Our own code sets no cookies and runs no analytics. Termly remembers your cookie choice. tawk.to loads after a Performance-category opt-in or when you click “Chat with the bench”. Order, quote and contact forms send requests to us without setting cookies. This page explains the browser storage and your choices.
The short version
Our own code sets no cookies and writes nothing to local storage, session storage or IndexedDB. No session cookie, no preference cookie of ours, no analytics cookie, no advertising cookie. That part of the old version of this page still stands.
Termly runs the consent banner and remembers your choice in browser storage and its consent record. tawk.to loads automatically only after you opt in to Termly’s Performance category. You can also load and open it by clicking the “Chat with the bench” button, even if you declined that category. Before either action, no tawk.to code loads, no connection to tawk.to is made and no tawk.to cookie is set.
There are also the two standing exceptions from before, each with a section of its own below. The page fetches its typefaces from two outside providers across three hosts, and asking for a font tells them your IP address. And the pages themselves come from a web host, which sees your browser ask for a file: your IP address, what you asked for and when.
A page claiming that nothing at all is recorded about your visit would be claiming something no website can honestly claim, so all of it is written out below rather than left for you to find.
What a cookie is
A cookie is a small piece of text a website asks your browser to keep and hand back on the next page, so the site can recognize the same browser again. That is how a cart survives a page change, how a site remembers you chose dark mode, and how an ad network follows you from one site to the next.
Local storage and session storage do a similar job with more room and no automatic expiry. IndexedDB is a small database sitting in the same place. Our own code uses none of the three. The consent manager keeps your choice in this kind of storage — remembering your answer is the whole point of it — and the chat widget uses it too, once you have opted in or clicked the chat button. Nothing else of ours sits in your browser to clear when you leave.
Why there is a banner now
This page used to explain why there was no consent banner: there was nothing non-essential to consent to, and a banner would have been asking permission for something that was not happening.
Termly provides a first-visit banner with accept, decline and category choices, and Cookie Settings in the footer. The Performance category controls automatic loading of tawk.to. The separate “Chat with the bench” button lets you request chat directly.
Declining Performance prevents automatic chat loading and leaves the site usable. You can still click “Chat with the bench” to load and open chat. No tawk.to script, connection or cookie precedes either that click or a Performance opt-in.
The full inventory
Here is the table a cookie policy is supposed to carry. Two rows now have something in the middle column, and both get a section of their own below. The last column says what each category would be for, so the empty rows mean something to you instead of asking to be taken on faith.
| Category | On this site | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Strictly necessary | One, from the consent manager | Termly stores your consent choice in your browser — a cookie or local-storage entry under its own name — so the banner does not reappear on every page. A site cannot offer you a choice without remembering what you answered. Section 6.0. |
| Preferences | None set | Remembering a language, a currency or a theme. The site has no such switches. |
| Analytics | None set | Counting visits and pages. We do not count them. |
| Advertising | None set | Retargeting you elsewhere and measuring ad clicks. We run none. |
| Social | None set | Feeds, share buttons and social logins. There are no embeds and no login. |
| Live chat (optional) | After a Performance opt-in or a click on “Chat with the bench” | tawk.to uses cookies and browser storage to keep an active chat session across pages. Nothing loads before either action. Section 7.0. |
No tracking pixels, no fingerprinting, no tag manager, no A/B testing, no session recording, no heatmaps, no CRM, no captcha, no embedded map or video, no newsletter signup, no social login and no accounts. Those are not disabled or dormant. They were never added. The consent manager and the chat widget are the only two exceptions to the old “never added” list, and both are on this page.
Local storage and the forms
The forms at /quote and /contact send your request to /api/inquiry on fixedgearstraps.com. They set no cookies and write no form data to local storage, session storage or IndexedDB. There is no captcha; a hidden honeypot and IP-derived rate limiting help prevent abuse.
Requests are stored in Cloudflare D1 and emailed through Resend to quotes@fixedgearstraps.com, then through Migadu to Fastmail. This is server-side processing, not browser storage. The fields, technical data and retention periods are listed at /legal/privacy, sections 3.0 and 10.0.
A successful submission shows a reference shaped GH-XXXX-123. No confirmation email is sent to you; the bench replies personally. There is no card field on this site: card checkout happens on Stripe’s own page at buy.stripe.com, which sets its own cookies under Stripe’s policy. Nothing from Stripe loads on fixedgearstraps.com. Never put card details in a form or chat.
The consent manager
In plain EnglishTermly runs the banner and remembers your answer. It is the one strictly necessary storage write on the site, because a choice that is forgotten every page is not a choice.
The banner on your first visit, and the Cookie Settings button in the footer of every page, are run by Termly, a third-party consent manager. Its job is narrow: ask before anything optional loads, remember what you said, and let you change your mind.
Remembering what you said takes storage. Termly writes your choice to your browser as a first-party cookie or a local-storage entry under its own name, per its current documentation, and your browser reports the choice to Termly’s consent service — the consent.api.termly.io connections in your network tab — so there is a record that consent was given or refused. The record carries the choice, a timestamp and the page you were on.
The stored choice has an expiry set by the consent manager rather than by us, and when it lapses the banner asks again. You never have to wait for that: Cookie Settings in the footer reopens the controls at any time, and switching Performance off prevents automatic chat loading on subsequent pages. The chat button remains available if you choose to load it again. Reload the page after changing settings to end the loaded widget; clearing tawk.to cookies and browser storage removes its local entries. Withdrawing does not reach back and delete what was logged while the category was on — for that, write to us and we will take it up with the provider. 14.0 has the addresses.
The chat widget and when it loads
In plain EnglishChat loads after a Termly Performance opt-in or a click on “Chat with the bench”. Neither browsing nor submitting a form loads it.
tawk.to loads automatically only after you opt in to Termly’s Performance category. You can also load and open it by clicking the “Chat with the bench” button, even if you declined that category. Before either action, no tawk.to code loads, no connection to tawk.to is made and no tawk.to cookie is set. Clicking the button requests chat at that moment; it does not opt you into unrelated optional services.
Once you switch it on, the widget can begin a visitor session even before you type anything. What it processes while it is active, per the provider’s current documentation: your chat messages and any name, email or other details you submit; your IP address and browser or device data; the pages you view and your session activity; your approximate location; and timestamps. It keeps the session alive across pages with cookies and local or session storage under its own name, and the messages go to tawk.to and its subprocessors, which process them internationally.
The purposes are what a chat is for: delivering the live chat, monitoring and troubleshooting chat sessions, security, support and follow-up. What the provider keeps and for how long sits in our settings with them, and a deletion request to us is actioned through their dashboard or passed on.
One warning, because the chat window feels like the bench: do not put card numbers, account credentials or anything highly sensitive into it. Card payment never happens through this website at all — /legal/trust-security covers why — and nothing legitimate will ever ask you for one in a chat.
To stop automatic loading, switch Performance off in Cookie Settings and reload. If you loaded chat by clicking the button, reload without clicking it again; automatic loading also requires Performance to be off. Clearing tawk.to browser storage removes local session entries. Closing the chat window alone does not remove a widget that has already loaded. To request deletion of a transcript, contact hello@fixedgearstraps.com.
Asterisk one: webfonts
In plain EnglishYour browser fetches the typefaces from Google and Fontshare, which shows them your IP address. Section 11.0 is how to stop it.
This page is set in Archivo, Space Mono and Clash Display. Those files come from two providers across three hosts we do not run, and your browser has to ask them directly. Two of the three are preconnected, which means your browser opens the connection a moment before it needs the file — the same hosts, one less wait.
| Host | What it serves | What the request sends |
|---|---|---|
| fonts.googleapis.com | The stylesheet for Archivo and Space Mono (Google Fonts, United States) | IP address, user-agent, referring page |
| fonts.gstatic.com | The Archivo and Space Mono font files (Google Fonts, United States) | IP address, user-agent, referring page |
| api.fontshare.com | Clash Display (Fontshare, operated by Indian Type Foundry, India) | IP address, user-agent, referring page |
That is a real transfer, not a formality. An IP address is roughly a location. Two of those hosts are operated from the United States and one from India, so unless you are reading this from one of those two countries, that information leaves your country. What each provider does with the request is governed by its own policy rather than ours, and a request about that data has to go to the provider holding it.
They set no cookies on fixedgearstraps.com, and nothing comes back to us. No report, no log, no visitor count. The font providers do not return a visitor report to us.
While you browse, the page requests fonts and the consent manager; tawk.to is added only after a Performance opt-in or a chat-button click. Submitting a form also uses the server-side pipeline in 5.0. The 3D cog on the home page runs on three.js, and that code is bundled into the site rather than pulled from a content delivery network, so it calls nowhere. The host that serves the pages themselves is the next section.
Asterisk two: the web host
In plain EnglishPage delivery involves connection data. Inquiry submissions also use an IP-derived rate-limit key and technical records, without setting cookies.
A page has to come from somewhere. The files that make up this site sit with a hosting provider, and asking for a page means your browser connects to them. That connection carries your IP address, your user-agent string, which file you asked for and the time you asked — the four things every web server on the internet sees.
Our hosting provider keeps whatever request logs a web host keeps by default. For inquiry submissions, we also process an IP-derived rate-limit key, a truncated user-agent, timestamps and delivery status as described at /legal/privacy. We do not use these records to count visitors or build browsing profiles. It is not a cookie, nothing is written to your browser, and it cannot follow you to another site.
This one is not something we can switch off. A server cannot send you a page without being told where to send it. We would rather write it down than let the rest of this page imply that nobody sees you arrive.
The full list of outside companies involved in this site and in the business, and what each one gets, is at /legal/trust-security.
Caching is not tracking
Your browser will normally keep a downloaded font file for a while so the next page does not have to fetch it again. That is ordinary caching, and it is worth being clear about what it is: a copy of a typeface sitting on your machine. It is not an identifier and it holds nothing about you. Nothing on this site reads it, and we cannot see it.
Clearing your browser cache clears it. There is nothing else of ours in there to clear.
How to block it anyway
If you would rather your browser never asked those three font hosts for anything, you can stop it. Any of these will do.
- Browser settings. Most browsers can block third-party requests, or remote fonts specifically, somewhere under privacy or content settings.
- A content blocker extension. Most of them include a switch for remote fonts. Turning it on stops all three requests.
- Reader mode. It strips the page down to text in a typeface already installed on your machine, usually before the fonts load.
- A blocker at network level, on your router or in your DNS, if you already run one.
The site is built to survive that. Blocked fonts fall back to what is already on your machine. The type looks plainer and a little less like us, but every word, link, table and button still works, and the layout does not break.
We would rather you read the site in system fonts than not trust it.
What none of that blocks is the request for the page itself, covered at 9.0. Nothing can, short of a VPN or Tor, and those change which IP address arrives at the host rather than whether one does.
Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control
In plain EnglishGlobal Privacy Control concerns sale or sharing of personal information. We do neither for cross-context advertising; Cookie Settings controls automatic chat loading.
Do Not Track is a header your browser can send with every request. Global Privacy Control is a newer signal that, in some US states, counts as a legal request not to sell or share your personal information. Most sites receive both and ignore both.
We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. Form processing and the optional chat session are separate from advertising. Chat stays unloaded until a Performance-category opt-in or a click on “Chat with the bench”.
We do not read these headers and the consent manager is not set to read them. We do not use them as chat controls. To change automatic chat loading, use Cookie Settings. If our sale or advertising-sharing practices change, this page and our handling of opt-out signals must change before those practices start.
If you would rather have the opt-out recorded in writing than sent as a signal, /legal/your-data is where that request goes and you will get a written answer.
If we ever add analytics
Two tools have arrived since this page was first written — the consent manager and the chat widget, both described above — and both arrived the way this section promised: this page changed in the same release, before either one ran. There is still no analytics. If that day comes, this is the order it happens in.
- This page changes first, before anything is switched on, with a new effective date at the top.
- We name the tool. Not “an analytics provider” — the actual product, and where it keeps what it collects.
- We say what it records, what it does not, and how long it holds it.
- If it needs a cookie or any form of consent, you get a real choice before it is set, and declining leaves the site completely usable.
- Anything we add is measurement for the workshop, not advertising. We aren’t going to start retargeting you.
Until then this page is accurate as written, and you don’t have to take our word for it. Open your browser developer tools, look at the cookies and storage panel, and reload the page. The only entries you will ever find there are the consent manager’s record of your own choice and, if you opted into Performance or clicked the chat button, the chat widget’s session storage.
Questions
If anything here does not match what you see in your own browser, tell us. That is either a bug in the site or a mistake on this page, and both are worth fixing.
This page covers the website only. What the business holds when you submit a form, email, call or order is at /legal/privacy, how to ask for a copy or a deletion of it is at /legal/your-data, and how the whole place is run is at /legal/trust-security.
When this page changes, the effective date at the top changes with it. Anything material — a new third-party request, a new tool, a cookie of any kind — is written here before it goes live, not after.
Gearhold LLC, 104 S Cherry St, Tunnel Hill, GA 30755, USA · hello@fixedgearstraps.com · +1 (762) 760-1179 · Tue–Sat 10–18 ET. Wholesale quote requests go to quotes@fixedgearstraps.com.
Privacy requests reach us at hello@fixedgearstraps.com; security reports can go to security@fixedgearstraps.com. We have no appointed Data Protection Officer or EU or UK representative.
29 Oct 2026: added chat loading on a button click as well as Performance-category opt-in, and replaced the local-only quote description with cookie-free form submission and server storage.
30 Oct 2026: card checkout went live on Stripe’s own page at buy.stripe.com. Stripe sets its cookies there, under its own policy; nothing from Stripe loads on this site and no new cookie was added here.