About Cookies

NOESIS website uses own and third-party to provide visitors a better browsing experience.

Cookies play an important role in online browsing experience. Using cookies, users can customize online browsing, choosing website display language, currency of certain prices/taxes, preserving and storing browsing options.
These files are important for website owners, because they provide valuable feedback about the user experience, how websites are used and teaches them develop websites as efficiently as possible.
Also, cookies allow multimedia applications or other types of applications to be included in a particular site to generate valuable and useful browsing experience, and also as pleasant as possible. Also, they make online advertising more efficent by displaying those ads conformity with the interests of each user’s browsing.

What is a “cookie”?

According to Autoritatea Naţională de Supraveghere a Prelucrării Datelor cu Caracter Personal, an “Internet Cookie” (a term known as “browser cookie” or “HTTP cookie” or simply “cookie”) is a small file consisting of letters and numbers, which will be stored on your computer or other mobile terminal equipment of a user that is accessing the internet.
The cookie is installed as a result of the request made by an webserver to a browser (eg Internet Explorer, Chrome, Mozilla) and it is completely “passive” (does not contain software viruses or spyware and can not access information on user’s hard-drive).
A cookie consists of two parts: the name and content/cookie value. Moreover, the life of a cookie is determined; technically, only web server that sent the cookie can access it again when a user turns on the website associated with that webserver.

There are two main categories of cookies:
Session cookies – they are temporarily stored in the web browser`s cookies file so it could remember them until the user exits the website or close the browser window (for example, when logging in / logging off a webmail account or social network)
Persistent or tracking Cookies – stored on the hard drive of a computer or equipment. They also include those placed by a website other than the one user is visiting at that time – known as ‘third party cookies’ – which can be used anonymously to store user’s interests, so he could receive more relevant advertising.

Security and privacy issues

Cookies are NOT viruses. Cookies use a plain text format. They are not compiled pieces of code so they cannot be executed nor are they self-executing. Accordingly, they cannot make copies of themselves and spread to other networks to execute and replicate again.
Cookies CAN be used for malicious purposes though. Since they store information about a user’s browsing preferences and history, both on a specific site and browsing among several sites, cookies can be used to act as a form of spyware. Many anti-spyware products are well aware of this problem and routinely flag cookies as candidates for deletion after standard virus and/or spyware scans.
Most browsers have built in privacy settings that provide differing levels of cookie acceptance, expiration time, and disposal after a user has visited a particular site.
Sometimes, for instance, an unauthorized third party may interfere with the browser-server relationship and intercept data contained in cookies. Although rare, this can happen if the browser connects to the server using an unencrypted network, such as, for example, unsecured wireless networks.
Other cookie-based attacks involve exploiting faulty cookie-setting systems on servers. If a website doesn’t require browsers to use encrypted channels only, attackers can use this vulnerability to trick browsers into sending sensitive information over insecure channels. The attackers then siphon off the sensitive data for unauthorized access purposes.
Due to their flexibility and the fact that many of the largest and most-visited websites use cookies by default, cookies are almost unavoidable. Disabling cookies will lock a user out of many of the most widely-used sites on the Internet like Youtube, Gmail, Yahoo mail, and others.

Tips for safe and responsible cookie-based browsing

Customize your browser’s cookie settings to reflect your comfort level with cookie security or use our guide to delete cookies.
If you are the only person using your computer, you may want to set long expiration time frames for storing your personal access information and browsing history.
If you share access on your computer, you may want to set your browser to clear private browsing data every time you close your browser. While not as secure as rejecting cookies outright, this option lets you access cookie-based websites while deleting any sensitive information after your browsing session.
Install antispyware applications.

How can I stop those cookies?

Cookies can be disabled, but doing so will lock a user out of some websites. Every browser gives you the choice (in Options or Settings) to disable cookies.
For more information about cookies you can consult the following websites:
Autoritatea Naţională de Supraveghere a Prelucrării Datelor cu Caracter Personal
Youronlinechoices.com
Allaboutcookies.org