Cookie Policy

This policy explains which cookies our website uses and why. It sits alongside our Privacy Policy and is written to meet the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA) and the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 (ECTA).

1. The short version

This site sets no cookies of its own. What you will encounter, only if you accept, is our Google reviews widget and Google Analytics — four cookies between them. Neither is used to advertise to you or to build a profile of you across other websites. Decline, and neither one ever loads.

2. What a cookie is

A cookie is a small text file a website asks your browser to store, so that something can be remembered between requests. Related technologies — local storage and session storage — do a similar job. This site uses one local storage entry and no session storage: it records whether you accepted or declined cookies, so you are not asked again on every page. It holds only that answer, and never leaves your browser.

A first-party cookie is set by the site you are visiting. A third-party cookie is set by another company whose content is embedded in the page. The reviews widget's two cookies are third-party; Google Analytics writes its two under our own domain, so they are first-party, even though the data they collect goes to Google.

3. How this website is built

Understanding the build explains why there is so little to disclose.

The site is statically generated. Every page is plain HTML built in advance and served from our host's CDN. There is no login, no shopping basket and no session to keep track of, so there is nothing for a first-party cookie to do.
Fonts are self-hosted. They are served from our own domain rather than pulled from Google Fonts, so no font provider sees your visit.
Analytics is opt-in, not on by default. We use Google Analytics (via Google Tag Manager) to see which pages get visited and roughly how people find us — nothing more granular, and no heatmap, session recording, or advertising pixel of any kind. It does not run until you accept; declining, or simply not answering, keeps it off.
Forms are sent by email, not stored in a browser. When you submit the contact, project or newsletter form, it is posted to a small server function that emails it to us. Nothing about your submission is written to your browser.
The animated backgrounds are drawn locally in your browser and send nothing anywhere.
The reviews widget is the one exception, and it is gated twice over: it is not fetched unless you have accepted cookies, and even then only once it is close to your screen. Decline, or simply ignore the banner, and its code is never requested — so no cookie is ever set.

4. The cookies actually used

The list below was produced by loading this website in a clean browser, scrolling the whole page, and reading back exactly what had been stored.

elfsight_viewed_recently

Set by: Elfsight (core.service.elfsight.com)
Type: Third-party, functional
Purpose: Lets the reviews widget remember that it has already been shown to you recently, so it does not re-fetch the same content on every page.
Lasts: Expires the same day

_cfuvid

Set by: Cloudflare, on Elfsight’s behalf (.elfsight.com)
Type: Third-party, strictly necessary
Purpose: Used by Cloudflare to tell genuine visitors apart from automated traffic and to apply rate limits, protecting the reviews service from abuse. It does not track you across websites.
Lasts: Deleted when you close your browser

_ga

Set by: Google Analytics, via Google Tag Manager
Type: First-party, analytics — only set if you accept cookies
Purpose: Distinguishes you from other visitors, so Google Analytics can count unique visits rather than page loads.
Lasts: 13 months

_ga_80JYC49PQ5

Set by: Google Analytics, via Google Tag Manager
Type: First-party, analytics — only set if you accept cookies
Purpose: Holds the state of your current analytics session — the same purpose as _ga, in the format GA4 uses for this specific property.
Lasts: 13 months

The first two are set by Elfsight, the service that displays our Google reviews. When the widget loads it also requests reviewer profile pictures from Google, which means Google's servers see the request your browser makes for those images. The _ga cookies are set by Google Analytics, run through Google Tag Manager.

5. Your choice, and what it actually does

The two tools behind the banner rest on different grounds, but the choice you are given is one and the same: Accept turns both on, Decline — or simply not answering — keeps both off.

Google reviews is a legitimate-interest case: it does not track you between websites, build a profile of you, or feed advertising, so we can rely on our interest in displaying our own reviews, disclosed to you here, without asking first. It would still load if you never touched the banner — accepting is what keeps that showing rather than switching it off.
Google Analytics measures individual visits, which is not strictly necessary, so POPIA requires your consent before it runs at all. It does not load on arrival, and it does not load because you ignored the banner — only an explicit Accept starts it.

The opt-out is real. Choosing Decline cookies is not just dismissing a message:

Neither the reviews widget nor Google Analytics is ever requested — not on this page or any later visit — so none of the four cookies above are set.
You will see a short note where the reviews would have been, rather than a blank space.
If you decline while a page is already open, it takes effect from your next page view; anything already loaded is not retrospectively unloaded.

We record your answer in your browser's local storage rather than in a cookie, because storing it is strictly necessary and a cookie would be the very thing being discussed. It never leaves your browser.

Withdrawing consent must be as easy as giving it, so you can change your mind at any time: . To clear cookies already set, use your browser's settings as described below.

6. How to control cookies

You are in charge of what your browser stores. Declining in the banner is the simplest way to stop all four cookies from being set in the first place. You can also block or delete cookies directly in your browser settings — blocking third-party cookies stops the two Elfsight sets, and Google offers a browser add-on that blocks Google Analytics specifically, including the first-party cookies it sets here. Because nothing on this site depends on cookies, blocking any or all of them will not break anything — at most the reviews widget may load its content more often than it needs to.

Most browsers also offer a private or incognito window, which clears everything when you close it.

7. Changes to this policy

If we add or remove a tool that stores something in your browser, we will update this page and the date at the top. Because the list above reflects a real audit rather than a generic template, we re-check it whenever we change how the site is built.

8. Contact

Questions about cookies or anything else on this page: hello@digitalfold.co.za.

This policy describes our actual practices. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for having it reviewed by an attorney against your specific circumstances before you rely on it.