Cookie Policy
What cookies Observer sets, why, and how to manage them. Last updated 2026-07-06.
Effective date: 2026-05-24 Last updated: 2026-07-06
This page lists every cookie the Service sets, what category each belongs to, and what to do about it. It sits alongside the Privacy Policy, which is the canonical document for personal data more broadly.
Summary
The Service today sets only strictly-necessary cookies: cookies needed to keep you logged in and to protect the session. We do not run third-party analytics, advertising, or social media trackers on the Service, on the docs site, or on customer status pages. The only analytics we run is self-hosted and cookieless (see "Cookieless analytics" below): it sets no cookies, stores nothing in your browser, and sends nothing to any third party.
Because we only set strictly-necessary cookies, we do not display a cookie consent banner. Strictly-necessary cookies are exempt from the consent requirement under the UK Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) and the EU ePrivacy Directive, and cookieless analytics does not access or store anything on your device, so PECR's consent rule does not apply to it either. The moment we introduce non-essential cookies, we will add a banner that lets you refuse them as easily as accept them, and we will update this page first.
Cookies set today
| Name (or prefix) | Provider | Purpose | Type | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|---|
__clerk_db_jwt | Clerk (our authentication provider) | Keeps you signed in to the Service. Without this cookie, the Service cannot remember that you are authenticated | Strictly necessary | Session, with periodic refresh |
__client_uat | Clerk | Helps Clerk's session machinery detect cross-tab session state | Strictly necessary | Session |
__session | Clerk | Carries the authenticated session token between the browser and Clerk | Strictly necessary | Session, with periodic refresh |
Other __clerk_* cookies | Clerk | Various session and CSRF helpers that Clerk uses to keep authentication safe | Strictly necessary | Session |
The exact cookie names set by Clerk may change as Clerk updates its session machinery. The set above reflects Clerk's published documentation at the time of the Last updated date. Inspect the cookies for the use.observer domain in your browser to see the current set.
Customer status pages served at <subdomain>.use.observer or on a customer's custom domain do not set tracking cookies. Public viewing of a status page involves no client-side cookies set by the Service.
What strictly-necessary means
A cookie is "strictly necessary" if removing it would prevent a service the user has explicitly asked for from working. For Observer that means the cookies above are the minimum needed to let you sign in and stay signed in. Removing them would log you out and prevent you from using the Service.
Strictly-necessary cookies do not require consent under UK PECR or EU ePrivacy. They do, however, still get mentioned here because we want the inventory of what we set to be visible.
How to manage cookies
Strictly-necessary cookies are not optional inside the Service. You can still:
- Block cookies in your browser for the use.observer domain. This will sign you out and prevent further use of the Service. Browser-level controls live in the privacy settings of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.
- Use a private/incognito window, which clears all cookies on close.
- Clear cookies manually at any time using browser tools. The next visit will redirect to sign-in.
Cookieless analytics
We run a self-hosted, open-source, privacy-focused analytics tool on our own infrastructure, in the same environment as the rest of the Service. It gives us aggregate page-view and referrer statistics for the marketing site and dashboard. What matters for this page:
- It sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser. No localStorage, no fingerprinting identifiers. That is why there is no consent banner: PECR / ePrivacy consent applies to storing or accessing information on your device, and nothing is stored or accessed.
- It is first-party. The script is served from use.observer itself and reports to use.observer itself. No data is sent to any third party. It does not appear on the Subprocessors list because there is no third party involved.
- Visitor de-duplication is done with a salted hash that rotates daily, so there is no durable per-person identifier and no cross-day tracking.
- Customer status pages are excluded. The analytics script is not loaded on any status page or embed, on use.observer subdomains or customer custom domains.
- It honours failure silently. If the analytics service is down, pages work exactly the same.
If we ever adopt a tool that sets non-essential cookies instead:
- We will update this page first, listing each non-essential cookie and the third party that sets it.
- We will add a cookie banner that lets you refuse non-essential cookies as easily as accept them. The default state will be "no analytics" until you actively opt in.
- Refusing the banner will not impair your ability to use the Service.
Cookies from third parties on your customer status pages
If you choose to add custom CSS, embed third-party scripts, or otherwise add content to a status page that sets its own cookies, those cookies are set on your behalf and you are the controller responsible for them. The Service does not inject any third-party tracking into customer status pages.
If you embed third-party content (for example, an embedded YouTube video on a status page), that content's provider may set its own cookies subject to its own policy. We do not control or share those cookies.
Changes to this policy
We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time. If we change the set of cookies in use or add a new category, we will update the table above and surface a notice. Continued use of the Service after such a change means you have seen the change.
Contact
If you have questions about cookies or want to report a cookie we have set but not listed, write to [email protected].