Cookies Notice

Last Updated: March 31, 2026

At Public Accountability Initiative (“PAI,” we, our, or us), we respect your concerns about privacy and value the relationship that we have with you. This Cookies Notice (the “Notice”) explains how we use cookies and other similar technology to recognize you when you access and/or use this site and any other online services provided by PAI that expressly incorporate this disclosure (collectively, the “Services”). It explains what these technologies are and why we use them, as well as your rights to control our use of them.

What are cookies?

Cookies are text files that are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website or use the Services and store certain information about your usage of the Services. They are useful because they allow websites to recognize a user’s device. They are then returned to the original website on each subsequent visit or to any other website that recognizes them. For more information on cookies, go to https://knowcookies.com.

The term “cookie” is used in this Notice in the broad sense to include all similar techniques and technology.

Types of information collected and reasons for collection

Cookies help us and our service providers to better understand your use of the Services and as a result allow us, among other things, to offer our users a more personalized and consistent experience. Here are examples of the types of information that we collect through cookies:

• The number of users visiting the Services, the frequency with which the Services were viewed, the pages viewed, the clicks made on the Services, and the total duration of navigation on the Services;
• The name of the website visited prior to the Services;
• Whether you are visiting our Services for the first time or not;
• Your viewing preferences (e.g. layout, sizing preferences, language etc.);
• The type of browser used and your IP address for analytics;
• Your username and your password, so that we can identify you during your next visits.

In addition, cookies allow us and/or our third-party service providers to analyze usage trends, so that we can understand how users are experiencing the Services and improve them.

Type of cookies we use

We use first-party cookies, and our third-party service providers may set cookies, for several reasons. Some cookies are necessary for technical reasons for our Services to operate and/or provide basic functionality to you, and we refer to these as “essential” cookies. Third parties also serve cookies through our Services; see the list of our service providers below.

First-party cookies: 

These cookies are created by PAI. Our database site sets two cookies which track whether you are logged in, and if so which user you are,

• _littlesis_production (essential): Contains your user ID if you’re logged in.  It is based on Ruby on Rails default class, https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionDispatch/Session/CookieStore.html. It expires after 25 months.
• _lilsis_session (essential): Tracks your session ID. It expires after your discrete session ends.. 

Our analytics service sets three cookies which track your unique user id and session id,

• _pk_id (analytics): Contains the unique visitor ID to recognise new and returning visitors to build up a Visitor Profile that includes a summary of your interactions on the site, number of visits, timestamp of first and last visit. It also includes interactions related to eCommerce orders, goals and conversions, and attribution across sessions. It expires after 13 months.
• _pk_ses (analytics): Used to link actions performed during your session (e.g., page views, downloads, events) to a unique visit, thereby allowing our Analytics service to accurately attribute these actions to a single session. It expires after 30 minutes.
• matomo_sessid (essential): A nonce to help prevent CSRF security issues when using the opt-out feature. It expires after 14 days.
• mtm_consent (analytics): A timestamp to track when a visitor consented to analytics tracking.
• mtm_cookie_consent (analytics): A timestamp to track when a visitor consented to analytics tracking.
• mtm_consent_removed (essential): A timestamp to track when a visitor has opted out of tracking.

See Matomo FAQ for more details on these analytics cookies, https://matomo.org/faq/general/faq_146/.

Third-party cookies: 

In addition to our first-party cookies, some third-party companies, such as our service providers, may place cookies on your computer, access them, and/or associate web beacons with them. These cookies enable third-party features or functionalities to be provided on or through the Services. The parties that set these third-party cookies can recognize your device both when it visits our Services and also when it visits certain other websites and online services.

 The types of first- and third-party cookies we use on the Services are:

• Essential website cookies: These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with the Services and to use some of its features, such as access to secure areas that require registration. Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the Services to you, you cannot refuse them without impacting the functionality of the Services.
• Functional cookies: These cookies allow you to browse our Services or benefit from some of its features, such as memorizing language preferences. Similar to essential cookies, if these cookies are disabled, it could impact your experience to use some site functionality, such as your set preferences
• Analytics cookies: These cookies allow us or our third-party service providers to collect statistics on the use of the Services by you and other visitors. Thanks to this information, we are able to improve the features offered on the Services.

By way of example, some specific third-party cookies that may be set in connection with the Services are, and their cookie disclosures:

• Action Network (https://www.actionnetwork.com/cookie-policy)
  • _can2_session
• Google (https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies)
  • __Secure-1PAPISID
  • __Secure-1PSID
  • __Secure-1PSIDCC
  • __Secure-1PSIDTS
  • __Secure-3PAPISID
  • __Secure-3PSID
  • __Secure-3PSIDCC
  • __Secure-3PSIDTS
  • __Secure-ROLLOUT_TOKEN
  • __Secure-YEC
  • AEC
  • APISID
  • DV
  • HSID
  • IDE
  • LOGIN_INFO
  • NID
  • SAPISID
  • SID
  • SIDCC
  • SSID
  • VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
  • VISITOR_PRIVACY_METADATA
  • YSC
• hCaptcha (https://www.hcaptcha.com/privacy)
  • _cf_bm
  • __cflb
  • hmt_id
• Progressive Technology Project (https://www.progressivetech.org/privacy/)
  • SSESS (Prefix. Suffix is randomized)
• Stripe (https://stripe.com/legal/cookies-policy)
  • _Secure-sid
  • _stripe_mid
  • _stripe_sid
  • cid
  • m

Duration of storage of cookies on your device

The duration of storage of cookies on your device may vary, depending on the category to which they belong: temporary or permanent.

Temporary cookies: 

Temporary cookies expire after a relatively brief duration (e.g., minutes to hours), until your browser is closed, and do not leave persistent information in your device’s storage. Our first-party cookies _lilsis_session and _pk_ses are temporary, and certain cookies set by third-party service providers may also be temporary.  

Persistent cookies: 

Persistent cookies are stored on your device for a longer period of time. They can stay on your device for 24 hours, a week or several years, depending on their function. They allow us and our service providers to understand your browsing behavior over a period of time, or to provide you with additional features related to the use of online services.  Our first-party _littlesis_production and _pk_id cookies are persistent, and many cookies set by third-party service providers are persistent. This means that these cookies survive after your browser is closed and can be used by our and our providers’ services to recognize your computer when you reopen your browser later.

 Cookie management

You can decide whether to accept or reject cookies. If you want to refuse cookies, please follow the instructions below:

 All cookies:

You can exercise your preference to receive, or not receive, all types of cookies by managing cookies from your web browser. As the means by which to activate or deactivate cookies varies from one web browser to another, you should visit your web browser’s help menu for more information on cookie preferences. You can also configure your browser at any time to be notified of the receipt of a cookie, so that you can decide whether you want to accept it or not. Cookies do not read the data from your hard drive and you can delete them from your computer at any time. At the moment, it is technically impossible for you to synchronize your settings between your browsers and your devices (your computer or your smartphone). You must set them on each browser/device that you currently use and each time you use a new browser or device.

Our first-party analytics cookies:

You may choose to prevent our services from aggregating and analyzing your actions by opting out with the offered opt out box on the Privacy Policy page, https://littlesis.org/privacy-policy.

Consequences of deactivation of all cookies

If you choose to deactivate cookies, you may continue to use certain parts of our Services. However, some useful features may not work anymore, depending on which cookies you deactivate. Please note that if you have disabled one or more cookies, we may continue to use the information that was collected by such cookies before they were deactivated.

Changes to the Cookies Notice

This Notice may be revised occasionally. Any changes made will be reflected on the Services. Please revisit this Notice regularly to stay informed about our use of cookies. If you have any questions, please contact us as explained below.

Contact us

If you have questions about the use of cookies on our Services, do not hesitate to contact us by email at info@littlesis.org. You will also find more general information about the types of information we collect about you and how you may exercise your data privacy rights in our Privacy Policy.