whatportis.com

legal / cookies

Cookie Policy

WhatPortIs is a free database of network ports and protocols. It sets one cookie in total — and only a maintainer signing into the admin console ever receives it — and keeps your theme choice in localStorage. Visits are counted without storing anything on your machine. That's the whole list, and it's written out below with names, flags and lifetimes so you can check it against your own devtools.

cookies set
1
for visitors
0
ad cookies
0
last updated
6 October 2026

00 / definitions

What A Cookie Actually Is

A cookie is a small named string a site asks your browser to keep and hand back on every later request to that site. It is how a server tells one visit from the next without knowing who you are. localStorage and sessionStorage are the other two places a page can leave data; they are not cookies, are never attached to a request, and are readable only by JavaScript running on the same site. This page covers all three, because "we only use essential cookies" is a hollow claim if the tracking simply moved next door.

A cookie is called first-party when it belongs to the domain in your address bar, and third-party when it belongs to someone else's domain embedded in the page. The one cookie here is first-party, and no third party sets any.

01 / inventory

Every Cookie This Site Sets

1 cookies

One, first-party, and never set for an ordinary visitor.

  • admin-auth

    necessarycookie
    provider
    WhatPortIs (this site)
    purpose
    Marks a signed-in maintainer in the admin console. It holds the literal string "true" and nothing else — no id, no name, no session record. It is only written after someone posts the correct admin password, and it is never set for ordinary visitors: reading, searching and contributing all work without a login.
    lifetime
    24 hours (max-age 86400); logging out deletes it immediately
    flags
    httpOnly (JavaScript cannot read it), SameSite=Strict, path=/, secure in production
    set in
    app/api/admin/login/route.ts

Visits are counted with Plausible, which is cookieless by design: it sets no cookie, writes nothing to localStorage or sessionStorage, and gives your browser no id. A visitor is counted from a hash of the request that changes every day, so yesterday's visit can't be joined to today's. What gets collected, as opposed to what gets stored on your machine, is the subject of the privacy policy.

02 / not cookies

Other Browser Storage

1 keys

These are not cookies and this page does not pretend otherwise. They are stored in your browser, they never travel with a request, and the same controls clear them.

  • whatportis-theme

    preferencelocalStorage
    provider
    WhatPortIs (this site)
    purpose
    Remembers whether you picked light, dark or system from the theme toggle. It holds one of those three words.
    lifetime
    until you clear site data
    flags
    not sent to the server — it is read in the browser only
    set in
    next-themes, configured in app/layout.tsx

03 / absent

What Isn't Here

advertising cookies
no ad network runs here. Google AdSense was integrated once and was removed from the codebase; nothing replaced it.
cross-site trackers
no pixels, no tag manager, no remarketing tags, no data brokers. Nothing here follows you off this domain.
social embeds
no like buttons, no embedded timelines, no comment widgets — those set cookies for the network behind them.
font cookies
Inter Tight and JetBrains Mono are compiled into this site by next/font at build time, so your browser never asks Google for them and Google never sees the request.
sold data
the analytics figures are read by the people who maintain the database and by nobody else. They are not sold, traded or licensed.

04 / control

How To Control It

There is no cookie banner on this site, because there is nothing for one to ask about: no visitor is given a cookie. The theme key is written only when you use the toggle. The controls that clear it are the ones your browser already gives you.

The quickest one: click the padlock or the tune icon at the left of your address bar while you are on whatportis.com. Every major browser puts per-site cookie and data controls behind it, including a button that clears everything this site has stored. The longer route runs through settings.

chrome
settings → privacy and security → site settings → view permissions and data stored across sites
firefox
settings → privacy & security → cookies and site data → manage data
safari
settings → privacy → manage website data
edge
settings → cookies and site permissions → manage and delete cookies and site data

analytics — since nothing is stored, there is nothing to clear. To stop being counted at all, run a content blocker with a rule against the /api/pv path. The analytics script and its requests are proxied through this domain, so a blocklist entry for an analytics host will miss them; the block has to be aimed at this site.

clearing — clearing site data for whatportis.com removes your theme preference, and the admin cookie if you are a maintainer. That is everything.

do not track / gpc — being straight about this: the analytics script does not read the Do Not Track header or Global Privacy Control. Since it stores nothing on your machine and keeps no id for you, there is no record of you for those signals to switch off; blocking the path above is what stops the count.

05 / consequences

If You Block Them

The site works. Search, categories, port pages, the API and sending a correction are all rendered on the server or need no stored state, so none of them depend on a cookie. Nothing is gated, nothing degrades, and no message will nag you about it.

One thing changes: if you block site data wholesale rather than just cookies, your theme choice stops sticking — the page falls back to your operating system's light or dark setting on every visit, which for most people is the right answer anyway.

06 / processors

Who Else Sees It

Nobody. The analytics run on our own Plausible server: requests go to /api/pv on this domain and are forwarded server-side to it, so no analytics company receives them. The admin cookie never leaves this site's own server, and the theme key never leaves your browser. For what the server itself logs, and how corrections you submit are handled, see the privacy policy and the terms of service.

07 / upkeep

Changes And Contact

updated 6 october 2026

The inventory on this page is meant to match the code, not to describe it loosely. If a cookie is added, a lifetime changes, a consent banner appears or the analytics tool is swapped, this page is edited in the same change and the date at the top moves. A policy that has drifted from the code is a bug here, the same as a wrong port number.

Found something we store that isn't listed?

Open your devtools, compare the keys against the tables above, and tell us if they disagree. Questions about anything on this page go to the same address.

[email protected]