WHAT IS A COOKIE?

A cookie is a small text file that may be stored on your computer or mobile device that contains data related to a website you visit. It may allow a website to “remember” your actions or preferences over a period of time, or it may contain data related to the function or delivery of the site. Cookies can be set by the owner of the website or in some cases by third party services the website owner allows to present other information, run content or provide other functionality such as analytics.

Further information on cookies can be found at; http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm

COOKIES USED ON OUR WEBSITE

St. Aloysius Secondary School uses cookies when you visit our website, which is built on the Squarespace platform. Through our cookie banner and cookie settings widget, we give you full control of what optional cookies are used on our website. We use Squarespace's proprietary analytics tools which allow us to measure and learn in aggregate how our website is being used, and to see for example, which the most popular pages are, or what % of our users access our website from a mobile device vs a desktop. This helps us make important design and functionality decisions and helps us ensure we provide relevant information in an easily accessible format. We also use a number of session cookies and a persistent cookie to record your acknowledgement of our cookie usage. For more information on Squarespace related cookies, please visit:  https://www.squarespace.com/cookie-policy 

ESSENTIAL AND NON-ESSENTIAL COOKIES

Cookies can be classified as either 'essential' or 'non-essential'.

Essential cookies: these are cookies that are either:
(a) used solely to carry out or facilitate the transmission of communications over a network; or
(b) strictly necessary to provide an online service (e.g. our website or a service on our website) which you have requested.

'Essential' cookies are automatically placed on your computer or device when you access our website or take certain actions on our website.

Non-essential cookies: these are any cookies that do not fall within the definition of essential cookies, such as cookies used to analyse your behaviour on a website ('analytical' cookies) or cookies used to display advertisements to you ('advertising' cookies).  'Non-essential' cookies and other technologies are only placed on your computer or device if you have consented to us doing so. 

SESSION AND PERSISTENT COOKIES

Cookies can be classified as either 'session' or 'persistent', depending on how long they last after they are placed on your browser.

Session cookies: session cookies last for as long as you keep your browser open. They expire when you close your browser.

Persistent cookies: persistent cookies expire at a fixed point in time or if you manually delete them from your browser, whichever occurs first.

FIRST AND THIRD PARTY COOKIES

Cookies can be classified as 'first party' or 'third party'.

First party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by our website domain.

Third party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by third party website domains.

LIST OF COOKIES USED

Essential cookies 

Through our cookie banner and cookie settings widget, you can control what cookies you wish to allow.

These are cookies which are strictly necessary for our website to be able to operate or to provide you with a service on our website which you have requested. We use the following essential cookies on our website:

- third party persistent cookie to recognise whether you have accepted the use of cookies on our website. This cookie is: CookieConsent and expires after 1 year.

How to opt out of essential cookies
Most browsers allow you to block all cookies, including essential cookies. Please note, however, that if you block all cookies, parts of our website and its functionality may not work or display properly.

You can delete existing cookies from your browser by clearing your browsing data and ensuring that the option to delete cookies is selected.

For more detailed information on how to accept and reject cookies, including guidance for specific browsers, please see the section below entitled "Managing Cookies".

Non-essential cookies

Through our cookie banner and cookie settings widget, you can control what optional cookies you wish to allow.

We use the following types of non-essential cookies on our website:

Functional cookies
These are cookies that are designed for purposes such as enhancing a website’s functionality. These are either not strictly essential for the website or functionality which you have requested to work, or are cookies which serve non-essential purposes in addition to their essential purpose. We use the following functional cookies on our website:

- third party persistent cookie used to gauge your bandwidth in order to optimise the display of YouTube videos on our website. This cookie is called VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE and expires after 8 months.

Analytical (or performance) cookies
Analytical (or performance) cookies track and gather data about what a user does on a website. These cookies are not essential for our website or its functionality to work. We use the following analytical cookies on our website:

- first party Squarespace cookies used to carry out website usage analysis. It does not collect personally identifiable information and these are either session cookies such as crumb, ss_cvisit and ss_cvt, or in the case of ss_cid, ss_cpvisit and ss_cvr expire after 2 years.
- third party YouTube (owned by Google) cookies which collect information about the videos you watch on our website, including what you watch and where you view them. These cookies are called YSC and PREF which are both persistent cookies which expire after 8 months.

How to accept or reject cookies 

Through our cookie banner and cookie settings widget, you can control what cookies you wish to allow.

There are a number of other ways in which you can accept or reject some or all cookies and similar technologies. Some of the main methods of doing so are described below:

You are welcome to block the use of some or all of the cookies we use on our website. However, please be aware that doing so may impair our website and its functionality or may even render some or all of it unusable. You should also be aware that clearing all cookies from your browser will also delete any cookies that are storing your preferences, for example, whether you have accepted cookies on a website or any cookies that are blocking other cookies. You can find more detailed information about cookies and adjusting your browser settings by visiting www.allaboutcookies.org

Managing Cookies

Through our cookie banner and cookie settings widget, you can control what cookies you wish to allow.

In addition, within your browser settings you can choose whether your wish to accept cookies or not. Different browsers make different controls available to you and so we provide links below to popular manufacturers’ instructions on how you can do this. Generally, your browser will offer you the choice to accept, refuse or delete all cookies at all times, or those from providers that website owners use (“third party cookies”), or those from specific websites. Some browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox, allow you to change your settings to browse in ‘incognito’ mode, limiting the amount of data placed on your machine and automatically deleting any persistent cookies placed on your device when you finish your browsing session. There are also many third party applications which you can add to your browser to block or manage cookies.