Cookies
Please note that the About Basque Country website uses cookies. A cookie is a small piece of information stored on a user’s computer by a website. Cookies are used because websites do not have a memory. A user that goes from one website to another is not recognised as the same user. Cookies enable the website to recognise the user’s browser. Therefore, cookies are generally used to remember the options that a user has chosen (e.g., remembering the language that the user uses) or to recognise users that frequent the website.
Cookies can be “session” or persistent. Session cookies allow a user to be identified during a live session, which means that cookers are stored and are only valid for the duration of an active session, i.e. during your visit to the website. These cookies do not permanently record any information on the hard drive of your computer and expire at the end of the session.
Our website uses 3 types of cookies:
- Technical cookies: We use technical cookies to show our website, make sure that it works correctly, create your user account, start your session and manage your bookings. These technical cookies are necessary for our website to operate correctly.
- Functional cookies:We also use functional cookies to remember your preferences and to help you use our website efficiently and effectively, such as remembering your favourite currency and language, your searches and the establishments you have consulted. These functional cookies are not required for the operating of our website, but they add functionality to it to improve the user experience.
- We use analytical cookies to understand how our users use the website, detect what works or what does not, optimise and improve the website and ensure that our users continue to think our website is interesting and relevant. The information that we collect include the websites visited, exit/reference pages, type of platform, date/time information and data such as the number of (mouse) clicks on a certain page, mouse movements, scrolling and (search) words that you use and what you write when you use our website. This information is anonymous as we only need it for statistical purposes.
Cookies on the website in general only gather certain information from the user (i.e. user’s type of Internet browser, user’s operating system and the IP address used to access our website in order to facilitate the browsing of our website).
In general, the cookies that we use are associated only with an anonymous user and their computer and do not provide references that could make it possible to work out the name and surname(s) of the user. As regards online purchasing processes in particular, the data entered by the user during that process will be associated to their session identifier for the bank reconciliation and to confirm the contracting processes.
Browsing without cookies
Users can always customise the use of “cookies”, as well as preventing the gathering of “cookies” by changing the user’s browser options. The most common are:
- Firefox: Options\Privacy\Tracking\tell websites that you do not want to be tracked
- Chrome: Chrome Menu\Settings\Show advanced settings\Privacy\Content settings\Cookies\Block sites from setting any data
- Safari: Preferences\ Privacy\Block Cookies
- Explorer: Tools\Internet options\Privacy\Settings\ move the slider all the way up to block all cookies or right to the bottom to allow all cookies and then click OK.
Completely blocking “cookies” may prevent some websites from being displayed correctly.
Cookies used
We specifically use the following types of cookies on our website:
Neccessary:
| Cookie | Type | Duration | Description |
|---|
| cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | persistent | 1 year | This cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. It is used to store user consent for the cookies in the “Necessary” category. |
| cookielawinfo-checkbox-non-necessary | persistent | 1 year | This cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. It is used to store user consent for the cookies in the “Non-Necessary” category. |
| PHPSESSID | session | End of browser session | This cookie is native to PHP and allows the website to save serialized status data. On this website, it is used to establish user sessions by passing status data via a temporary, or session, cookie. This cookie has no established expiration because it disappears when the website is closed. |
| viewed_cookie_policy | permanent | 1 year | This cookie is placed by the GDPR Cookies Consent plug-in and is used to store whether the user has consented to the use of cookies or not. It stores no personal data. |
| __cfduid | permanent | 1 month | Established by the CloudFlare service to identify trusted web traffic. |
Statistics:
| Cookie | Type | Duration | Description |
|---|
| GPS | persistent | 30 minutes | This cookie is placed by YouTube and registers a unique identifier to trace users based on their geographical location. |
| _ga | permanent | 2 years | Installed by Google Analytics, this cookie is used to distinguish users and sessions. |
| _gat_gtag_UA_18912877_1 | permanent | 1 minute | Installed by Google Analytics, this is used to distinguish users and limit the percentage of requests. |
| _gid | permanent | 1 day | Installed by Google Analytics, this cookie is used to distinguish users and sessions. |
| __gads | permanent | 1 year | These help Google Ad Manager to anonymously identify the visitors who have seen or clicked on an ad |
Marketing:
| Cookie | Type | Duration | Description |
|---|
| 1P_JAR | persistent | 1 month | This cookie is used to transfer data to Google. |
| DSID | persistent | 1 hour | Established by Google, if you have started a session with your Google account on another device, this is used to link your activity between devices and coordinate ads that appear on them and to convert them. |
| fr | persistent | 3 months | This cookie is necessary for the Facebook “Like” button to work. |
| IDE | persistent | 2 years | Used by Google DoubleClick, it stores information about the way the user uses the website and any other ads before visiting the website. It is used to present the user with ads that are relevant according to the user’s profile. |
| mc | persistent | 1 year | QuantCast platform cookie for granular audience measurements. It stores no personal data, only user identifiers and their browsing. |
| NID | persistent | 6 months | The NID cookie contains a unique ID that Google uses to remember your preferences and other information, such as your preferred language, the number of search results you want shown per page (for example, 10 or 20), and whether you want the Google Safe Search filter activated. |
| uid | persistent | 1 year | This cookie is used to anonymously measure the number and behavior of the visitors to the website. The data include the number of visits, the average duration of visit to the website, visited websites, etc., in order to understand the user’s preferences better with regards to targeted ads. |
| VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | permanent | 5 months | This cookie is placed by YouTube. It is used to trace the information of the YouTube videos that are embedded in a website. |
| _fbp | permanent | 1 day | Used by Facebook to offer a line of advertising products, such as real-time offers from third-party advertisers. |
Preferences:
| Cookie | Type | Duration | Description |
|---|
| YSC | session | End of browser session | This cookie is placed by YouTube and is used to trace the visits from embedded videos. |
Unclassified:
| Cookie | Type | Duration | Description |
|---|
| cref | persistent | 1 year | Contains data on user navigation interaction and time spent on the website and its sub-pages. This data is used to optimize the relevance of advertisements and for statistical purposes. |
| d | persistent | 3 months | Collects anonymous data on the user's visits to the website, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the website and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of generating reports for optimizing the website content. |
| i | persistent | 1 year | Registers anonymized user data, such as IP address, geographical location, visited websites, and what ads the user has clicked, with the purpose of optimizing ad display based on the user's movement on websites that use the same ad network. |
| KADUSERCOOKIE | persistent | 3 months | Registers a unique ID that identifies the user's device during return visits across websites that use the same ad network. The ID is used to allow targeted ads. |
| KTPCACOOKIE | persistent | 1 day | Registers a unique ID that identifies the user's device during return visits across websites that use the same ad network. The ID is used to allow targeted ads. |
| na_id | persistent | 13 months | Used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor's behavior and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com. |
| na_rn | persistent | 13 months | Used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor’s behavior and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com. |
| na_sc_e | persistent | 1 month | Used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor’s behavior and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com. |
| na_sr | persistent | 1 month | Used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor’s behavior and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com. |
| na_srp | persistent | 1 day | Used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor’s behaviour and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com. |
| na_tc | persistent | 13 months | Used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor's behavior and facilitate the social sharing function provided by Addthis.com. |
| ouid | persistent | 13 months | Sets an ID-string for the specific visitor. This is used to recognize the visitor upon re-entry. This allows the website to register the visitor's behavior and facilitate the social media sharing function provided by Addthis.com. |
