Cookie Policy

Cookies are small text files that a website saves to your browser to remember things between visits — like keeping you signed in. Some are essential for the platform to work; others are optional and help us understand how the Academy is used.

Essential cookies

• Access token — keeps you signed in while you move between pages. Without this you would have to log in on every page load. A first-party cookie, set by us on the .iesf.org domain, which is what lets one sign-in cover both the Academy and the main IESF site. Expires after 15 minutes and is renewed silently. Also held in your browser's local storage while we complete a migration towards cookies, which are the safer of the two.
• Refresh token — used silently to renew your access token before it expires, so you stay signed in across tabs and reloads. Expires after 7 days. Held in the same two places.

Both are httpOnly and secure: your browser sends them only over an encrypted connection, and scripts running on the page cannot read them. They go to IESF's own servers and to nobody else.

Functional storage

• Theme preference — remembers your colour scheme choice. Stored in your browser's local storage.
• Your cookie choice — remembers whether you accepted or rejected optional analytics, so we do not ask again on every page. Stored in your browser's local storage.

Site analytics

We do not run third-party analytics like Google Analytics or Meta Pixel. We run a first-party tracker on our own servers that collects aggregate site analytics — page path, page title, referrer, user agent, hashed IP, country, device type, and time-on-page — to understand how the site is used. We do not collect names, emails, or precise locations. Raw data is dropped after 90 days; aggregates are retained indefinitely. You can opt out by rejecting cookies.

The tracker uses a session identifier stored in sessionStorage (cleared when you close the tab) and a localStorage flag to remember your consent choice. No third-party domain is contacted.

The only third-party cookies that may be set on the Academy come from Stripe during checkout for paid courses. These are essential for fraud detection on payment forms. Stripe's cookie policy is available at stripe.com/cookies-policy/legal.

Embedded videos hosted on third parties (YouTube, Vimeo) may set their own cookies. These appear only on course pages that include such videos.

Your consent choice

You can change your choice about optional cookies at any time here. The essential sign-in cookies can't be turned off — the platform won't work without them — but they don't track you.

You can also clear or block cookies through your browser settings. Blocking the essential cookies will prevent you from signing in.

Quick links to common browsers:

• Chrome cookie settings
• Firefox cookie settings
• Safari cookie settings
• Edge cookie settings

We honour the Do Not Track browser signal — if it's set, we will not record analytics events from your session.

If we add new cookies or change how existing ones work, we'll update this page and notify signed-in users by email.