1. What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small text file placed by a website on a user's browser. It may contain a technical identifier, a preference or session information. Some cookies are strictly necessary to operate a service, others are used for audience measurement, advertising or behavioural tracking.
2. Strictly necessary cookies (no consent required)
These cookies are essential for the provision of the Service and do not require prior consent (Art. 45c TCA for Switzerland; Art. 5 §3 of Directive 2002/58/EC for the EU).
| Name | Duration | Domain | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| ark.stock session | Session | *.arkstock.ch | Authentication to the Customer Instance (post-signup) |
| CSRF token (HMAC) | Session | *.arkstock.ch | Protection against CSRF attacks |
3. Browser storage (no cookies)
The arkstock.ch site uses browser storage (localStorage and sessionStorage). These are not cookies. Part of this data is sent to ark.swiss sàrl, as shown below.
| Name | Duration | Content and use |
|---|---|---|
theme | Until cleared | Light or dark theme. Stays on your device. |
ark_consent | 6 months | Your choice for the Google Ads tag (accepted or declined) and its date. Stays on your device. |
ark_ads_conv | Until cleared | Identifiers of sign-ups and quote requests already reported to Google Ads, so they are not counted twice. Created only with your consent. Stays on your device. |
ark_vid | 13 months, then renewed | Random visitor identifier, not linked to your name or email address. It is sent with every visit event to the app.ark.swiss central system. |
ark_sid | While the tab is open; new identifier after 30 minutes of inactivity | Session identifier attached to the same events. |
ark_attribution | Until the tab is closed | Origin of the visit: utm_* campaign parameters, referring site (its address only), landing page and time. It is sent once to the central system with the first events. If you arrive from a Google ad, the advertising click identifier (gclid, gbraid or wbraid) present in the address is also remembered. If you start a Starter trial, the campaign parameters, the advertising click identifier and the referring site are attached to the signup and kept in the central system; the identifier is used only to tell Google Ads that a trial took place after your click. The central system sends it, without any cookie, independently of the tag described in section 6. |
ark_aq, ark_ft_sent | Until the next send; until cleared | Queue of up to 100 events not yet sent; marker showing that the origin of the visit has already been sent. |
This data stays with ark.swiss sàrl and is not sold. The only exception is a trial's advertising click identifier, sent to Google Ads with the signup time as described above. You can clear it at any time from your browser settings. Retention periods in the central system are listed in the Privacy Policy.
4. Payment cookies (Stripe)
When the Customer accesses the payment flow, Stripe may set fraud prevention cookies. They are necessary for performance of the contract.
| Name | Duration | Placed by | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| __stripe_mid | 1 year | Stripe Payments Europe Ltd. | Fraud detection |
| __stripe_sid | 30 minutes | Stripe Payments Europe Ltd. | Fraud detection |
Legal basis: performance of the contract (Art. 6 §1 lit. b GDPR) and legitimate interest in payment security (Art. 31 §1 FADP).
5. Audience measurement (cookieless)
ark.swiss sàrl uses Umami, self-hosted on analytics.ark.swiss, to measure site audience. Umami does not set any cookies. It identifies visits via an anonymous hash computed from the IP address, user agent and current date; this hash is purged nightly. No personal data within the meaning of FADP/GDPR is retained. No consent is required.
Internal measurement. The site also sends page views and some actions, such as starting a signup, to the app.ark.swiss central system. This system belongs to ark.swiss sàrl. Each event contains the visitor identifier, the page, the referring site, the language, the screen width and the browser. The IP address is not stored: the central system keeps only a hash of it.
6. Google Ads measurement (with your consent)
If you accept it in the banner, arkstock.ch loads the Google Ads tag (gtag.js). Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland, provides this service. Google LLC may process the data in the United States.
Purpose. To know whether a Starter sign-up or a quote request follows a click on one of our ads, so we can measure how well they work. After submission, the tag sends its random identifier, without any name or email address. Ad personalisation (remarketing) stays disabled.
Data sent to Google. Advertising click identifier, identifiers of the cookies below, page address, IP address, browser and time.
| Name | Duration | Domain | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
_gcl_* (e.g. _gcl_au, _gcl_aw) | 90 days | arkstock.ch | Link a sign-up or quote request to the click on a Google ad |
Google cookies (e.g. IDE, test_cookie) | Up to 13 months, as set by Google | google.com, doubleclick.net | Conversion measurement by Google; list kept by Google on its dedicated page |
Legal basis. Your consent (Art. 6 §1 lit. a GDPR; Art. 45c TCA; Art. 6 FADP). Without consent, the tag is not loaded and your browser sends no request to Google Ads.
Transfer outside Switzerland and the EU. The data may be processed in the United States by Google LLC, certified under the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. The European Commission's standard contractual clauses apply subsidiarily.
Withdrawing consent. The "Cookie choices" link at the bottom of every page reopens the banner. If you decline, the tag stops sending data and the arkstock.ch _gcl_* cookies are deleted. Your choice is kept for 6 months, then the banner appears again. Data already received by Google follows its privacy policy.
ark.stock application. The application (app.arkstock.ch and dedicated instances) uses neither this tag nor any other advertising tracker. The banner and the tag apply only to the arkstock.ch website.
7. No other advertising tracker
ark.swiss sàrl does not use any of the following services: Google Analytics, Meta Pixel (Facebook), LinkedIn Insight Tag, Hotjar, Intercom, Tawk.to, Crazy Egg, Mixpanel, Segment. No retargeting pixel is present on arkstock.ch.
8. Browser cookie management
Every browser allows you to block or delete cookies via its settings:
Note: blocking strictly necessary cookies makes the Service unusable after signup.
9. Policy updates
This policy is updated upon technical changes. Any material change is signalled on the website.
10. Contact
In case of discrepancy between language versions, the French version prevails.