1. What cookies are
A cookie is a small text file, made up of letters and numbers, that a website stores on your device when you visit it. On subsequent visits, the cookie can be read back by the site that placed it.
Cookies contain no programs, cannot execute code, and cannot access the files on your device. They can, however, contain identifiers which, combined with other information, allow your browser to be recognised from one visit to the next.
The same category covers similar technologies: the browser’s local storage (localStorage and sessionStorage), tracking pixels, and advertising tags. Wherever this policy refers to “cookies”, it refers to those technologies as well.
2. The legal basis
The use of cookies is governed by art. 4¹ of Romanian Law no. 506/2004 on the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector, and by Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) as regards the personal data resulting from their use.
Cookies that are strictly necessary for the Site to work are placed without consent, being indispensable to providing the service you requested. All other cookies — measurement and marketing — are placed only after you have given your explicit consent, through the banner shown on your first visit.
Until you express a choice, no measurement or marketing cookie is activated. Refusing them does not restrict your access to the Site.
3. The categories we use
Strictly necessary. These keep the Site working: remembering the language you chose, storing your cookie choices, security and traffic distribution. The Site cannot function properly without them, so they do not require consent.
Measurement, or analytics. These help us understand how the Site is used — which pages are visited, for how long, from what kind of device — so that we can improve it. The results are read in aggregate. They are activated only with your consent.
Marketing. These allow us to measure the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns and to show relevant ads on other platforms. They are activated only with your consent.
4. How they are used on this Site
Strictly necessary. The Site uses a small number of its own cookies, without which it cannot work: one that remembers the language you chose to browse in, and one through which your cookie choices are stored, so that consent is not requested on every page. They do not track your browsing behaviour and are not used for advertising.
Measurement. If you accept this category, we use analytics tools provided by Google, through Google Analytics, and by Microsoft, through Microsoft Clarity. They place their own cookies, through which your browser can be recognised from one visit to the next, and show us in aggregate how the Site is used.
Marketing. If you accept this category, we use Google Ads cookies, which let us establish whether a visit came from an advertising campaign and measure its results.
Retention periods differ from one cookie to another, from the length of a single browsing session to no more than two years in the case of the analytics tools. The exact names, detailed purposes and durations of each third-party cookie are set by their providers and can be consulted in their policies, listed in section 8.
The full list of the cookies actually placed in your browser is available to you at any time from the cookie settings panel and from your browser settings, following the instructions in section 6.
Without cookies. Vercel Web Analytics, the tool that gives us aggregate statistics about the pages visited, places no cookies and uses no persistent identifiers that would recognise you from one visit to the next. For that reason it runs by default, on the basis of our legitimate interest, and you can object to this processing by writing to us at contact@symphonote.ro.
5. Giving and withdrawing your consent
On your first visit to the Site you are shown a banner where you can accept all cookies or configure your choices by category, from the customisation section. Your choice is remembered, so that the banner is not shown to you on every page.
You can change your choices at any time:
- from the cookie settings panel, reopened from the consent banner;
- by clearing cookies and site data in your browser, which brings the banner back on your next visit;
- directly from your browser settings, following the instructions below.
Withdrawing consent takes effect for the future and does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out earlier, on the basis of the consent originally given.
6. Controlling cookies from your browser
Every browser lets you block, delete or restrict cookies. The official instructions are here:
In addition, you can refuse collection through Google Analytics by installing the opt-out add-on provided by Google, and you can manage your Google advertising preferences from My Ad Center.
Note that blocking all cookies, including the strictly necessary ones, may affect how the Site works: the language you chose, for instance, will no longer be remembered from one page to the next.
7. What happens if you refuse
Refusing measurement and marketing cookies does not limit your access to the content of the Site in any way, and does not change your browsing experience. The only consequence is that we will not be able to measure how the Site is used, nor to evaluate the effectiveness of our campaigns.
8. Third-party cookies and data transfers
Google and Microsoft cookies are placed by those providers, which act as independent or joint controllers for their own processing. The data collected through them may be transferred outside the European Economic Area, with the safeguards described in our Privacy Policy.
Their policies are available at Google — Privacy Policy and Microsoft — Privacy Statement.
9. Changes to this policy
We update this policy whenever we add, remove or change the tools used on the Site. The date of the last update is shown at the top of the page, and the version in force is always the one published here.
10. Contact
For any question about cookies, write to us at contact@symphonote.ro or call +40 733 205 502.
See also our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.