What Cookies Are
Cookies are small text files that a website stores on your computer, phone, or tablet when you visit. They are widely used to make websites work properly, to remember preferences, to measure how a site is used, and to support online advertising. Cookies cannot run programs or deliver viruses to your device, and they cannot read files from your hard drive. They simply let a website recognize your browser and recall information associated with it, such as a session identifier or a preference you set earlier.
Alongside cookies, websites may use similar technologies such as local storage, pixels, and tags. In this policy, "cookies" refers to all of these technologies collectively.
How We Use Cookies
Unemployment Benefits Calculator uses as few cookies as practical. The site's core promise, instant benefit estimates with no signup and no personal information, means we have no reason to build profiles of our visitors. The cookies that appear on this site fall into three broad categories:
| Category | Purpose | Who Sets Them |
|---|---|---|
| Strictly necessary | Basic site functionality and security, such as session-related cookies used by the content management system, load balancing, and protection against abusive traffic | Set by this website |
| Analytics | Aggregate measurement of page views, popular pages, and error rates so we can improve the site; reported in totals, not individual profiles | Set by us or our analytics provider |
| Advertising | Serving and measuring ads, limiting how often you see the same ad, and enabling personalized advertising where you have consented or where permitted | Set by our advertising partners, including Google |
Strictly necessary cookies are always active because the site cannot function correctly without them. Analytics and advertising cookies are used as described below, and your browser controls, described later in this policy, give you significant power over both.
Advertising Cookies and Google AdSense
This website is free because of advertising. We display ads served through Google AdSense, and those ads involve cookies in the following ways:
- Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites.
- Google's use of advertising cookies, including the DoubleClick DART cookie, enables Google and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to our site and/or other sites on the internet.
- Advertising cookies also perform non-personalized functions, such as frequency capping (not showing you the same ad repeatedly), fraud detection, and aggregated ad performance measurement.
You have direct control over personalized advertising. You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings, and you can opt out of third-party vendor cookies for personalized advertising at www.aboutads.info/choices. If you opt out, you will still see ads on this site; they will simply be less relevant to your interests, which is the practical difference between personalized and non-personalized advertising.
Where required by law, such as for visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, a consent message may ask for your permission before advertising cookies are set. You can change or withdraw that consent at any time through the same tool or through your browser settings.
Analytics Cookies
We use analytics measurement to answer simple operational questions: how many people read a guide, which states' calculators are used most, and which pages load slowly or produce errors. This data reaches us in aggregate form. We do not use analytics cookies to build individual profiles, and we do not attempt to identify visitors by name or email through analytics data.
How Long Cookies Stay on Your Device
Cookies have different lifetimes. Session cookies exist only while your browser is open and disappear when you close it. Persistent cookies remain on your device for a set period, from days to as long as two years, or until you delete them manually. Advertising cookies set through AdSense are typically persistent, with durations governed by Google's policies. Strictly necessary cookies used by the site's own systems are generally session-scoped or short-lived.
How to Control and Delete Cookies
Every major browser gives you direct control over cookies. You can block all cookies, block only third-party cookies, delete cookies when you close the browser, or review and delete individual cookies. Here is where to find those controls in the most common browsers:
- Google Chrome: Settings → Privacy and security → Third-party cookies, or Site settings → Cookies and site data
- Mozilla Firefox: Settings → Privacy & Security → Enhanced Tracking Protection; Manage Data under Cookies and Site Data
- Safari (Mac): Safari menu → Settings → Privacy → Manage Website Data and "Block all cookies"
- Safari (iPhone/iPad): Settings app → Safari → Privacy & Security → "Block All Cookies" or "Prevent cross-site tracking"
- Microsoft Edge: Settings → Cookies and site permissions → Manage and delete cookies and site data
If you block or delete cookies, the strictly necessary parts of this site, including the calculators, will generally continue to work, because our calculators do not require cookies to produce an estimate. However, some conveniences may be affected, and you will still see advertising, though it may be non-personalized or less relevant. Blocking all cookies on all websites can also break logins and carts on other sites you use, so many visitors prefer to block third-party cookies only.
You can also use industry opt-out platforms such as aboutads.info/choices and optout.networkadvertising.org to turn off personalized advertising across many participating publishers at once. These opt-outs are cookie-based, so they must be renewed if you clear your cookies or use a different browser or device.
Changes to This Cookie Policy
We may update this Cookie Policy as our cookie use changes, as we add or remove partners, or as the law evolves. When we update it, we will change the last-updated date below. We recommend reviewing this page periodically if cookies are important to you, and you can always see the current version here.
Last updated: September 14, 2026.
Questions
If you have questions about this Cookie Policy or how cookies are used on this site, contact us at unemploymentbenefitscalculator@gmail.com and we will respond within one to two business days. You can also read our Privacy Policy for the bigger picture of how information is handled on this website.