When you visit our site for the first time, a cookie banner appears at the bottom of your browser window allowing you to accept or decline the cookies and tracking described below. You can, however, withdraw or give your consent at any time: just press the button at the footer, and the original cookie banner reappears so that you can make your choice.

The link to this page in the footer at the very bottom of the browser window says either “Cookies accepted” or “Cookies not accepted” depending on your choice (or lack thereof). The site uses local storage, also described below, to record this piece of information (netcontrol-cookies-declined or netcontrol-cookies-accepted). It is not sent to the server.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files that websites and analytical services use to remember your behaviour on the web.

• As you visit a website or take a specific action there (for example, log in), the server for that site may send a cookie to your browser, which then stores it on your computer or other device. When you request another page on the site or later return to that site, your browser sends the cookie back to the server along with your request in order to indicate what you have done before.
• Cookies are also used by commercial third-party analytical services, which track and profile your behaviour on and across websites.

The following distinction is important in terms of consent:

• Essential cookies are those strictly necessary for a website to function. They do not require your consent.
• Non‑essential cookies are the ones requiring your consent. They may be used to record your preferences on a site and thus to improve your user experience or to enhance the site usability in general. Cookies of this kind are also used by third-party analytical services to follow your behaviour on and – most notably – across websites so that they can then build a profile of you or place you in a market segment.

Cookies also differ in how long they remain on your device:

• Session cookies are only kept in the working memory of your computer and are discarded when you leave the site or close the browser.
• Persistent cookies remain on your device as long as specified by their expiration dates. However, you can erase them in your browser settings at any time or even tell the browser to delete them automatically after each session.

Other technologies

Tracking pixels are tiny, invisible images on web pages. When you visit the page, your browser makes a request to the server hosting that image in order to download it, and this enables the server to record that you have visited that particular page. Such pixels are typically used by third-party analytical services to track your browsing behaviour.

JavaScript tags are pieces of code on web pages that interact with a server, having the same purpose as the tracking pixels.

Local storage is another way for your browser to store information related to websites on your device. Unlike cookies, its contents are not sent to the website server with every request (but may still be shared with it).