About Cookies

A cookie is a piece of information in the form of a very small text file that is placed on an internet user’s hard drive. It is generated by a web page server, which is basically the computer that operates a web site. The information the cookie contains is set by the server and it can be used by that server whenever the user visits the site. A cookie can be thought of as an internet user’s identification card, which tell a web site when the user has returned.

Cookies make the interaction between users and web sites faster and easier. Without cookies, it would be very difficult for a web site to allow a visitor to fill up a shopping cart or to remember the user’s preferences or registration details for a future visit.

Web sites use cookies mainly because they save time and make the browsing experience more efficient and enjoyable. Web sites often use cookies for the purposes of collecting demographic information about their users.
Cookies enable web sites to monitor their users’ web surfing habits and profile them for marketing purposes (for example, to find out which products or services they are interested in and send them targeted advertisements).

Session, or transient cookies

Cookies that are stored in the computer’s memory only during a user’s browsing session and are automatically deleted from the user’s computer when the browser is closed. These cookies usually store a session ID that is not personally identifiable to users, allowing the user to move from page to page without having to log-in repeatedly. They are widely used by commercial web sites (for example, to keep track of items that a consumer has added to a shopping cart). Session cookies are never written on the hard drive and they do not collect any information from the user’s computer. Session cookies expire at the end of the user’s browser session and can also become no longer accessible after the session has been inactive for a specified length of time, usually 20 minutes. This site use CloudFlare cookies in order to use their JavaScript library.

Permanent, persistent, or stored cookies

Cookies that are stored on the user’s computer and are not deleted when the browser is closed. Permanent cookies can retain user preferences for a particular web site, allowing those preferences to be used in future browsing sessions.
Permanent cookies can be used to identify individual users, so they may be used by web sites to analyse users’ surfing behaviour within the web site. These cookies can also be used to provide information about numbers of visitors, the average time spent on a particular page and generally the performance of the web site. They are usually configured to keep track of users for a prolonged period of time, in some cases many years into the future. This site doesn’t have permanent cookies, except for the one used to store the acceptance of cookies.

Stats cookies.

Help web site owners to understand how visitors interact with the sites by collecting and transmitting information anonymously. This site uses the Google Analytics cookies: to disable them go to this page: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout