Cookie policy

1. What cookies are

A cookie is a small text file a website puts on your device when you visit, and can read back on your next visit. Cookies let a site work properly, remember your preferences, or measure how it’s used. Throughout this policy, “cookies” also covers similar technologies that store or read information on your device, such as local storage, pixels, and scripts.

2. The rules that apply

Two sets of rules cover cookies in Belgium at the same time:

• Article 129 of the Belgian Electronic Communications Act, which implements the European ePrivacy Directive. It says a cookie may be set or read only after you give prior, informed consent, unless the cookie is strictly necessary to deliver something you asked for.
• The GDPR and the Belgian Framework Act of July 30, 2018, which kick in as soon as a cookie involves personal data.

So for any non-essential cookie, Novasar asks first, before the cookie is set. You’re never required to say yes, and you can change your mind later.

3. The usual categories

Cookies generally fall into four groups:

• Strictly necessary: required to make the site work and keep it secure. No consent needed.
• Functional: remember your preferences, such as a language choice.
• Analytics: measure how visitors use the site so it can be improved.
• Marketing:track your browsing behavior to target ads. Novasar doesn’t use these.

4. What novasar.be actually sets

The only cookies novasar.be can set are analytics cookies, and those follow only after you accept them in the banner. Decline, and nothing is set and the site keeps working exactly the same.

There is one exception: your language choice. Switch the site to another language and novasar.be remembers it in a functional cookie (novasar-taal, up to a year), so a later visit doesn’t drop you back into the other language. That cookie holds nothing but the language you picked, and it is strictly necessary to deliver the version you asked for.

5. Analytics cookies (Google Analytics)

Novasar uses Google Analytics to understand how the site gets used and to improve it. These cookies are set only after you consent in the banner. There are two:

Google acts as a processor for Novasar here. Data may be transferred to the United States in the process, under the safeguards described in section 7 of the privacy policy. For more on what Google does with it, see Google’s privacy policy.

6. Giving, refusing, and withdrawing consent

A banner appears on your first visit. Accepting and declining are equally easy, one click each, and no analytics cookie is set before you accept. Your answer is remembered so the banner doesn’t come back every visit.

You can change or withdraw that answer whenever you want through the Cookie preferenceslink at the bottom of every page. Withdraw it, and novasar.be sets no new analytics cookies and deletes the Google Analytics cookies already there. Withdrawing doesn’t make anything processed beforehand unlawful.

7. Managing cookies in your browser

Your browser gives you another way in: you can view and delete the cookies already set, and tell it to refuse some or all of them. Each browser does this differently, so check its help pages. Keep in mind that blocking cookies across the board can break how some sites behave.

8. Changes to this policy

Novasar updates this policy whenever a cookie is added or removed, or when the rules change. The current version is always on this page, dated at the top.

9. Questions?

Email contact@novasar.be with any question about cookies. The Belgian Data Protection Authority also publishes plain-language guidance on the subject.