Cookies policy

The Board of European Students of Technology ("BEST", "us", "we", or "our") uses cookies on best.eu.org and affiliated websites (collectively the "Site").

Our Cookie Policy explains what cookies are, how we use cookies, how third-parties we partner with may use cookies on the Site, and your choices regarding cookies. You might want to read this Cookies Policy in conjunction with our Privacy Policy, which sets out additional details on how we use personal data and your various rights.

What are cookies

Cookies are small text files that websites place on your device as you are browsing. They are processed and stored by your web browser. In and of themselves, cookies are harmless and serve crucial functions for websites. Cookies can also generally be easily viewed and deleted.

Cookies can have various durations, provenances, and purposes.

Duration:

  • Session cookies expire once you close your web browser, or when your session ends.
  • Persistent cookies expire after a set amount of time that you are able to see and that cannot exceed 12 months.

Provenance:

  • First party cookies are put on your device directly by the website you are visiting. Here, it would be the cookies that originate from BEST directly.
  • Third party cookies are all the other cookies, the ones that are put on your device by a third party. In this case, it would be any cookie that does not originate directly from BEST.

Purpose:

  • Strictly necessary cookies are essential for you to browse the website and enjoy its features. It is not necessary to receive consent for using such cookies, but what they do and why they are necessary must still be explained.
  • Preference cookies, also known as "functionality cookies," allow a website to remember choices you have made in the past, like what language you prefer or what region you would like to see news for. Not accepting them does not prevent the user from using the website normally.
  • Statistics cookies, also known as "performance cookies", collect information about how you use a website. For example, which pages you visited and which links you clicked on. None of this information can be used to identify you because it is all aggregated and, therefore, anonymized. Their sole purpose is to improve website functions. This includes cookies from third-party analytics services as long as the cookies are for the exclusive use of the owner of the website visited.
  • Marketing cookies track your online activity to help advertisers deliver more relevant advertising or to limit how many times you see an ad. These cookies can share that information with other organisations or advertisers. This type of cookie can contain a significant amount of personal data.

How BEST uses cookies

When you use and access the Site, we may place a number of cookies in your web browser.

We use both session and persistent cookies on the Site.

We use strictly necessary cookies to: authenticate users, keep our users logged in, prevent fraudulent use of user accounts and store the details of the consent, if any, of the user on the usage of the cookies that require it.

We also use statistics cookies to obtain aggregated and anonymised data about the usage of the Site by its visitors. We may use this data to: determine the ratio of recurring visitors, calculate statistics on the amount of time users spend at any particular area of our Site, and to determine the specific functionalities that users choose to use. The consent of each visitor of the Site is required for us to use these cookies.

We do not use marketing cookies.

What are your choices regarding cookies

If you would like to delete cookies or instruct your web browser to delete or refuse cookies, please visit the help pages of your web browser. Please note, however, that if you delete strictly necessary cookies you might face an undesirable behaviour of the Site.

For us to use cookies that are not strictly necessary, we always ask for your consent. We do not, and may not, assume your consent if it is not explicitly given.

You may change your choices regarding the use of cookies on the Site at any point in time by clicking on "Cookies Disclaimer" at the bottom of any page of the Site.

Cookies table

The tables below list all the cookies we use. As the properties of these cookies may change over time, this page may be updated to reflect those changes. Note that if these change, we will not use a new or modified cookie without requesting a new consent.

Cookie Name Duration Provenance Purpose More information
BESTSERVERID Session First-party Strictly necessary Store which of our servers the user is connected to for load balancing purposes. Necessary to allow us to manage many users in parallel.
JSESSIONID 1h First-party Strictly necessary Necessary to keep the user logged in through pages and sessions.
bestAuth 1h First-party Strictly necessary Necessary to keep the user logged in through sessions.
cookies_consent 30 days First-party Strictly necessary Necessary to store the consent or absence thereof for the use of cookies that are not strictly necessary.
cf_clearance 12 months Third-party Strictly necessary Used by Cloudflare to no longer issue a challenge to visitors who have already passed it. We use this functionality to protect our website from non-legitimate visitors. More information from Cloudflare here.
_ga 12 months Third-party Statistics Used by Google Analytics to distinguish one visitor from another. Each _ga cookie is unique to the specific property, so it cannot be used to track a given user or browser across unrelated websites.
We use it to see aggregated and anonymised data about the usage of our websites by their visitors.
_ga_<container-id> 12 months Third-party Statistics Used by Google Analytics to persist session state.
We use it to see aggregated and anonymised data about the usage of our websites by their visitors.