Cookies and Other Technologies

We sometimes collect anonymous information from visits to our website(s) to help us provide better customer service. For example, we keep track of the domains from which people visit and we also measure visitor activity on our website and the various free databases it houses, but we do so in ways that keep the information anonymous. We use the information that we collect to measure the number of visitors to the different areas of our website, and to help us make our website(s) more useful to visitors. This includes analysing these logs periodically to measure the traffic through our servers, the number of pages visited and the level of demand for pages and topics of interest. The logs may be preserved indefinitely and used at any time and in any way to prevent security breaches and to ensure the integrity of the data on our servers.

We collect the anonymous information we mentioned above through the use of various technologies, one of which is called "cookies". A cookie is an element of data that a web server can send to your browser, which may then be stored on your computing device. For example, EAO webpages record whether you are using the English, French or German interface so whenever you visit the site, you are taken to the language you prefer. Other session information (marked lists, search terms) is recorded with an expiration date. On our web site (if users register for it), cookies are used to save the visitor's password so that it does not have to be re-entered at each new visit. The following information is stored in the cookies:

  • IP address
  • ID information (first name, last name, job function ) will only be stored for those websites/web services that require login information on the device used (screen, browser brand and version, computer operating system)
  • An exception to only anonymous collection of data concerns only those websites/web services that require login Information on the device used (screen, browser brand and version, computer operating system). In these cases ID (first name, last name, and job function) is also collected and stored. This data is never used for other purposes.
  • If a "registered" user to EAO returns to the site, even without logging in, the IDs stored in the cookie are used to track the user (unless the user manually deleted the cookie, at which point the server will automatically regenerate another cookie).