Cookies

One cookie is needed to hold your place in the queue. Everything else is either kept inside your own browser or does not happen until you say yes.

Last changed 20 October 2026.

A 1940 building under a sign reading Department of Motor Vehicles, with a long queue of people down the street
The Department of Motor Vehicles, Los Angeles, 1940. The queue goes down the street and around the corner, as queues do.

What the site itself uses

ww_pid
Cookie, signed, expires after seven days
Holds the identifier of your place in the line. Without it a refresh loses your number.
ww.join-key
Browser storage, stays until you clear it
A random key sent with the request for a number, so a double click or a reload cannot hand you two numbers.
ww.motion
Browser storage, stays until you clear it
Remembers that you asked for the animation to stop.
ww.sound
Browser storage, stays until you clear it
Remembers that you asked for the sound to stay off.

None of these follow you anywhere. The three stored in the browser never leave it except for the join key, which is sent once with the request for a number and then forgotten by the server.

Advertising

Advertising comes from Google AdSense and it sets its own cookies. It is asked for only after you agree in the consent dialog, which is Google’s certified consent tool. If you refuse, the advertising script is never loaded and no advertising cookie is set.

You can change your answer later through the privacy settings link that the consent tool puts in the page. What Google does with the consent you give is described in its own policy at policies.google.com/technologies/ads.

Refusing everything

You can block cookies in your browser and the site will still load, but you will not be able to hold a place in the line, because there will be nothing to hold it with. That is not a dark pattern, it is simply how a queue with no accounts works.

What is stored and why is set out in full on the privacy page.

A door at the bottom of the Idrija mercury mine, opening onto a tunnel. Ten seconds, on a loop, going nowhere.
An engraved 1898 share certificate beginning "This is to Certify that"
An 1898 certificate, engraved to prove that something had happened. Yours is printed from a browser.
A long queue of people in coats and hats waiting to be fed, New York City, 1932
New York, 1932. Every one of these people was waiting for something. This is the version where that part is optional.
A crowd in hats and fur coats standing in a line in the snow outside the White House, 1909
A line outside the White House in 1909, for a handshake. People have always been willing to stand for an hour to be told hello.