What Cookies Are
Cookies are small text files that are stored on your device when a website loads in your browser. They carry a small amount of technical information that helps the site function properly and securely as you move between pages.
How This Website Uses Cookies
As of , this website sets strictly necessary first party cookies and nothing else until you say otherwise. These are the cookies the site needs to load and operate securely. They are set by this website itself, they carry no advertising or tracking purpose, and they do not need your permission.
Beyond those there are three optional categories: functional, which remembers choices you make on the site, statistics, which tells us how the site is used, and marketing, which measures our advertising. None of them run until you switch them on, either in the cookie banner that appears on your first visit or in the cookie settings panel, which you can open at any time from any page.
- Nothing optional loads before you accept it. Every optional category starts switched off, and stays off if you do nothing.
- Refusing is as easy as accepting. The banner gives Reject All exactly the same prominence as Accept All, side by side.
- Refusing changes nothing about your access to the site. Every page, every course and every booking works the same either way.
Advertising and Measurement Cookies
Google is the only advertising and measurement provider this website uses: Google Ads, to advertise our Polish courses, and Google Analytics, to measure how the site is used. There is no other provider, and Google is a third party. Two of the optional categories cover this work:
- Marketing. Lets Google recognise your browser, so we can see which advert led to an enquiry or a booking and show our courses to people with similar interests.
- Statistics. Tells us which pages people actually use, so we can see what is useful and fix what is not.
If you switch these on, information about your visit, such as the pages you viewed and whether you sent an enquiry, is shared with Google, and Google handles it under its own policies, which can include its own advertising systems outside our control. You can read how it uses cookies in the Google cookie policy.
What happens if you say no. This part is worth stating plainly rather than burying. Once our advertising is switched on, the Google tag may still load on the page even for visitors who declined. When it loads in that state it is running with every consent signal set to denied: it sets no cookies, it uses no identifier for you or your device, and it cannot personalise anything or build a profile. What it sends is a cookieless, aggregated signal, meaning a count that tells Google an anonymous visit happened and nothing that points back to you. If you accept, the tag switches to its normal behaviour and the cookies described above are set.
Where this stands today. The advertising account is not live yet. The Google tag IDs on this site are still placeholders, so no Google script is requested at all and none of our adverts are running. The consent machinery described here is built and working now, which is the point: when the real IDs are added, nothing about your choice changes and nothing loads that you have not agreed to.
Your consent comes first. A cookie banner appears on your first visit, before any optional cookie is set. It offers Accept All and Reject All with equal prominence, and a Customise option if you would rather take the categories one at a time. Refusing will not limit your access to the site or affect any booking.
Withdrawing consent. You can change your mind at any time. The Cookie Settings link in the footer of every page reopens the settings panel, and there is a button further down this page that does the same thing. Switch a category off and it stops being used straight away. Your decision does not last forever either: it is kept for at most 12 months, after which the banner asks again. You can also delete cookies already stored on your device using the browser guides below, and you can email us at info@polishonline.ie if you want help doing it.
How Your Choice Is Stored
Your answer has to be remembered somewhere, or you would be asked again on every page. This site keeps two small entries in your browser's local storage. Both are first party, both stay on your device, and neither is ever sent to us or to anyone else.
- cookie-consent. Your own decision, category by category, and the date you made it. Kept for at most 12 months, after which it lapses and the banner asks you again.
- accessibility-settings. The text size, readable font, contrast and animation choices you make in the accessibility widget. Written only if you accept functional cookies, and deleted as soon as you withdraw that.
Technically these are local storage entries rather than cookies. We treat them under the same rules regardless, because that distinction is a technical one. What matters to you is that something is kept on your device, what it is for, and how long it stays.
The Check on the Contact Form
The enquiry form on the contact page runs Cloudflare Turnstile, which confirms a person rather than a bot filled it in. It works invisibly: there is no puzzle, no tick-box, and nothing appears on screen. We are telling you about it precisely because you cannot see it happening.
To make that judgement it reads a few technical signals: your IP address, your browser's TLS fingerprint and user-agent, and which site the form sits on. Cloudflare treats these as strictly necessary for blocking bots, and states that it cannot identify individuals from them. It is not used to profile you or to follow you to other websites. Cloudflare's own Turnstile Privacy Addendum sets out exactly what it collects and how, including anything it stores in your browser.
Because it protects the form from abuse rather than measuring your visit, it is a security measure and runs on every submission, and it is not one of the categories you can switch off in the cookie banner. What the form does with the details you actually type is set out in the GDPR policy.
Managing Cookies in Your Browser
The cookie settings panel on this site is your main control. It lists every optional category with a switch, and it is the quickest way to see and change what you allow.
Your browser is the second route, and the one to use for clearing what is already stored on your device. Every browser lets you view, block and delete cookies and site data for any website at any time. Note that blocking strictly necessary cookies can stop parts of a website from working correctly.
The official guides below explain how to do this in the most widely used browsers:
If you use a different browser, look for cookie settings in its privacy or security section, or check its own official support pages.
More About Your Data
Cookies are only one part of the picture. Our GDPR Policy explains what personal data Bilingual Learning Consultancy collects, how long we keep it, and the rights you can exercise over it. Course booking and participation rules are set out in our Terms and Conditions.
Questions about this Cookie Policy? Email info@polishonline.ie.
Bilingual Learning Consultancy, Newbridge, Co. Kildare
Email: info@polishonline.ie