Stack Exchange Cookie Policy
Please read this cookie policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are and how we use cookies on our website. This policy should be read together with our privacy policy which sets out how and why we collect, store, use and share personal information generally, as well as your rights in relation to your personal information and details of how to contact us and supervisory authorities if you have a complaint.
Who we are?
This website is operated by the Stack Exchange Network (also referred to herein as “Stack Overflow”, “Stack Exchange”, or “Network”). Stack Overflow is a set of related Internet sites and other applications for questions and answers, owned and operated by Stack Exchange, Inc. (“Stack Overflow”, “we” or “us”), a Delaware corporation.
Our website
This cookie policy only relates to your use of our websites, apps and services listed below:
askubuntu.com, mathoverflow.net, serverfault.com, stackapps.com, stackexchange.com, stackoverflow.co, stackoverflow.com, stackoverflow.blog, stackoverflowsolutions.com, stackoverflowteams.com, superuser.com.
Throughout our websites we may link to other websites owned and operated by certain trusted third parties to service advertisements or provide analytical services. These other third party websites may also use cookies or similar technologies in accordance with their own separate policies. For privacy information relating to these other third party websites, please consult their policies as appropriate.
Cookies
A cookie is a small text file that our sites store on your computer or mobile device when you visit our websites. Our websites, apps and other services (“Sites”), send this data to your browser when you first request a web page and then store the data on your computer or other device so the website or app can access, store or collect information from your device when you first request a web page. Browsers support cookies and similar technologies (such as local storage and pixels) so that our websites can remember information about your visit and can use the information to improve your experience and to create aggregated anonymized statistics about usage of the site. In this Policy, we use the term “cookie” to refer both to cookies and similar technologies.
Cookies may be set by the site you are visiting (“first-party cookies”) or by a third party, such as those who provide analytics or advertising services or interactive content on the site (“third-party cookies”). In addition to using cookies on our sites, we may also serve our cookies (specifically, our advertising pixel) on third-party sites operated by our advertisers who use our advertising platform.
If you use the Stack Overflow Network, both Stack Overflow and third parties will use cookies to track and monitor some of your activities on and off the Stack Overflow Network, and store and access some data about you, your browsing history, and your usage of the Stack Overflow Network.
Third Party Cookies
Our third party partners and other organizations that sponsor pages on Stack Overflow may use cookies or other technologies to learn more about your interest in their products and services and in some cases to tailor such products and services to you.
Third-Party Cookies: Our services also include cookies from third parties that we partner with or which provide services us. These include third party companies that work with us or with advertisers who advertise on the Stack Exchange Network in order to help target ads or measure the results of an advertising campaign.
For further information on cookies generally, including how to control and manage them, visit the guidance on cookies published by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, https://www.aboutcookies.org or https://www.allaboutcookies.org.
Our use of cookies
Third party access to the cookies
Our third party partners and other organizations that sponsor pages on Stack Overflow may use cookies or other technologies to learn more about your interest in their products and services and in some cases to tailor such products and services to you.
Third-Party Cookies: Our services also include cookies from third parties that we partner with directly or indirectly. Many of these third parties are companies that work with us or with advertisers who advertise on the Stack Exchange Network in order to help target ads or measure the results of an advertising campaign.
More information about the cookies we use
General Browsing: We use cookies that are important for certain technical features of our website, like logging into user accounts and implementing fixes and improvements to our platform.
These cookies:
- Enable behavior in our Products and/or Services that is tailored to the activity or preferences of a person visiting our properties
- Allow users to opt out of certain types of modeling, tailoring, or personalization in our products
- Collect information on our users’ preferences in order to create more useful products
- Maintain the regular business operations of our Advertising and Marketing departments (such as one-time pop-ups or “hero” displays when first visiting a site and to collect impressions and click data)
- Help to diagnose and correct downtime, bugs, and errors in our code to ensure that our products are operating efficiently
Public Q&A Platform: We use cookies that support and enhance our public Q&A platform by enabling important functionality. Such activity includes tracking and attributing reputation and badges based on site activity.
These cookies:
- Validate the authenticity of persons attempting to gain access to a specific user account
- Enable the core platform of community-generated questions and answers, including diagnosing and resolving issues within our Q&A platform
- Identify individual users to attribute activities and awards
- Allow you to create an optional, résumé-like listing of user achievements and employment history, comparable to a resume, which users can reference when applying for new jobs through our Talent platform or externally
Talent Platform: We use cookies to run our Talent platform, allowing prospective employers to recruit for open positions and users to view and apply for those positions.
These cookies:
- Validate the authenticity of persons attempting to gain access to a specific user account
- Help us to comply with legal requirements in recruitment and hiring
- Provide a means of contact for Talent employers (including opting out of the Talent candidate listings)
- Allow employers to target specific users (via searches and marketing efforts) who are likely to qualify for a given position
- Allow users to save searches in order to more quickly identify newly listed jobs
- Create a channel of direct communication between our support staff and users who request assistance
- Support integration of job applications and listings from our platform to third-party applicant tracking systems (ATS).
Stack Overflow Teams: We use cookies for our Teams platform, enabling groups to access our secured, private Q&A solution.
These cookies:
- Validate the identity of authorized persons and accounts to gain access to a specific Team or Company account
- Enable the core platform of team-generated questions and answers, including diagnosing and resolving issues within our Teams Q&A platform
- Identify individual users to attribute activities and awards
Advertising: We use cookies to enable advertising with our third-party Partners, which in turn allows us to provide many of our services free of charge.
These cookies:
- Customize the ad experience for our users, including tailoring job and display ads to the technologies a person has previously looked at, the communities a person has visited, and the job ads a person has already seen
- Allow direct communication between a 3rd party partner who hosts a promotional event with us, and users who have opted into the promotion
- Allow us to track when a Stack Overflow user sees or clicks on an ad or later visits a third-party website or purchases a product on a third-party website
- Collect impressions and click data for internal reporting and product optimization
Analytics: We use cookies to compile usage activity in order to better cater our Products and Services offerings to you, and to third parties. We DO NOT share identifiable “raw” data with our clients or any third parties, however we do make high-level decisions based on aggregated data about your usage of our Products and Services.
These cookies:
- Monitor site traffic and behavior flows of users
- Measure the effectiveness of on-site products
- Measure the effectiveness of off-site marketing campaigns and tactics
How to turn off all cookies and consequences of doing so
If you do not want to accept any cookies, you may be able to change your browser settings so that cookies (including those which are essential to the services requested) are not accepted. If you do this, please be aware that you may lose some of the functionality of our website.
For further information about cookies and how to disable them please go www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.
Your browser settings
Your browser includes controls that allow you to manage the use of cookies by the sites that you visit. Most browsers have features that enable you to see and delete cookies stored on your device and to block cookies from all or selected sites.
Your browser may be initially set to accept cookies, but you can change your settings to notify you when a cookie is being set or updated, or to block cookies altogether.
Please note that by blocking any or all cookies you may not have access to certain features, content, or personalization available through the website.
Please check the “Help” section of your browser for more information. You can also click on the links below for more information from external help materials for some of the popular browsers:
Your mobile device settings
Your mobile device may also include browser settings that allow you to manage the use of cookies, especially if the device supports installing apps such as iOS and Android devices. iOS and Android devices also include additional device settings that control whether advertising partners can use information about your app activity for advertising purposes. On iOS, you can search for a setting called Limit Ad Tracking. On Android, you can search for a setting called Opt out of Ads Personalization.
Third-party opt-outs
The major online advertising industry groups offer tools to limit how cookies are used for advertising purposes by participating third parties. More information is available on these sites from the Network Advertising Initiative, the Digital Advertising Alliance, and for users in the EU, the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance. Also, Google provides web users with the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on to prevent the collection of data via Google Analytics.
How to contact us
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding this Cookies Policy, please contact Stack Overflow at:
Changes to this policy
We may change this policy from time to time, when we do we will inform you by publishing it on our websites.