Cookies Policy for FL Property Search explains how this website uses cookies and similar technologies, what each category does, and the choices available to you. The site is an independent educational resource operated by Digital Rackup, covering Florida’s public property records across all 67 counties, and its cookie usage reflects its purpose: a free, reading-focused site that keeps technologies minimal and discloses what it does run.
This policy works alongside the site’s Privacy Policy, which covers the broader data practices, and it focuses on the browser technologies specifically: cookies, local storage, and the embedded services that may touch your browser during a visit. Reading both policies in full gives the complete picture of the site’s practices. This website is an independent educational resource and is not affiliated with any government office or agency.
What Cookies Are and What They Do
A cookie is a small text file that a website stores in your browser, carrying data the site can read on your later visits: a preference, a session identifier, a consent record, or a usage marker, the kinds of notes the privacy policy and this page both disclose in full. Cookies are neither programs nor surveillance by themselves; they are notes your browser keeps at the site’s request, and their purposes range from making websites function to remembering choices to measuring usage across every FL Property Search visit that this educational site receives.
Similar technologies work alongside cookies: local storage, which keeps data in your browser under the site’s origin without the cookie headers; session storage, which clears when your session ends; and pixels or scripts, which are resource loads that can serve functions equivalent to cookies. This policy’s coverage and your browser’s controls apply to that whole family, and the site’s usage of each is disclosed below.
Why Websites Use Cookies at All
The web’s fundamental design is stateless: every page request stands alone, and the server would not remember your previous request without a mechanism to carry state. Cookies fill that role. A consent system needs to remember that you already answered; a security system needs to distinguish legitimate traffic; an analytics system needs to count visits without double-counting every page. The technologies are therefore structural to modern web delivery, and the honest question is not whether they exist but what each one is used for.
This site’s answer, stated in full below, is: as little as possible, with each technology serving a disclosed function, and nothing serving the construction of individual advertising profiles from this site’s own traffic.
First-Party and Third-Party Cookies
First-party cookies are set by the site you are visiting, under its own domain, and they serve that site’s functions. Third-party cookies and scripts are set by services the site embeds, under the services’ domains, and they serve the services’ functions, from analytics to advertising to content delivery. The distinction matters because your controls and the applicable law’s consent requirements treat them differently.
The site’s own usage runs first-party wherever practical, with third parties limited to the disclosed supporting services, and the sections below name the categories and their functions as they exist on this site.
Cookie Categories Used on This Site
The site’s cookie usage falls into the standard categories, and each category’s presence, purpose, and duration are disclosed here. The table gives the summary, and the sections that follow explain each category’s role on this site specifically.
| Category | Purpose | Duration | Set By |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strictly necessary | Security, page delivery, load balancing | Session to short-term | First party |
| Consent and preferences | Remembering your privacy choices | Months | First party |
| Analytics | Aggregate usage measurement | Short to medium term | First or third party per configuration |
| Advertising | Ad delivery and measurement, where advertising is in use | Varies by provider | Third party via consent mechanism |
Strictly Necessary Cookies
These technologies serve the site’s basic delivery: security tokens that distinguish legitimate readers from abusive traffic, load-balancing markers that route requests efficiently in the hosting environment, and technical flags that keep the infrastructure operating under load. Without them, the site either cannot function properly or cannot defend itself, which is why the applicable laws treat the category differently: strictly necessary technologies do not wait for consent, though they are disclosed.
On this site, the category is deliberately minimal: nothing in it carries personal profiling, and its durations are session-scoped or short-term by design. Blocking it through browser controls may degrade page delivery or security handling, and the disclosure exists so the trade-off is informed.
Consent and Preference Technologies
Where consent laws require choice, the site’s consent mechanism stores your answer so it does not ask again on every page: a first-party record of the choice itself, with its date and scope. The record is functional and serves your own expressed preference, and deleting it simply means the mechanism asks again, which is the correct behavior under the law.
Aside from consent records, the site carries no preference-memorizing features that require storage: no themes, no accounts, no saved states, because the site’s design is a clean reading experience that needs none.
Analytics Technologies
The site’s analytics, where enabled, measure aggregate usage: page and county-guide traffic, referral sources, general device classes, and reading patterns at the population level. The configuration preference runs toward anonymized measurement: data aggregated rather than profiled, IP handling minimized, and no cross-site tracking joined to the site’s own measurement.
The purpose is editorial: knowing what readers actually use directs the maintenance, the corrections, and the expansion of the guides. The analytics exist for the content’s quality, not for building individual dossiers, and the third-party tool’s own policy governs its technical processing where a third-party tool is in use.
Advertising Technologies
Where the site carries advertising to fund its operations, the advertising providers set their own technologies under their own consent mechanisms and policies, which govern their processing under the applicable law. The site’s own posture toward this category is disclosed: advertising data flows are the providers’, the consent experience is theirs under the lawful frameworks, and the site does not supplement them with its own reader data beyond the delivery mechanics.
Your choices in this category run through the consent mechanism where the law requires it, the providers’ own opt-outs, and the industry’s choice tools the providers’ policies reference. Blocking advertising technologies through your browser is another lawful path, and the disclosure’s purpose is that every path be informed.
Browser Controls and Third-Party Tools
You control the technologies through your browser, and this section explains the practical controls available to every reader. The controls work identically whether or not the site requests additional consent, because they are your system’s settings rather than the site’s.
Browser Settings
Every modern browser offers cookie controls: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari each provide settings pages where you can block all cookies, block third-party cookies only, clear existing cookies, and set site-specific exceptions. Clearing cookies removes the consent records and any stored state, which means mechanisms will ask again, and blocking categories means the functions they serve degrade accordingly.
Private or incognito browsing adds another layer: session technologies clear when the window closes, and the technologies that persist across visits do not persist there. For readers who prefer minimal persistence, the private window plus default settings achieves a clean, functional reading experience on this site.
Third-Party Opt-Out Tools
Where third parties’ technologies operate, their opt-outs run through their own channels: the analytics providers’ opt-out mechanisms, the advertising industry’s choice tools, and the providers’ own privacy settings. These tools operate at the providers’ level rather than the site’s, and their effectiveness follows their documentation.
The site’s practical guidance is simple and honest: your browser’s controls plus the consent mechanism where presented cover everything this site runs, and the providers’ tools add control at their level for the technologies that are theirs.
Mobile Devices
Mobile browsers carry the same controls through their settings, and the mobile operating systems add their own tracking permissions: iOS’s privacy controls and Android’s equivalents govern identifiers beyond cookies, and both platforms’ settings pages document the choices. The site’s mobile experience runs on the same disclosed technologies, and the same controls apply.
Embedded Content and Its Technologies
Websites embed third-party resources for fonts, media, and functionality, and embedded resources can themselves load technologies. This section discloses the site’s embedded-content posture.
What This Site Embeds
The site’s pages are text-and-graphics guides, and their embedding posture is minimal: system fonts or self-hosted fonts, self-hosted or directly served styles and scripts, and no social-media embeds, no video embeds from third-party platforms, and no comment systems that would pull third-party scripts into every page. The design choice is deliberate: fewer embedded parties means fewer technologies and fewer data flows, which serves the site’s privacy posture and its speed.
Where the site’s tooling changes and an embedded service appears, this policy updates with it, and the embedded service’s own policy governs its processing as described in the Privacy Policy’s third-party section.
Links Are Not Embeds
The site’s links to county portals and its references to official sites are navigation, not embedding: clicking a link takes you to the county portals carrying florida property records, under their own domain, its own policies, and its own technologies. Nothing loads from those destinations while you read this site.
The distinction matters for your control: linked destinations’ technologies are handled entirely by your visit to them, your browser settings apply there as anywhere, and this site’s policies cover only what loads here.
Updates to This Cookies Policy
The site’s technologies evolve with its tooling, the law evolution affects the requirements, and this policy updates alongside them. The updated policy publishes on this page with its effective date, and material changes to the categories, the purposes, or your choices are highlighted in the consent mechanism where one is presented and in the policy’s own text.
Questions about this policy reach the site through the contact email at info@flpropertysearch.org, and they are answered with the same priority the privacy matters carry generally. The policy’s commitment is stable even as its details evolve: minimal technologies, disclosed purposes, honored choices, and no construction of individual profiles from this site’s traffic. That is the whole usage, disclosed in full here, so that your reading of Florida’s public records stays as private as reading should be.
