Cookies Policy

The Agency for Support for BEREC (the BEREC Office) uses cookies for the technical functioning of the website. Furthermore, data on the website usage of visitors is collected via an analytics platform to generate overall statistics on it. 

The Controller for this processing operation is the BEREC Office.

You can enquire about the way BEREC Office uses cookies by contacting the Controller at [email protected].

What are cookies?

Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored on your computer or mobile device to optimise your browsing experience and to provide usability and statistical information on the website usage to the BEREC Office.

Cookie types

There are two types of cookies.

Persistent cookies remain on a user's device for a set period specified in the cookie. They are activated each time that the user visits the website that created the particular cookie.

Session cookies are temporary. They allow website operators to link the actions of a user during a browser session. A browser session starts when a user opens the browser window and finishes when they close the browser window.

How does the BEREC Office use cookies?

The BEREC Office uses the open-source analytics platform Piwik/Matomo (Piwik) that runs on a web server for the purpose of measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of this website. BEREC’s/BEREC Office’s website visitors are tracked using 'first-party session cookies' and 'first-party persistent cookies'

  • 'First party' means that the BEREC Office retains full responsibility and control of the data collected through these cookies, by storing the data in servers fully owned and controlled by the BEREC Office. This data is not shared with any organisations for marketing, market research or commercial purposes. 
  • 'Session', for the BEREC Office, means that the cookie set by our website will expire immediately after closing the browser session.
  • 'Persistent', for the BEREC Office, means that the cookie set by our website will expire after a specific period of time.

The BEREC/BEREC Office website has several cookies with different expiration times in place:

  • 'First-party session cookies'
    • PIWIK_SESSID (When the browsing session ends)
    • TS0135cd18 (When the browsing session ends)
    • TS01fa26b3 (When the browsing session ends)
  • 'First-party persistent cookies'
    • _pk_id.1.d8b8 (280 days)
    • _pk_ref.1.d8b8 (183 days)
    • _pk_ses.1.d8b8 (393 days)

Note that in different website use cases, the file name and the number of files can change.

Within the content of the cookies, no personal information is stored nor can it be used to identify a particular website visitor. Further to the random identifier generated by Piwik, which enables the BEREC Office to understand when a user returns to the site, there are other random identifiers, search and document viewing related, that optimise the user's experience. This information is used to gather aggregated and anonymous statistics with a view to improving our services and to enhance your user experience.

We do not use our cookies to identify you personally. The cookies are there to make the site work better for you as a user and for the BEREC Office to improve the quality of the website for our users.

Social media cookies

The BEREC/BEREC Office is active on three social media platforms. We are active on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to strengthen our online presence and visibility for stakeholders and interested parties.

  • The BEREC/BEREC Office website does not set cookies when displaying links to our social media channels when you browse our website.
  • You can watch BEREC/BEREC Office videos, which we upload also on our YouTube channel.
  • In order to watch a BEREC/BEREC Office video on our website, a message might alert you that you need to accept YouTube cookies to do so. YouTube has its own cookies and privacy policies over which we have no control. There is no installation of cookies from YouTube until you consent to YouTube cookies and then are redirected to the YouTube website.
  • Similarly, by clicking on the LinkedIn/Twitter button on our website, you will be redirected to the LinkedIn/Twitter site, which has its own cookies and privacy policies over which we have no control.

Privacy measures

Values collected with the analytics platform are stored in the cookies to enable the BEREC Office to track information about visitors. We use this information to prepare aggregated, anonymous statistics reports of visitor activity. Included variables are:

  • IP address (masked);
  • Location: country, region, city, approximate latitude and longitude (Geolocation);
  • Date and time of the request (visit to the site);
  • Title of the page being viewed (Page Title);
  • URL of the page being viewed (Page URL);
  • URL of the page that was viewed prior to the current page (Referrer URL);
  • Screen resolution of user's device;
  • Time in local visitor's time-zone;
  • Files that were clicked and downloaded (Download);
  • Links to an outside domain that were clicked (Outlink);
  • Pages generation time (the time it takes for webpages to be generated by the webserver and then downloaded by the visitor: Page speed);
  • Main language of the browser being used (Accept-Language header);
  • Browser version, browser plugins (PDF, Flash, Java, …) operating system version, device identifier (User-Agent header);
  • Site Search.

To improve the accuracy of the produced reports, information is also stored in first-party cookies from our website and then collected by the analytics tool:

  • Random unique Visitor ID;
  • Time of the first visit for the specific visitor;
  • Time of the previous visit for the specific visitor;
  • Number of visits for the specific visitor.

Do not track preferences

The Do Not Track function allows visitors to opt out from being tracked by websites for any purpose including the use of analytics services, advertising networks and social platforms. Do Not Track options are available in a number of different browsers including the following:

Masking of Internet Protocol addresses

Organisations, cities and countries of origin are determined from the full Internet Protocol (IP), then stored and aggregated before a mask is applied. The analytics platform uses an IP de-identification mechanism that automatically masks a portion of each visitor's IP, effectively making it impossible to identify a particular visitor via the sole IP address.

Data storage

Anonymised and aggregated data is stored for an indefinite period by the BEREC Office for analytical purpose.

How to control cookies

You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish – for details, see AboutCookies.org.

Managing cookies in your browser

Most browsers allow you to:

  • see what cookies you've got and delete them on an individual basis;
  • block third-party cookies;
  • block cookies from particular sites;
  • block all cookies from being set;
  • delete all cookies when you close your browser.