COOKIE POLICY

Last updated: November 2025

This Cookie Policy explains what cookies are and how we use cookies and similar technologies on this website. When we refer to “we”, “us” or “our” in this Cookie Policy, we mean The Polar Citizen Science Collective (“Polar Collective”). We hope that this Cookie Policy helps you to understand the use of cookies and similar technologies on our website, and please see our Data Protection Policy for further details on how we collect and use your personal data. However, if you have any further questions, please contact us via info@polarcollective.org.

What is a cookie and what are our cookies?

Cookies are small text files placed on your computer or device when you visit certain parts, or use certain features, of our website. They are widely used to help improve user experience by enabling websites to work in a better and more efficient way. We also use cookies to enhance your user experience and improve our website by better understanding how you might use it.

When you first visit our website from the UK or EU, and periodically thereafter, our cookie banner gives you the option to either “Accept” or “Decline” the use of cookies before accessing certain content. If you would like to adjust your cookie preferences, prevent future cookies, or otherwise delete any cookies already stored on your device, you may do so via the settings in your web browser. Please note that you will need to separately delete cookies on each device or browser that you use, and that any deletion or blocking of cookies could impact your overall user experience or functionality of the site.

Which cookies do we use on our website?

Our website uses both “session cookies” and “persistent cookies”, for which we have provided further information below.
- Session cookies: these cookies expire at the end of your browsing session (typically when you exit the browser) and allow a website to recognise and link your actions during that browsing session.
- Persistent cookies: these cookies are stored on your device for a specified duration until they are removed or otherwise expire (see the expiration periods of our cookies below). These allow a website to remember certain of your preferences and actions each time you access the training platform on your device.

Cookies can also be divided into 4 main categories, being strictly necessary cookies, analytics (performance) cookies, functionality cookies and targeting or advertising cookies. Our website uses strictly necessary and analytics cookies, for which we provide further information below.
- Strictly necessary cookies: these cookies are essential to the operation of our website, without which we cannot provide proper site functionality. However, they do not gather information about you that could be used to track browsing history or for marketing. Please note that we do not require your consent to use strictly necessary cookies. We process this data under the legitimate interests basis as it helps make our website function properly and enables us to see what people are interested in viewing.
- Analytics (performance) cookies: these cookies help us to understand how you use our site, such as how efficiently you can navigate around it and what features you use. Analytics cookies enable us to gather this information, helping us to improve our site and your experience of it. For example, we use Google Analytics , managed by Google Inc., to monitor website usage and activity. The data collected is typically aggregated to provide trends and usage patterns for business analysis, website improvement and performance metrics, such as how many users visit our website, when and for how long they visited, and which parts of the site they visited. We seek consent for these if they are not strictly necessary.

Our website uses third party cookies, these are not placed by us; instead, they are placed by third parties that provide services to us and/or to you. Third-party cookies may be used by advertising services to serve up tailored advertising to you on our website, or by third parties providing analytics services to us (these cookies will work in the same way as analytics cookies described above).

We have listed the cookies that we use on our website in the table below, together with the duration they last until expiration, category of cookie and source of the cookie.

Cookie Name

ssr-caching

XSRF-TOKEN

svSession

bSession

consent-policy

Domain

polarcollective.org

Expiration

xxx

Changes to this Cookie Policy

We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time, for which we will post the updated version to our website. In the event of conflict between the current version of this Cookie Policy and any previous versions, the most current will prevail unless expressly stated otherwise.