Privacy Policy
Cookies, Web Beacons and Other Technologies
STARS collects information from your visits to our Web sites to help us gather statistics about usage and effectiveness, personalize your experience, and tailor our interactions with you. We do so through the use of various technologies, including one called "cookies". A cookie is a piece of data that a Web site can send to your browser, which may then be stored on your computer as a tag that identifies your computer. While cookies are often only used to measure Web site usage (such as number of visitors and duration of visit) and effectiveness (such as topics visitors are most interested in) and to allow for ease of navigation or use and, as such, are not associated with any personal information, they are also used at times to personalize a known visitor's experience to a Web site by being associated with profile information or user preferences. Over time this information provides valuable insight to help improve the user experience.
Cookies are typically categorized as "session" cookies or "persistent" cookies. Session cookies help you navigate through the Web site efficiently, keeping track of your progression from page to page so that you are not asked for information you have already provided during the current visit. Session cookies are stored in temporary memory and erased when the web browser is closed. Persistent cookies, on the other hand, store user preferences for current and successive visits. They are written on your device's hard disk, and are still valid when you restart your browser. We use persistent cookies, for example, to record your choice of language and country location.
While STARS Web sites at this time do not recognize automated browser signals regarding tracking mechanisms, such as "do not track" instructions, you can generally express your privacy preferences regarding the use of most cookies and similar technologies though your web browser. You can set your browser in most instances to notify you before you receive a cookie, giving you the chance to decide whether to accept it or not. You can also generally set your browser to turn off cookies.