Cookies
What are Cookies?
Cookies are small data files that a website asks your browser to store on your computer or mobile device when you visit the website or certain pages. The cookies allow the website to 'remember' your actions or preferences over time. Most browsers accept cookies, but users can set their browsers to block or delete these cookies whenever they wish.
Cookies usually contain the name of the website the cookie came from, how long the cookie will remain on your device, and a value, which is usually a randomly generated unique number.
Some cookies will be deleted as soon as you leave the website (so-called 'session cookies'), other cookies will remain on your computer or mobile device and will help us to identify you as a visitor to our website (so-called 'persistent cookies' ).
Why do we use cookies?
Cookies are used on our Website for various purposes.
We use cookies to improve the user experience on the Website and to map your surfing behavior (e.g. the pages you have visited and the time you spent on that page). Cookies make our Website more user-friendly and allow us to better tailor our Website to your interests and needs. Cookies are also used to speed up your future activities and experience on the Website. For example, we use cookies to remember your language preferences.
We also use cookies to collect anonymous aggregated statistics that allow us to understand how our Website is used and how we can improve our services.
Which cookies do we use?
We use first party cookies and third party cookies. First party cookies are cookies created by the Website itself. These cookies are used to optimize your user experience.
Third party cookies are cookies created by other parties (and therefore not by the Website). Third party cookies on our Website are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Analytics. Google Analytics is Google's analytical tool that helps us understand how you interact with our Website. The tool may use a series of cookies to collect information and report usage statistics about the Website without personally identifying individual visitors to Google. The main cookie used by Google Analytics is the "___ga" cookie.
A further distinction can be made between the following types of cookies: necessary and analytical cookies.
[o] Necessary cookies
These are necessary for the operation of our Website. These include, for example, cookies that enable you to log in.
__optimizelyEnduserId: Used to identify a user with a unique Optimizely ID. A combination of timestamp and a random number.
[o] Analytical/performance cookies
These cookies allow us to analyze our web traffic, view the number of users of our Website and see how visitors navigate our Website.
___ga: Used to distinguish different users
___gid: Used to distinguish different users
___gat: Used to slow down the request rate. If Google Analytics is used via Google Tag Manager, this cookie will be named _dc_gtm_<property-id>
_gac_<property-id>: Contains campaign information for the user.
[o] Functional cookies:
These cookies 'remember' the choices you made on our Website (e.g. language preference), which makes the Website more user-friendly and enhances the user experience.
__JSESSIONID: a platform session cookie and is used by sites with JavaServer Pages (JSP)
__lang: Used to display the pages in the correct language
How can you manage or delete cookies?
You can manage or delete cookies at any time through the settings of your internet browser, which allows you to block some or all cookies. Disabling cookies will limit the services we can offer and may impact your user experience. Deleting cookies may require you to manually adjust your preferences each time you visit our Website. For more information on managing and/or deleting cookies, please visit the page relevant to your browser:
Safari: https://support.apple.com/kb/ph19214?locale=en_US
Chrome: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en
Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/cookies-information-websites-store-on-your-computer
Internet Explorer: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/260971
For other browsers, refer to the browser operator's documentation.