1. Introduction
In accordance with applicable data protection legislation, IEE (“IEE”, “we”, “us”, “our”) hereby informs you that when using the website, mobile sites, or mobile apps (“Website”) of IEE, IEE may collect information by using 'cookies'. By using our Website, you agree to our use of cookies for the purposes listed below in accordance with this Cookie Policy. You may refuse at any time the use of cookies by adapting the appropriate settings on your browser, but please note that this may affect your experience and ability to exploit the full functionality of the Website. This is further explained below.
2. What are cookies and how do they work
Cookies are small bits of text that are downloaded to your computer or other internet enabled devices when you visit a website. They enable IEE to collect information related to the use of the Website with the intent of improving the overall user experience. Examples of recorded data are the operating system you use, your IP address and time spent on the Website. Note that information is collected on the aggregate level, so it is not possible to determine who an individual user of the Website might be.
Cookies can be classified in two different ways, by ‘life span’ and by ‘domain’. There are two types of cookies categorized by life span:
- Session cookies to identify you and used as an element in the security of your session. These are deleted once the browser is closed and are therefore not saved on your device.
- Persistent cookies which do remain stored on the user’s terminal device for a certain period of time or until it is deleted manually. Your browser sends these cookies back to the Website every time you visit it, so it can remember your preferences and tailor what you see on the screen.
When it comes to the domain, a distinction is made between:
- First-party cookies that are all related to the same domain, being related to one single website.
- Third-party cookies are kept by another domain, e.g. when accessing a file located on another web server.
3. What do we use cookies for?
Cookies are an important part of the internet. They make using websites smoother and affect lots of the useful features of websites. In general, the reasons why websites use cookies are threefold: (1) to recognize users, (2) to recall their preferences and (3) to assist users in a multitude of ways such as remembering data that was inputted before. Cookies are also employed for targeted advertising and to show relevant content based on user’s past researches.
Below you find a number of examples of how our Website seeks to improve your user experience:
- Recalling if you visited the Website before. If you are a first-time user, you might see different content compared to a regular user.
- Remembering your preferences and settings, including marketing preferences
- Remembering your specific preferences, such as if you filled in a survey, so you are not asked to do it again.
- Gathering anonymous statistics about users (only high level information like country, repeated visits…).
4. Analytics
We like to keep track of what pages and links are popular and which ones do not get used so much to help us keep our sites relevant and up to date. It is also very useful to be able to identify trends of how people navigate (find their way through) our Website and if they get 'error messages' from web pages.
This group of cookies often called ‘analytics cookies’ is used to gather this information. Analytics cookies only record activity on the site you are on and they are only used to improve how a website works.
5. How to manage cookies
As per European legislation, IEE requires your prior consent to store or access data in the form of cookies on your terminal device. We therefore have a pop-up banner to inform you of the use and storage of cookies on your terminal device when visiting the Website for the first time. Unless you deleted the cookies stored on your device or they have expired, you will not encounter the pop-up banner again when visiting the Website another time with the same browser and device.
In general browsers are configured to automatically accept cookies from any website. However, your browser’s settings offer the possibility to manage cookies.
You can block them for example or choose to notify you when a cookie is being stored on your terminal device.
In this respect it is also possible to disable the cookies used by our Website so that no cookie may longer be stored and used. Note that this may however reduce the Website’s functionality and have an impact on the overall user experience. We therefore recommend adjusting your browser settings in a manner that the Website’s cookies are accepted.