holds only times — when you last opened the album and when the newest photos you had seen were added to it — nothing about who you are. It is sent back only to that album's link, and we keep nothing of it. Lasts one year from your last visit.

Album access (moana_share_grant): set only when you open a shared album that asks for something first — its password, or, for an album shared with specific people, the code we emailed you or the button of the invitation we emailed you. It is sent back only to that album's link and lasts 12 hours after a password, 30 days after a code or an invitation, or until the link expires if that comes first.

Shared album visitor (moana_visitor): set only by the feature of an album someone shared with you that needs to recognise your browser on a later visit — marking photos with ♥ (what is new since your last visit has a cookie of its own, above). It holds a random code and nothing else — not who you are, not your IP address or your browser — and is sent back only to shared album links. It is not used to count visits: how many people opened an album is counted without a cookie (our Privacy Policy, Sharing Your Photos). Lasts one year.

Support view (moana-view-as): set only in the browser of a Media Moana operator using the read-only support mode described in our Privacy Policy. Lasts one hour.

Local Storage

Your color scheme (mui-mode), and your library display settings such as grid or map view and which filters are open (app-storage).

A draft of a support message you have not sent yet, so it survives a reload (contact-form-draft).

The albums shared with you where you closed the offer to keep the album in a Media Moana account of your own, so it does not come back on that link (keep-album-dismissed). It holds a short fingerprint of each such link, never the link itself — the last 100 at most.

Session Storage

For the length of one browser tab, a note that you just signed up, signed in or started a subscription (pending_auth_event, pending_purchase), so our page-view counter can count that step once the page you land on has loaded. It holds the kind of step — for a subscription, the plan, billing period and price — never who you are.

Where you arrived from — the campaign tags in the link that brought you, the domain of the site that sent you and the first page you opened (signup_source) — so that if you sign up, it can be recorded with your new account, and a note that it has been (signup_source_sent). If you sign in with an email link, the same values travel inside that link and are removed from the address bar when it opens. If you do not sign up, they are gone when you close the tab.

Third-Party Cookies

None on our pages. Our page-view counter, Umami, runs on our own servers and sets no cookies. The map view loads map images from OpenFreeMap, which sets no cookies either.

Pages you are sent to that belong to someone else set their own cookies under their own policies: Stripe's checkout and billing pages when you pay, and Google's or GitHub's sign-in pages if you sign in with them.

Managing Cookies

You can view, block or delete cookies and site storage in your browser's settings. Blocking the sign-in cookie means you cannot sign in, and blocking the album access cookie means an album with a password or one shared with specific people cannot be opened; blocking the shared album visitor cookie means a shared album cannot remember your ♥, and blocking the last-visit cookie means the photos added to it since your last visit are not marked as new; everything else keeps working.

Do Not Track

We do not track you across other sites, so a Do Not Track signal has nothing to switch off here.

Updates

When we add or change a cookie or a storage item, we update this page and its effective date. If a change is material, we will also tell you in the app or by email.