This document explains how and why A-B Solutions (Asif Bacchus) uses ‘cookies’ relating to our websites with the root domain “a-b.solutions” and your rights to control the use of such cookies.
Questions, concerns or any other inquiries about this document, our cookie policies and practices in general or specific cookie-related requests may be directed to [email protected]. We aim to respond to any such inquiries within seventy-two (72) hours.
This document is located at “https://a-b.solutions/privacy/policies/website-cookie-policy.html" and was last updated on Friday, March 31, 2023.
Definitions
The following conventions are used throughout this document:
- "we", "us", and "our" refer to A-B Solutions (Asif Bacchus) located at 175 1500 14th Ave S.W., Calgary AB, T3C 3N7.
- "website" and "site" refer to the site accessible at https://a-b.solutions and all its subdomains.
- "page", "pages", "webpage", and "webpages" refer to individual pages that are part of our website(s).
- "you", "your", "visitor", "visitors", "user", "users", "customer", and "customers" refer to the individuals or other legal entities that are accessing and/or using our website.
What are cookies?
Cookies are small data files sent from our servers to your web browser where they are stored for a definite or (somewhat) indefinite period. Placing a cookie on your device via your web browser is referred to throughout this document as 'setting' a cookie.
Cookies are widely used by websites to provide or enhance certain functionalities and for persisting user preferences and 'states'. The most common examples are remembering chosen colour schemes such as 'dark mode' or remembering you are logged in so that you don't have to enter your username and password each time a new page is loaded. Cookies are also used extensively in analytics to help websites distinguish between visitors and get more accurate statistics.
Cookies may be blocked and/or deleted by you at any time via your browser settings. If you are interested in how to do this, please use your favourite search engine or refer to the support website for your chosen web browser. In most cases, cookie settings are located in the ‘privacy’ or ‘privacy & security’ sections of your browser settings.
How and why we use cookies
We set, permit to be set and only use “first-party cookies”. This means all cookies refer to and only apply to our websites. We do not permit, set or use “third-party cookies”, meaning those that are set for domains or accessible by domains other than ours. This means we do not permit or use any external advertiser ‘tracking’ cookies and the like — they are against our operating policies. All cookies set by our sites are only used by our sites.
Cookies allow us to offer you a better experience and enable certain functions such as managing user accounts and remembering your preferences. While our sites remain essentially functional and usable without cookies, your experience would likely be noticeably diminished. Cookies also provide us with enhanced analytics as outlined in our Privacy Policy (https://a-b.solutions/privacy/policies/website-privacy-policy.html). We use that information, if you provide your consent for us to collect it, so that we may better optimize, secure and maintain our websites.
Our websites use any or all of three categories of cookies: analytics-related cookies, preference-persistence cookies and account-related cookies.
Analytics-related cookies
If you provide your consent, we place one or more cookies from our analytics server (webstats.a-b.solutions) on your device via your web browser. These cookies contain a unique ‘Visitor ID’ which allows us to more accurately determine information about how you interact with our site than would an IP address alone.
A Visitor ID allows us to determine if you have visited our site before and helps us analyze which pages you visit while using our site. This information is aggregated and anonymized as per our Privacy Policy (https://a-b.solutions/privacy/policies/website-privacy-policy.html). The information enabled by Visitor IDs allows us to generate useful business metrics such as:
- Total unique visitors and the number of repeat visitors;
- What products and services visitors are interested in based on their browsing patterns on our site;
- Effectiveness of our site navigation tools;
- The popularity of in-page links (anchors) and downloadable items;
- How well our marketing or other promotional campaigns are working;
- Whether our bandwidth, capacity and geographic mirror allocations need to be adjusted to provide a better user experience; and
- Other ‘usage data’ as outlined in our Privacy Policy.
To make these metrics useful, the Visitor ID must be persisted across visits on the same device. A cookie is the only current practical method of reliably achieving this. Despite the obvious usefulness of this information to us, we require your explicit consent to set these cookies and will NOT do so without your consent.
Preference-persistence cookies
These cookies are used exclusively by our sites to remember your browsing preferences and/or enhance that experience. Examples of these cookies include (but may not be limited to):
- Your colour scheme preferences (such as enabling 'dark mode').
- Your cookie and analytics tracking preference.
- If you choose to opt-out of analytics, for example, we store a cookie on your device to record this preference so we don't continue asking you within a certain time.
- Content-Delivery Network (CDN) routing preferences.
- These cookies are used by Cloudflare (our CDN partner) to determine which server is the closest or the fastest responder to your requests. The result is that our pages load faster since they know which server to query.
These cookies DO NOT store any identifiable data associated with you and exist solely to facilitate site operation and/or enhance your experience. As such, we do not ask for consent before setting these cookies and do not provide an opt-out mechanism for them.
Account-related cookies
These cookies apply only to visitors logged in to restricted or otherwise controlled/exclusive access portions of our websites. These cookies store a representative hash of your username or digitally signed token that identifies you have logged in successfully. They never contain any directly personally identifiable or sensitive data. Using these cookies prevents you from continually entering your credentials each time you visit our site or navigate between different pages. These cookies are removed when they expire for security reasons or when you log out, whichever happens first.
These cookies are essential for the operation of the aforementioned sections of our website. We do not ask for consent before setting them. If they are denied or otherwise blocked, we cannot reasonably assure you that said sections of our site will continue to function in your browser.
Disabling cookies
As part of respecting the privacy of our visitors, we offer an automatic way to opt-out of analytics-related cookies. You may do this regardless of whether you have previously consented to such cookies.
To opt-out of analytics-related cookies, please visit our Privacy Centre (https://a-b.solutions/privacy), click on the “Your Settings” link and follow the instructions on that page. Your preferences take effect immediately.
If you want to manually disable all cookies, including those which are required for the proper operation of parts of our sites, then please set your browser to block/ignore cookies from the following sites:
- https://a-b.solutions
- https://*.a-b.solutions
- https://webstats.a-b.solutions
- Note: This address is implicitly included in the previous one. You would only have to set this address if your browser does not accept 'wildcard' addresses like the preceding address that contains an asterisk (*).
Manually blocking all cookies from our sites is not recommended since it prevents us from storing preferences or processing login states. This means you will see overlay prompts asking about your preferences (including, ironically, cookie preferences) more often and you will need to continually re-enter login information on each page if you are browsing controlled-access sections of our sites. For these reasons, we recommend disabling cookies using our Privacy Centre instead of manually via your browser settings.
Changes to this policy
We reserve the right to change this policy from time to time. If we make such changes, we will post an updated copy of this document on our website and update you via email if you have provided consent to such communication. The date near the beginning of this document reflects the most recent update and provides an easy way to determine if changes were made to this document since the last time you reviewed it.
Any changes to this policy come into full force and effect upon being posted to our website(s) regardless of whether you have received a notice of such changes.
Contact us
If you have any questions or concerns about this Cookie Policy, you may contact us via email at [email protected].
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