Cookie <strong>policy</strong>

Cookie policy

Welcome to Club Brugge!

Our contact details are: Club Brugge NV, Olympialaan 72, 8200 Bruges, enterprise number 0460.444.251 (hereinafter referred to as “Club Brugge”, “we”, “us” or “our”).

1. Notice

This cookie policy describes how Club Brugge uses ‘cookie’ technology on its websites, mobile applications, web shops, ticket shops, wireless (WiFi, Bluetooth) networks, software or other online products and services (hereinafter “Online Services”).

A cookie is a text file that is placed by the website server in your computer’s browser or on your mobile device when you visit the website or another online environment. The cookie contains a unique code that allows your browser to be recognised during your visit to the website (a so-called ‘session’ cookie) or during subsequent, repeated visits (a so-called ‘persistent’ cookie). Cookies can be placed by the server of the website you are visiting or by partners with which this website cooperates. The website server can only read the cookies that it itself has placed; it has no access to other information that resides on your computer or mobile device. Cookies are saved on your computer or your mobile device in your browser’s folder. The contents of a cookie usually consist of the name of the server that placed the cookie, an expiration date and a unique numeric code.

Cookies generally make the interaction between the visitor and the website easier and faster, and help the visitor to navigate between the different parts of a website. Cookies also allow your preferences to be remembered both during your visit to the website and with a view to a return visit. Cookies can also be used to make the content of a website or advertisement on a website more relevant to the visitor and adapted to his or her personal tastes and needs.

Our ‘cookie policy’ makes use of multiple analogue technologies such as cookies, web beacons, pixels and GIFs, all of which are referred to as ‘cookies’. We explain below which cookies we use and how you can control them. Please read our privacy policy which establishes the rules that we follow when we use cookies and when we process personal data we have collected about you.

You have the option to agree or not to agree to our use of cookies. If you do not agree, you can access the public pages of the Online Services, but some functions may be limited or denied in this case. More explanation will follow below.

2. Purposes

We can process through our Online Services the following categories of cookies for the purposes stated below. These purposes also include, as is also described in our privacy policy:

  • making the general use of the Online Services (ticket shop, club shop, mobile app, offers, promotions …) as safe, easy and user friendly as possible, and optimising the user experience of the Online Services;
  • creating content via the Online Services that is relevant to you, and providing information, promotions, products and services of Club Brugge and of partners of Club Brugge, and integrating these with other information, promotions, products and services of third parties;
  • processing for the purpose of advertising, marketing and direct marketing in the service of commercial and promotional events, products and services of Club Brugge and of partners and suppliers of Club Brugge.

3. Use of cookies for the Online Services

Club Brugge can use the following types of cookies in connection with the Online Services:

  • Necessary cookies. These cookies are essential to the use of our Online Services or certain parts thereof. These cookies facilitate, for example, navigation between the different parts of the websites, filling out forms, placing orders, and tracking the contents of your shopping cart. When you wish to log in with your personal account, cookies are also required to safely verify your identity before we give you access to your personal information. If you reject these cookies, certain parts of the Online Services will not work or will not work optimally.
  • Connection cookies. These are cookies and metafiles that support communications on the network (routing messages, encryption information …).
  • Cookies for browser functionality or user friendliness. Certain cookies memorise the dialogue language or allow a page to be personalised by taking into account previous searches or dialogues. The first aim of these cookies is to make the dialogues more user-friendly. They can also contain useful information such as purchases in progress (shopping cart), the memorised list of documents in a personal space, etc. These cookies are deleted after a browsing session or retained in order to be supplemented or refreshed in subsequent visits.
  • Temporary and permanent cookies. Some cookies exist only as long as the exchange or conversation with the website lasts (maximum several hours) and are erased when the internet user exits the browser; they are called temporary cookies. Other cookies can have a longer lifespan or are subject to an expiration date; these are persistent cookies. They will only be erased by a new cookie that comes from the server that created it, possibly with a new expiration date. They can also be deleted if the user takes explicit action by deleting the history or the software that monitors the cookies. These user actions do not necessarily delete all cookies and metafiles stored on the workstation.
  • First-party or third-party cookies. Cookies memorised during the dialogue can be managed by the Online Service visited: these are cookies that are specific to the Online Service visited (first-party cookies). A cookie can also be further defined by an Online Service other than the one visited. Thus the “I like” button on a page generates a cookie that is identified by Facebook; Facebook can read and modify it at a later time. These cookies are called third-party cookies; they can contain information about the open exchange, such as the IP address of the internet user, the address of the visited page or any other information. We can also make use of third-party cookies for the functionality itself of exchanges, such as for web mail and other communications. When third party cookies are disabled by refusing these parameters in the browser, communication problems with the Online Services website can arise. Third-party cookies make it possible to send personal data to a third party, either directly (e.g. through an active component linked to a banner), or indirectly by placing cookies that are accessible to websites other than our own Online Services. These data transfers are implicit and take place while the page is loading.
  • Keyboard friendly Cookies. The texts and forms completed via the keyboard are preserved in cookies or in other metafiles stored on the computer: they automatically propose text (identification, address, passwords …). This information remains available for websites visited later. Browsers have several possibilities for managing the storage of such information: the most secure is the use of a virtual keyboard.
  • Statistical or analytical cookies. These cookies collect information about the technical details of the exchange or the use of the Online Services (pages visited, average duration of the visit …) in order to improve their operation. The data collected in this way in principle is combined and processed anonymously, but can also be processed for other purposes.
  • Cookies for technical performance. These are analytical cookies that provide technical information on the exchange that, for example, is useful for proper routing of the pages on the network or to remember communications incidents or errors (especially to count the number of failed authentications). This category also includes load-balancing cookies that classify requests according to the use made of the Online Services (pages visited …). The data collected in this way in principle is combined and made anonymous, but can also be used for other purposes.
  • Cookies related to visitor origin. Thanks to the cookies that the user returns, we know if the visitor is coming from another site (at the top of the request with a third-party cookie) or if he is continuing his visit on the same site (primarily the website’s own cookies), which allows us to count the number of pages read per visit. They also allow us to know the origin of the visit, for example visits generated through a search using a search engine. Thus, it is also a way to measure the effectiveness of the search engine’s hits. Most web hosts also log these cookies to provide statistics to their customers.
  • Visit monitoring cookies. Visit cookies are internal cookies that allow tracking of the browsing trajectory on the Online Services. They are useful for the development of the Online Services, to count the clicks or other functions that the visitor activates.
  • Check digit cookies. The cookies that are exchanged with our Online Services include the IP address of the user and therefore information about the geographical location as well as other information. Consolidating this information makes it possible to catalogue and analyse the so-called check digit of the Online Services. It is also a means to classify visitors by category or by IP address. The cookies concerning visit origin may also be used to further refine the check digit cookies.
  • Tracking cookies. Third-party tracking cookies are used by advertisers and other third parties to monitor browsing behaviour. They can be accumulated on the workstation of the user, after which the Online Services and other websites and online environments compare them. This concerns determining your surfing habits. It is information that advertisers use to adapt their advertising to, among others, your presumed preferences and habits.
  • Advertising cookies. Many (commercial) websites, including our Online Services, contain advertising messages, usually in the form of banners that store cookies on the workstation of the internet user. These cookies can be generated by the page itself at the time the banner is displayed while quickly reviewing the screen or by explicitly clicking on it. These cookies contain information about your browsing habits and aim to provide you with advertising within your sphere of interest.
  • Reference cookies. We can also work with third parties to provide additional services. These third parties provide their own cookies generated by the partner site as third-party cookies. In this way, the third-party advertisers and the other organisations use the visited site to create their own cookies to store information about activities on the visited website. The third party advertiser then uses this information to distribute advertising on the websites visited or on any other website with which the third party has concluded an agreement: other partners that according to them might be of interest to you, given the content that you have consulted. The third-party advertisers may also use this information to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and expand their field of control via cascade agreements. For example, the social network icons on an online shopping site gives these networks access to the list of the shopper’s purchases by using the reference cookies.
  • Cookies for multimedia media. A multimedia presentation that is understandable requires knowledge of multimedia parameters: the type of file to be downloaded, compression method used, duration of the presentation, dimensions of the presentation window, the way intellectual property rights are protected, etc. Such information in principle is anonymous and is temporarily stored on your workstation, without personal data.
  • Cookies for multimedia usage. Most elements that make multimedia presentation possible have features that facilitate user friendliness: remembering recently viewed or listened to media, classification into albums by author, etc. This information can be remembered in cookie form, in metafiles or managed in a more intelligent way within the database that was created on the user’s workstation. In itself, this data contains no personal information, but can be re-used for other purposes, for example to create a profile of the user (in particular the definition of his or her preferences and type of behaviour on the basis of the visited media).
  • “Flash” or “LSO” cookies. If our Online Services use an “Adobe Flash Player” extension to play animations or video content, this extension generates special cookies (Local Shared Objects). These are cookies for multimedia media but they also offer other cookies for multimedia use. These cookies are not managed by the browser options.
  • Cookies for content sharing. Social networks are many and varied, for example: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr, Myspace, Linkedin, Viadeo, Xing. They usually offer buttons for sharing content (of the type “I like”, “g+1”, “Twitter”, “YouTube” …) and use cookies to provide their services. These cookies are managed by software modules, in particular plug-ins, that they themselves make available or are offered by the developers for pay or free of charge. These modules are offered in a proprietary version or open source, and do not necessarily provide a basic guarantee of legal compliance. The display of these buttons implicitly generates several requests on the social networking sites and an exchange of information, usually without the knowledge of the user. This dialogue, of which the user is unaware, obviously generates standard communications cookies specific to social networking sites, but are third party with respect to the shown website being visited by the internet user. In addition, a click on the button causes a series of communications with the social network, and the associated cookies are used.  Although this explicit click expresses consent for the known function of the button, this is not necessarily the case for the underlying or hidden processing.
  • Web beacons. The web bug has several names: web bug, web beacon, tracking bug, transparent GIF, pixel tag. This 1-pixel image is transparent and therefore invisible on the page. It covers the software code that brings together the functions of third-party cookies, content sharing cookies and reference cookies.

4. Cookie management

By using the Online Services, you give your consent for the use of cookies.

  • You can refuse the installation of cookies via your browser settings. You can also delete the already installed cookies from your computer or mobile device at any time. Each type of browser has its own way of managing cookies. This information can be found on the websites of Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, Safari and Firefox.
  • If you wish to reject the advertising cookies (e.g. Google or Criteo), you can do so via the website http://www.youronlinechoices.com/
  • If you do not wish to receive advertising based on your surfing habits and the remarketing cookies, such as those of Google, you can change the settings of the Google Ads Preferences Manager. Google also recommends that you install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
  • If you agree to the use of cookies during a visit to the Online Services of Club Brugge, they can be used on subsequent visits to our Online Services.