(Last updated: 2014-06-14)

Cookies are small pieces of information that a website stores in your computer browser. These pieces of information consist of an identifying key and a text value. Cookies can be categorized based on their origin as First-Party or Third-Party and based on their lifetime as Persistent and Session.

Cookies usually have an expiration date and time which indicates for how long they should be stored on your computer. Based on the span of that period of time cookies are categorized into Persistent and Session. Session cookies usually store temporary information and are destroyed as soon as your current session ends, which means as soon as you close your browser window. Persistent cookies on the other hand have an expiration date which can vary from some minutes in the future to many years, so they do not actually get automatically deleted when you choose to close your browser.

Cookies are also categorized as First-party or Third-party. First-party cookies are usually the cookies set by a domain (the name of the website you are visiting) and hold information associated with that domain. Third-party cookies are cookies set when you are visiting a website but are not directly associated with that domain and could possibly originate from embedded advertising or other content. These cookies can be accessed by the domain that has set them up regardless of the website you are currently visiting.

On this site we use five First-party cookies, three of which are Session cookies and the remaining two are Persistent. The cookies that are used by this website are listed in the following table.

Name of cookie Purpose of cookie
conferencesites_session_id This is a session temporary cookie that holds information about your current interaction with the website.
__utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmz We utilize a service called Google Analytics which assists us in gathering anonymous statistical information about our visitors which in extend assist us in improving and enhancing the services we provide. Some of these cookies do persist the duration of your visit to our site. For information about the cookies please click here.

If you wish to opt-out from the use of cookies in general you can:

  • Set the necessary settings on your web browser that will notify you on any website trying to set any type of cookie on your computer.
  • Restrict any site from setting any cookies on your computer by setting the necessary settings on your browser.
  • Delete cookies from your computer by visiting the corresponding settings page/tab of your browser or by manually deleting the files from the browser folder on your computer.

The settings might differ from browser to browser so you should first identify the browser you are currently using to navigate to web pages and then set the corresponding settings.

Other resources that could possibly provide you with more information about cookies and their usage include but they are not limited to the following:

By continuing to use this website we assume that you are happy to receive cookies from this website.