About cookies
What is a cookie?
Cookie is a small text file the browser downloads to the user’s device. Cookies do not harm the user’s device or files. Use of cookies is a common practice on most websites. Cookies are primarily divided session cookies and persistent cookies. Session cookies expire once the user closes the web session, while persistent cookies remain on the browser for a certain period or until the user removes them.
Cookies have two purposes. On one hand they facilitate the use of a website, for example by remembering the user’s choices and previous settings. On the other hand, they help in website development and in analysing the user information. Certain functions cannot work without cookies.
How do we use cookies?
We use cookies on our website to enhance the user experience and to collect data for marketing purposes and for website development. Cookies also help us to optimize our website’s speed.
Website development
Cookies help us to collect and analyse our website’s user data. We track for instance which pages the users visit and how long they spend there. Our aim is to develop our website’s quality and content.
Marketing
Cookies allow us to show ads and offers based on the user’s actions on the site, regardless whether they have logged in or not. We also use cookies on competition forms and client surveys.
What kind of cookies do we use?
- Session cookies
Session cookies expire when the user leaves the web service.
- Persistent cookies
Persistent cookies have a certain duration period, which defines how long a cookie stays on a computer or a mobile device. This kind of cookies are stored until they reach their expiration date or are manually deleted.
Third party cookies
Third party cookies are cookies installed on a device by another party for us. This happens when a service provider produces us services, for instance analytical services or services that allow sharing our sites on social media. If you for instance use buttons when sharing online content with friends on social media such as Facebook, this third party may place cookies on your device.
More information available here:
https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/
https://twitter.com/en/privacy
https://policies.google.com/privacy
The so called third parties can also use and collect the information collected with cookies to target their advertising.
On our web services we use e.g. Google Analytics to measure the use of our web services (including IP-address, device ID, physical location, browser, operator and type of operating system, and URL-addresses related to them).
More information on Google Analytics’ terms can be found here.
How to deal with cookies?
The user can clear cookies from the browser’s settings. The user also has the possibility to disable the use of cookies altogether by changing the browser settings on their device. Disabling cookies might affect the service’s functionality and ad targeting. If the user decides to disable cookies, they might be unable to benefit from all of the service’s features. Most browsers allow turning off the cookie functionality.
More information on disabling cookies:
Chrome
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647?hl=en
Firefox
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/delete-cookies-remove-info-websites-stored
Internet Explorer
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17442/windows-internet-explorer-delete-manage-cookies#ie