Data Protection

Introduction:
This Cookie Policy explains how the International UniBuc website uses cookies and similar technologies, what types of cookies we use, and how you can manage your preferences. We want to be transparent about our use of cookies so that you can make informed decisions. By using our site, you can choose which optional cookies to allow, and you can change your settings at any time through our cookie consent tool or your browser settings.

What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files that websites store on your device (computer, tablet, smartphone) when you visit them. Cookies serve a variety of functions: they can enable core site functionality, remember user preferences (like language or login status), collect analytics data, or be used for marketing purposes (like tracking across sites for advertising). Cookies set by the website you’re visiting are called first-party cookies. Cookies set by other domains (for example, by a third-party analytics or advertising provider) are called third-party cookies. In addition to cookies, there are similar technologies like web beacons (pixel tags), local storage, and scripts that perform a similar role – for simplicity, we refer to all of these as “cookies” or “cookie technologies” in this policy.

When you first visited our site, you should have seen a cookie banner explaining that we use cookies and giving you the option to accept or reject certain categories of them. No cookies beyond the strictly necessary ones are set unless you agree. Below, we categorize the cookies we use and provide details about each category, including examples of specific cookies.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly necessary cookies are essential for the basic functioning of our website. These cookies enable core features such as security, network management, and accessibility. Without them, the site would not perform as expected. They do not collect information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you’ve been on the internet. For this reason, strictly necessary cookies are typically exempt from consent requirements – they are placed by default to ensure the service you requested (browsing the website) works properly.

On our site, strictly necessary cookies include:

• Cookie Consent and Preference Cookies: When you set your cookie preferences on our site (for example, choosing which categories of cookies to accept or reject on the cookie banner), our site needs to remember those choices so it doesn’t ask you again every time and so it respects your preferences moving forward. We use a GDPR-compliant cookie consent tool that sets cookies like cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary, cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional, cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics, cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance, and cookielawinfo-checkbox-others. Each of these cookies simply stores a “yes” or “no” value to indicate whether you have allowed that category​. They have a typical lifespan of around 11 months (so that once you’ve set your preferences, they persist for about a year)​. We also use viewed_cookie_policy, which records that the cookie banner was shown and your overall consent state (this prevents the banner from popping up repeatedly)​. These cookies do not contain personally identifying information; they just remember your settings. If you were to delete them or block them, the site wouldn’t remember your preferences and you’d likely see the consent banner each visit.
• Security and Session Management Cookies: We utilize certain cookies to maintain website security and manage session state. For example, wordpress_test_cookie is set by our content management system (WordPress) to check if your browser accepts cookies at all​. It doesn’t hold any user info and is deleted when you close your browser. It’s purely a functional check — when you log in to WordPress (for site admins) it helps ensure the login process can proceed. Regular visitors might still see this cookie being set and immediately removed, as WordPress tests cookie capability on any login page. Additionally, if there were any login-protected areas on the site (primarily for admins, not for public users), cookies like wordpress_logged_in_<hash> or wp-settings-<uid> would be strictly necessary to keep those users logged in and to remember their admin preferences​. These are only relevant to site maintainers, not general visitors, but we mention them for completeness. They expire when the browsing session ends or after a short period of inactivity (or in the case of wp-settings, around 1 year, but those apply to admin users customizing their dashboard).
• reCAPTCHA Cookies (Security): We have Google reCAPTCHA implemented on our forms to distinguish human users from bots. reCAPTCHA sets several cookies as part of its process (_GRECAPTCHA and others with names like SID, HSID, APISID, SIDCC, etc., which are tied to Google domains) to provide its spam-filtering functionality. These cookies are considered strictly necessary for security because without them, the form could be abused by spammers or malicious scripts. For instance, _GRECAPTCHA is a cookie set by the Google.com domain to store the reCAPTCHA response, and it lasts for the duration of the session or a bit longer. Some of the Google security cookies (like SID and HSID) may last longer (they can persist for months or years) as they contain digitally signed and encrypted records of a user’s Google account ID and most recent sign-in time – these help prevent fraudulent use of login information and protect user data from unauthorized parties. If you are not logged into a Google account, these cookies might not identify you personally; they just serve to identify that a particular browser/computer is deemed low-risk by reCAPTCHA. We treat these as necessary because they are solely there to ensure that interactions with our site are from legitimate users. Blocking them might result in the contact form or other protected features not working (you may be unable to submit if reCAPTCHA cannot validate you). Data from these cookies may be sent to Google for analysis (as described in our Privacy Policy and Google’s privacy policy), but it is used only for fraud and abuse prevention.

These strictly necessary cookies are automatically placed when you visit our site or engage with relevant features. While you can technically block them via your browser settings, we advise against blocking strictly necessary cookies because doing so may cause parts of the site to break or not function optimally. For example, if you blocked our preference cookies, the site would continually ask for cookie consent because it can’t remember your choice; if you block reCAPTCHA cookies, you might not be able to submit forms; if you blocked session cookies, features for logged-in organizers would fail (not relevant to normal visitors, but indicates how core functionality relies on them).

We do not use strictly necessary cookies for any purpose other than providing you with the service and functions you request. They are not used for analytics or advertising.

Functional Cookies

Functional cookies enable enhanced functionality and personalization on our website. These cookies are not strictly required for the site to work, but they improve your experience by remembering choices you’ve made and providing more personal features. They may be set by us or by third-party services that we have integrated into our pages.

Examples of what functional cookies might do include: remembering your language or region selection, keeping track of preferences (like font size for accessibility, if we had such a feature), or enabling embedded content like videos or social media feeds to display correctly. If you do not allow functional cookies, some of these features (if present) may not function properly.

On the International UniBuc site, our use of functional cookies is relatively limited, because our site is straightforward and informational. However, we do have one notable feature that involves a functional cookie:

• Social Media Integration (Facebook Page Widget): We have a Facebook Page plugin embedded on our site (for example, a section that shows the latest posts from our official Facebook page or a “Like” button). This integration sets a cookie named _fbp on our domain​. The _fbp cookie is placed by Facebook’s scripts when they load on our site. According to Facebook, this cookie is used to store and track visits across websites that use Facebook Pixel or Facebook social plugins. In our case, we are using it primarily to display our Facebook content (making it a functional aspect, as it helps the widget know you’ve visited and possibly tailor content or just function). The University of Bucharest categorizes the _fbp cookie under functional cookies for the operation of the Facebook page widget​. This cookie typically has a lifespan of a few months (commonly around 3 months). It doesn’t contain personal data like your name, but it does have a unique identifier that Facebook uses to recognize your browser. This could potentially be used by Facebook to provide analytics to us or to inform their advertising system (see Marketing section), but on our site, we consider its primary role to be functional – ensuring the Facebook feed displays correctly and maybe identifying if you’ve liked our page already (to show an appropriate button state). If you disallow functional cookies, the Facebook widget might not load, or it might not remember your interactions (for example, if you clicked “Like” through our site’s plugin, it might not stick).
• Embedded Media/Maps: Currently, we do not have other embedded third-party media on the site beyond the Facebook plugin. But if in the future we embedded, say, a YouTube video or a Google Map, those services might set their own cookies to manage functionality (like remembering your volume level or that you’re logged into YouTube, or for Google Maps, to remember preferences and perform geolocation). Such cookies would be considered functional (and possibly also fall under marketing/analytics per those providers’ use). We would update this policy and list them if that occurs.

Functional cookies on our site are by default disabled until you allow them. If you choose to enable functional cookies (via our consent banner or settings), you’re allowing these additional features to run. If at any time you disable functional cookies, features like the Facebook feed may stop working or appear with degraded functionality.

To reiterate, these cookies are intended to make your experience better but are not critical. We do not use functional cookies to track you for advertising — any data collected might incidentally be used by the third-party that provides the feature (like Facebook may observe that you loaded our page widget). We recommend enabling functional cookies if you enjoy the enhanced experience (e.g., seeing social media updates directly on our site), but the choice is yours.

Performance Cookies

Performance cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources, so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us understand which pages are popular, how users navigate through the site, and if there are any errors being encountered. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and anonymous; they do not collect personal information. These cookies are essentially there for statistical analysis that benefits the site’s improvement.

In our implementation, performance cookies are closely tied to what we also call analytics cookies (discussed in the next section). You can think of performance cookies as a subset of analytics cookies focused on site performance metrics and usage.

By analyzing data from these cookies, we can, for example:

• Determine the number of visitors and see how that changes over time.
• See which sources are bringing visitors (e.g., search engines, social media, referral links).
• Understand if certain pages are rarely visited (perhaps indicating they are hard to find or not of interest).
• Monitor page load times or technical issues (some analytics can show if users leave quickly, possibly due to slow performance or errors).
• Detect patterns like a lot of traffic from a particular country, which might encourage us to provide additional info or support for that audience.

The main tool we use for performance analysis is Google Analytics. When enabled, Google Analytics sets cookies that gather information about your visit. The specific cookies set and their functions include:

• _ga: As described below in Analytics, it distinguishes users by assigning a unique ID. This helps count how many unique visitors we get (performance metric). It persists for 2 years if not deleted​.
• _gid: Also distinguishes users on a shorter-term basis (day-to-day). Persists for 24 hours​.
• _gat (or _gat_gtag_UA_xxx): Used to throttle request rate – ensuring the analytics collection doesn’t overwhelm either your browser or our server. Persists for 1 minute​.
• There may be other performance-related cookies or storage used by Google Analytics (like collect as a pixel request, or performance timing APIs) but they don’t store info on your device beyond these cookies.

By looking at the data from these cookies, we can gauge site performance. For instance, Google Analytics provides a “Behavior Flow” that shows how users typically move from one page to another – if we see many users dropping off on a particular page, we might examine that page for performance issues or confusing content. It also alerts us to technical issues if any (like a spike in exit rate on a page may suggest something’s wrong there).

If you do not allow performance cookies, we will not be able to use Google Analytics to see how your visit went, and thus our aggregated statistics become a bit less accurate. That’s perfectly okay – it will not affect your experience on the site, but it could slightly affect our ability to improve the site for the future. We appreciate when users allow these cookies because the insights gained really help us enhance the content and layout, but it’s ultimately your choice.

In sum, performance cookies do not identify you personally – they operate with anonymized IDs and aggregate data. They are used solely for the purpose of evaluating and improving our site’s performance and content delivery. We treat them as optional; they will only be set if you opt in.

(Note: Our performance cookies are essentially the same as our analytics cookies. The next section on Analytics Cookies will give more detail on Google Analytics. There might be overlap in description, but we separate the categories as an organizational matter because some policies differentiate the two. In practical terms, if you accept “Analytics/Performance” cookies on our site, you are enabling Google Analytics.)

Analytics Cookies

Analytics cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with our website. They collect information about your visits such as which pages you go to, how long you stay, how you got here, and what you click on. The purpose is to help us analyze and improve our web presence. These cookies are similar to performance cookies, and indeed we consider our Google Analytics cookies to cover both performance and analytics functions.

The primary analytics tool we use is Google Analytics. When you consent to analytics cookies, the following cookies (as mentioned) may be set by Google Analytics on our behalf:

• _ga: This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as an identifier. It is included in each page request and helps us count how many people visit our site and understand if a visitor is new or returning. The _ga cookie has a lifespan of 2 years​.
• _gid: This cookie also identifies unique visitors but on a shorter time frame. It groups user activity within a 24-hour window (essentially reset each day). It helps us see daily user counts and how many pages a person visited during that day. The _gid cookie expires after 24 hours​.
• _gat (or gat_gtag_UA[PropertyID]): This cookie is used to throttle the request rate to Google’s servers. In high traffic situations, it prevents too many analytics hits from being sent in rapid succession. It contains the Google Analytics property ID of our site (UA-XXXX) and has a short life of 1 minute​. It doesn’t store user data; it’s more of a regulator.
• AMP_TOKEN (if applicable): If we were using Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and analytics, this would contain a token to retrieve a client ID from the AMP Client ID service. We likely are not using AMP for our site, so you may not see this.
• gac<property-id>: This cookie might appear if we integrate Google Ads with Google Analytics. It stores campaign information in order to link ad clicks to site actions. For example, if someone clicked a Google ad for International and then visited our site, this could help Analytics attribute that visit to the ad campaign. We will mention more in Marketing Cookies, but this could be present. It typically lasts 90 days.

(These Google Analytics cookie lifespans are approximately: _ga persists for about 2 years, _gid for 24 hours, and _gat for 1 minute​.)

The information from analytics cookies is sent to Google Analytics servers (which may be outside your country, as discussed in the Privacy Policy). Google Analytics then compiles reports for us. The kind of data we see includes: total number of users in a given period, demographic estimates (if available, like approximate geolocation by country – note: we have not enabled more granular demographics or interest tracking), user flow through the site, time spent on pages, bounce rates (percentage who leave after one page), etc.

Importantly, we have enabled IP anonymization in Google Analytics. This means Google truncates your IP address before using it, so the last few digits are removed, making it harder to identify you or your exact location. For example, if your IP is 192.168.1.123, it might be anonymized to 192.168.1.0. This is a privacy measure to ensure we don’t collect full IP addresses in Analytics.

We also honor the “Do Not Track” setting of your browser to the best of our ability – if we detect it, our policy is to treat it as an opt-out of analytics. Additionally, you can separately opt out of Google Analytics by using their opt-out browser add-on if you wish, regardless of our site’s settings.

Analytics cookies could be considered as creating a profile of site usage, but in our configuration we do not use them for advertising or sharing with other entities. The data stays in our Google Analytics account. We do not attempt to identify individuals via analytics; we look at aggregated trends. For example, we might see that our site had 10,000 pageviews in a month and that 30% of them were for the “Problems” page. This tells us something useful (the problems are of high interest). We do not see that “User X did A, B, C” in any personally identifiable way.

If you do not allow analytics cookies, Google Analytics will not be activated and we will simply not have a record of your visit in our stats. That’s absolutely fine — it will not impact your ability to use the site at all. It only means our statistics might undercount by one. Many users choose to disable analytics cookies for privacy reasons and we respect that completely.

In summary, analytics cookies help us improve the site by providing insight into user behavior and site performance. They work anonymously and are fully optional. We ask for your consent for these cookies explicitly when you first visit. If you decline, they will stay off. If you accept but later change your mind, you can always clear your cookies or use our cookie settings tool to disable analytics.

Marketing Cookies

Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites and deliver content (especially advertisements) that is more relevant to the user’s interests. These cookies can remember that you visited our site and then use that information to help us show you outreach messages or ads on other platforms, or measure the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. Marketing cookies often involve uniquely identifying your browser and device.

On the International UniBuc website, we use a few marketing-oriented tools, specifically the Facebook Pixel and (potentially) Google Ads conversion tracking. These set cookies that allow us to connect your visit on our site with our campaigns on those external platforms.

• Facebook Pixel (_fbp & fr cookies): We have embedded the Facebook Pixel on our site to help us reach people on Facebook who have shown interest in International UniBuc website. The Pixel triggers the _fbp cookie on our domain (first-party)​. Additionally, when the Pixel sends data to Facebook, Facebook may set a third-party cookie called fr on the .facebook.com domain in your browser. The fr cookie contains an encrypted Facebook user ID and browser ID and is used by Facebook to deliver personalized advertising to you on Facebook and other websites that include Facebook social plugins. In essence, if you have a Facebook account and are logged in, or even if not, Facebook uses the _fbp and fr cookies to recognize you as someone who visited our site. This allows us (via Facebook) to later show you, for example, an announcement or reminder about International UniBuc on your Facebook feed. It also allows us to measure how effective our Facebook outreach is (e.g., did people who saw a Facebook post click through to our site?). The _fbp cookie on our site is set to last for a certain period (approx. 3 months if not cleared), and the fr cookie typically lasts 3 months as well. These cookies track your browser’s activity for the purpose of advertising. The data collected (like which pages you visited on our site, your Facebook ID if available, etc.) is sent to Facebook, who holds it under their Data Policy. We do not see individual-level data; we get aggregated reports like “100 people clicked on your Facebook ad and visited the site.” The Facebook Pixel is only activated if you consent to marketing cookies. If you opt out of marketing cookies, the Pixel will not run, _fbp won’t be set, and Facebook will not receive Pixel data from your visit.
• Google Ads (DoubleClick IDE & others): We may use Google Ads to run campaigns promoting International UniBuc (for instance, to attract students). If so, we might have a Google Ads conversion tracking tag on our site, which would set a cookie named IDE on the .doubleclick.net domain (which is Google’s advertising domain) and possibly a cookie named ANID or DSID. The IDE cookie is used by Google’s DoubleClick to record and report your actions after you interact with our ads (e.g., if you clicked an International UniBuc ad on Google and then performed some action on our site, this cookie helps tie that together). IDE typically lasts about 13 months in the EU​. The DSID cookie is used to link your activity across devices if you’re logged into Google, ensuring we don’t double-count conversions across phone vs computer; it lasts a shorter time (2 weeks)​. Another Google cookie that might appear is 1P_JAR, which is used to gather site statistics and track conversion rates (its presence could be due to Google services; it often lasts around a month). Also, NID is a Google cookie that stores user preferences and sometimes is present if you interact with services like reCAPTCHA or maps; NID lasts about 6 months and, while not directly an “ad” cookie, it can serve ads personalization. By consenting to marketing cookies, you allow these Google advertising cookies to function during your visit. They tell Google Ads if a user from an ad campaign took an action (like visited certain pages). This helps us measure ROI of ads (e.g., “X people who clicked our Google ad ended up registering interest via the contact form”).
• Other Third-Party Marketing Cookies: Currently, aside from Facebook and Google, we do not employ other advertising networks on our site. We do not display any third-party ads on the site (like banners for unrelated products). Marketing cookies we use are solely to promote International UniBuc itself on platforms like Facebook/Instagram or Google’s networks. If in the future we partner with a sponsor that might have a presence, we would update our policy accordingly, but as of now, your data isn’t being shared with any ad networks beyond the ones mentioned.

Consent and Control: Marketing cookies are disabled by default on our site. They will only be set if you opt in to them via the cookie consent banner or settings. If you opt out (or simply never opt in), none of these marketing scripts will run. That means:

• Facebook Pixel will not load, and we will not send any visit data to Facebook.
• Google Ads tags will not fire, and no DoubleClick cookies (IDE, DSID, etc.) will be written by our site.

If you do opt in but later change your mind, you can use our cookie settings tool to disable marketing cookies (and we will stop using them on your visits), and you can clear existing cookies from your browser to remove those that were set.

Privacy Implications: Marketing cookies do track your browsing to some extent. For instance, Facebook will know that a user of a certain browser (possibly linked to your Facebook ID) visited our pages. They could use this to show you International UniBuc-related ads, but also, theoretically, it contributes to Facebook’s broader knowledge of browsing habits (which they use to refine their advertising systems). Similarly, Google’s advertising cookies will note that you visited pages related to International UniBuc (chemistry competition content). Google might then use that info to show you relevant ads elsewhere (like maybe an ad for a chemistry textbook, who knows, though Google’s use of conversion cookies is primarily to measure, not to profile, since profiling comes more from your search and general browsing data which is separate).

We want to assure you that we (International UniBuc) do not get personal data from these cookies. We don’t know who you are just from you visiting our site, even with marketing cookies on. We only see the aggregate outcomes, like how many conversions an ad got. The trade-off with marketing cookies is mostly between you and those big platforms (Facebook/Google) which already likely have data if you use them. If you are uncomfortable with that cross-site tracking, it’s perfectly reasonable to keep these cookies disabled. Our site content is fully accessible without them; you just might not see our event promotions on other platforms targeted specifically to you.

Managing Marketing Preferences: In addition to our site controls, you can usually manage ad preferences directly with platforms:

• Facebook: in your Facebook account settings, you can opt out of seeing targeted ads based on data from partners (which would include pixel data) by adjusting Ads Preferences (under “Ad settings” -> “Data about your activity from partners”). You can also clear and block cookies like _fbp and fr via your browser.
• Google: you can visit Google Ad Settings to control personalized ads. Also, using a browser plugin like the DoubleClick opt-out extension or general ad blockers can block these cookies outright.

Remember, marketing cookies are about outreach. They help us spread the word about International UniBuc to interested people. But if you’re already on our site, you likely know about us, so advertising to you might not be necessary – in fact, if you opt out, you might just not see our reminders on social media, meaning you’ll need to keep up-to-date via our site or mailing list instead. There’s no impact on your ability to compete or engage with International UniBuc content by disabling marketing cookies.

Managing Cookies (Preferences and Opt-Out)

We want to give you control over how cookies are used when you visit our site. When you first visited, you had the opportunity to accept or reject different categories of cookies. You can change your preferences at any time. Here’s how:

On Our Website (Consent Tool):

• Review/Change Preferences: If you want to adjust which cookies are enabled, look for a “Cookie Settings” or “Privacy Settings” link on our site (often found in the footer or as a widget). Clicking this will bring up our cookie consent management pop-up again, where you can toggle cookie categories (Necessary, Functional, Performance, Analytics, Marketing) on or off as you wish, then save your preferences.
• Withdraw Consent: If you previously gave consent for certain cookies and have changed your mind, you can use the same settings interface to disable those categories. Once you save that, our site will stop setting those cookies on your browser. To fully ensure removal, you might also want to delete the cookies that were already set (because our site won’t magically pull them off your browser; it just won’t refresh them or use them going forward). See below for how to delete cookies in your browser.
• Banner Reappearance: If you’ve cleared cookies entirely, our site will treat you as a new visitor and show the banner again at next visit so you can make a fresh choice. We intentionally don’t make it pop-up on every single page load once you’ve set a preference, as that would be annoying, but you can always find the settings link to change your mind proactively.

Using Your Browser Settings:
All major web browsers let you manage cookies:

• You can block all third-party cookies (cookies from domains other than the one in the address bar). This can strike a balance: it would, for instance, block Facebook and Google cookies on our site (since those are third-party), while still allowing first-party necessary cookies. Most browsers have this as an option in the privacy settings.
• You can block all cookies from specific sites or all sites. Note that blocking all cookies might break login-based sites or some features, including parts of our site that rely on cookies.
• You can delete cookies at any time. It’s a good habit to occasionally clear cookies if you want to “reset” your online trackers.
• Many browsers offer a “Do Not Track” setting and private/incognito modes to reduce tracking.

Instructions for Popular Browsers:

• Chrome: Go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Cookies and other site data. Here you can choose to allow all, block third-party, or block all cookies. You can also see all cookies and site data and remove specific ones. To clear cookies, go to Privacy and Security > Clear browsing data and select “Cookies and other site data.”
• Firefox: Go to Options > Privacy & Security. Under Cookies and Site Data, you can manage data (clear cookies) or set Enhanced Tracking Protection to Standard/Strict/Custom (custom allows you to block all cookies or just third-party trackers). Firefox also has a handy “Shield” icon in the address bar on sites to show what’s being blocked.
• Safari (Mac/iOS): On Mac, go to Safari > Preferences > Privacy. You can block all cookies (not usually recommended broadly) or remove specific cookies via “Manage Website Data…”. On iOS, go to Settings > Safari, where you can clear history and website data, and under Advanced > Website Data, you can remove cookies for specific sites.
• Edge (Chromium-based): Go to Settings > Cookies and site permissions > Manage and delete cookies and site data. You have options to block third-party cookies or all cookies. Clearing cookies is under Privacy, search, and services > Clear browsing data.
• Internet Explorer: (If anyone still uses it) go to Internet Options > Privacy, and you can set the slider to different levels or use Advanced settings to override automatic cookie handling.

Opt-Out Mechanisms for Analytics/Ads:

• Google Analytics Opt-Out: Google provides a browser add-on for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge that prevents Google Analytics from collecting data on any sites you visit. You can get it by visiting Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on and installing it. With this installed, you don’t even have to rely on cookie settings; it ensures no data from your browser is sent to Google Analytics (effectively it tells the GA script to not execute).
• Industry Ad Opt-Out: There are industry groups like the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) and Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) that provide centralized opt-out pages. On these pages, you can opt out of targeted ads from participating companies (which include many major ad networks). For example, the NAI opt-out page allows you to opt out of many or all member cookies in one go. In Europe, the EDAA offers YourOnlineChoices.eu where you can manage preferences for various ad companies. Keep in mind: these typically work by setting an “opt-out cookie” on your browser. If you clear cookies, you erase the opt-out and would need to do it again.
• Facebook and Google Ad Preferences: As noted, go to Facebook’s ad preferences and Google’s ad settings to directly control how those individual companies use data for ads. For Facebook, disabling “data from partners” will stop them from using our Pixel data to target you (though it might also reduce personalization of other ads you might find relevant). For Google, turning off “Ad Personalization” will mean Google doesn’t use your info to tailor ads on Google services and on partners’ websites.

Consequences of Disabling Cookies:

• Necessary cookies: If you somehow disable these (via browser settings), expect that parts of our site might not function. For instance, try blocking all cookies and then submitting our contact form (with reCAPTCHA) – likely it won’t submit properly. Or our site might not remember that you closed a pop-up or set a preference.
• Functional cookies: Disabling them might mean a less convenient experience (e.g., needing to manually refresh social media content or losing some nice-to-have features), but nothing critical.
• Performance/Analytics cookies: We won’t know you came or what you did, which is fine. Our improvement efforts will rely on less data.
• Marketing cookies: You’ll simply see more general ads rather than ones about International UniBuc or related to your interests. Or you might not see our event promoted on Facebook/Google at all (which might be fine if you already know about us).

We have designed our site to be fully usable even if you reject all but the necessary cookies. You should not encounter content that is gated behind accepting cookies (aside from possibly the inconvenience of a cookie banner reappearing if it can’t remember you said no – which is a necessary cookie issue ironically).

If you have any trouble or questions about managing cookies on our site, please contact us. We can assist or provide specific guidance. We value your right to privacy and want you to feel comfortable with how your data is being handled while you browse our site.

Summary: Cookies are there to make our site function correctly (necessary cookies), to remember your choices (functional), to help us improve (performance/analytics), and to assist in promoting International UniBuc (marketing). You have full control over the non-essential ones. We hope this explanation clarifies what each type does. We appreciate your engagement, whether you allow all cookies or none – the important thing is you get the information you need 

For further information on how we handle any data collected (via cookies or otherwise), please refer to our Privacy Policy. And for any concerns regarding cookies that we haven’t addressed here, feel free to reach out.

Happy browsing!