Cookies
What are cookies?
A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. It enables the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as login, language, font size and other display preferences) over a period of time, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you come back to the site or browse from one page to another.
How do we use cookies?
A number of our pages use cookies to remember:
- your display preferences, such as contrast colour settings or font size
- if you have already replied to a survey pop-up that asks you if the content was helpful or not (so you won’t be asked again)
- if you have agreed (or not) to our use of cookies on this site
Some cookies are placed by third party services (Zendesk) that appear on our pages. Zendesk is the OLS support service. It handles the ticketing system and the articles displayed on the support page of the OLS website. Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.
Cookies are also stored by Matomo (Piwik).
Enabling these cookies is not strictly necessary for the website to work but it will provide you with a better browsing experience. You can delete or block these cookies, but if you choose to do that, some features of this site may not work as intended.
The cookie-related information is not used to identify you personally and the pattern data is fully under our control. These cookies are not used for any purpose other than those described here.
How to control cookies
You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish – for details, see aboutcookies.org. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site and some services and functionalities may not work.
Opt-out features
The OLS website uses Matomo (Piwik). Visit our disclaimer page for more information.
By default, website visitors are tracked using the first party persistent cookie from Matomo (Piwik). You may choose not to be tracked by Piwik (opt-out). If you change your mind, you can choose to be tracked again by Piwik (opt-in).
Choosing not to be tracked by Piwik does not affect your navigation experience on the OLS website.
Cookie ‘piwik_ignore’
To check your current status and make your choice, tick the corresponding box in the text below.
Do Not Track feature
Do Not Track is a feature that enables visitors to opt-out from being tracked by websites for whatever purpose, including the use of analytics services, advertising networks and social platforms.
To enable the Do Not Track feature in your browser:
Matomo (Piwik) respects visitors’ preference and will not track visitors that have enabled the Do Not Track feature in their web browsers:
- If the Do Not Track feature is enabled, the visitor will not be tracked. This is a layer on top of the cookies and opt-out mechanism.
- If the visitor does not have the Do Not Track feature enabled and clicks on the opt-out option, the cookie ‘piwik_ignore’ is stored in the browser. All visitors with a piwik_ignore cookie are not tracked.
- If the visitor has disabled all cookies from their browser, the visitor is still tracked but the data is less accurate (Piwik cookies are not used).