When you visit this website to search, read or download information, we collect and store certain ‘visitor information’ about your visit, such as the domain name and host you use to connect, or the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the device you are using, the date and time of your visit and the Internet address of the website that contains the link to this website.
We use this information to track traffic on this website and to improve it. If you do not want us to handle this information, you can block cookies from this and other websites. However, when you block cookies, you may no longer be able to use all the options on this website.
WHAT IS A COOKIE?
Cookies are small files which are stored on a user’s computer. They are designed to hold a modest amount of data specific to a particular client and website, and can be accessed either by the web server or the client computer. This allows the server to deliver a page tailored to a particular user, or the page itself can contain some script which is aware of the data in the cookie and so is able to carry information from one visit to the website (or related site) to the next.
WHY ARE COOKIES USED?
Cookies are a convenient way to carry information from one session on a website to another, or between sessions on related websites, without having to burden a server machine with massive amounts of data storage. Storing the data on the server without using cookies would also be problematic because it would be difficult to retrieve a particular user’s information without requiring a login on each visit to the website.
If there is a large amount of information to store, then a cookie can simply be used as a means to identify a given user so that further related information can be looked up on a server-side database. For example the first time a user visits a site they may choose a username which is stored in the cookie, and then provide data such as password, name, address, preferred font size, page layout, etc. – this information would all be stored on the database using the username as a key. Subsequently when the site is revisited the server will read the cookie to find the username, and then retrieve all the user’s information from the database without it having to be re-entered.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS
This website may store cookies as part of the Google Analytics service. We use this service to track and receive reports on how visitors use our websites. Google may also transfer this information to third parties if Google is legally obliged to do so, or if third parties process the information on behalf of Google. We cannot control this. In our case, we have not allowed Google to share the acquired analyzes with other Google services.
The information collected by Google is anonymized to the greatest extent possible. Your IP address is definitely not being broadcast. Google transmits and stores the information on servers in the United States. Google claims to adhere to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles and has chosen to participate in the Safe Harbor program of the US Department of Commerce.This means that the processing of any personal data may depend on an adequate level of protection.
ABOUT SHARING CONTENT OR INFORMATION FROM THIS WEBSITE THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKS
You may notice that there are buttons on our website to promote or share content (“like”, “tweet”, etc.) on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. These buttons work through code snippets that originate from Facebook or Twitter, as well as other platforms. Cookies are placed through this code. We cannot control this. Check the privacy policy of the platform where you are going to share the content (which may change frequently) so that you know what they do with your personal data that they may process through these cookies.
HOW SECURE ARE COOKIES?
There is a lot of concern about privacy and security on the internet. Cookies do not in themselves present a threat to privacy, since they can only be used to store information that the user has volunteered or that the web server already has. Whilst it is possible that this information could be made available to specific third party websites, this is no worse than storing it in a central database.
HOW LONG DOES A COOKIE LAST?
The time of expiry of a cookie can be set when the cookie is created. By default the cookie is destroyed when the current browser window is closed, but it can be made to persist for an arbitrary length of time after that.
HOW TO ENABLE AND DISABLE COOKIES?
You can find additional information on how to enable, disable and delete cookies in the settings or Help section of your browser.