Cookie Policy

Overview

FreeCV.org uses three groups of cookies. Essential cookies keep you signed in and block bots. Analytics cookies tell us which pages people actually read. Advertising cookies serve the ads that pay for the free builder. That's the whole picture.

The short version: if you want to skip all the non-essential stuff, enable Global Privacy Control in your browser. We honor it automatically. No clicking through a consent maze, no dark patterns. Done.

What Are Cookies?

Cookies are tiny text files a website asks your browser to store. The next time you visit, the browser hands the file back to the site. That's how a shopping cart remembers what you put in it, how a video site remembers which clips you've watched, and how an ad network figures out you've seen the same banner six times today.

Most cookies are harmless. A few track you across the open web. We use the harmless kind on purpose and the trackier kind only because Google AdSense needs them to deliver ads, which is the reason FreeCV stays free for everyone else.

Essential Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary. Without them the site can't keep you signed in, can't tell humans from bots, and can't process a PRO purchase safely. EU law says you don't need to consent to these because the site literally won't work otherwise.

Analytics Cookies

We use Google Analytics 4 to count pageviews and figure out which templates and CV examples are actually useful. We don't see your name, email, CV content, or anything personally identifying. We see numbers like "300 people read the cover-letter guide today" and "Toronto template gets more downloads than Modern". That's it.

You can opt out of Google Analytics globally with the official Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or just block these cookies in your browser settings.

Advertising Cookies

FreeCV stays free because Google AdSense serves ads to logged-out visitors on most pages. AdSense sets cookies so the same person doesn't see the same ad fifty times in a row, and so advertisers can measure whether a click turned into anything useful. The cookies don't see your CV content because we don't expose it to them. They see the page URL, your IP, and a Google-assigned identifier.

Local Storage (Not a Cookie, but You Should Know)

Your CV draft lives in your browser's local storage under the key freecv-builder-v3. Local storage is not a cookie. It's a bigger sibling that stays on your device and never gets attached to network requests automatically. We use it so you can close the tab, come back tomorrow, and pick up exactly where you left off without an account.

• Your CV data is saved to your own device only
• It is not sent to our servers unless you sign in and choose to save online
• Clearing your browser data wipes it. Make sure to download the PDF first
• Different browsers and different devices keep separate copies

If you want to start fresh, click "Reset" in the builder, or clear your browser storage for freecv.org. Either works.

How to Manage Cookies

You don't need our permission to control your cookies. Pick whichever method matches the level of effort you feel like making.

The 10-second method

Enable Global Privacy Control in your browser. It's a single setting that broadcasts an opt-out signal to every site you visit. We honor it automatically. Brave and Firefox have it built in. Chrome and Edge need a small extension like Privacy Badger or DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials.

The per-browser method

• Chrome cookie settings
• Firefox cookie settings
• Safari cookie settings
• Edge cookie settings

The Google-specific method

Visit Google's My Ad Center to turn off personalized ads across the entire Google ecosystem. This affects every site that uses AdSense, not just FreeCV.

Consent & Your Rights

If you're in the EU, EEA, UK, or Switzerland, GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive give you the right to refuse non-essential cookies before they're set. If you're in California, the CCPA and CPRA give you the right to opt out of "sale" or "sharing" of your personal info, which in our case means the AdSense cookies above.

For your full data rights including access, deletion, and portability, see the GDPR Rights section of our Privacy Policy. For California-specific rights and the opt-out form, visit Your Privacy Choices.

Changes to This Policy

We update this page when we add or remove a cookie, when a third-party service changes its names, or when the law changes. The "Last Updated" date at the top tells you when the current version was published. Big changes get a banner on the homepage for a couple of weeks so nobody misses them.

Contact Us

Questions about cookies, requests to exercise your rights, or just want to flag something we got wrong? Reach us at info@freecv.org or via the contact page.