Cookie Policy

Last Updated: October 18, 2025

This Cookie Policy explains how SmartEdge Institute uses cookies and similar tracking technologies on our academic portal dedicated to smart homes, IoT systems, home automation, and sustainable technologies. This policy provides detailed information about the types of cookies we use, their purposes, and how you can manage your cookie preferences.

What Are Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer, smartphone, or other device when you visit a website. They are widely used to make websites work more efficiently, provide a better user experience, and deliver information to website owners about how users interact with their sites. Cookies typically contain a unique identifier, the website domain name, and some digits and numbers. There are different types of cookies: session cookies that expire when you close your browser and are used to maintain your session while navigating the site; persistent cookies that remain on your device for a set period or until manually deleted and remember your preferences across visits; first-party cookies that are set by the website you're visiting directly; and third-party cookies that are set by domains other than the one you're visiting, often used for advertising and analytics. Similar technologies include web beacons, pixel tags, and local storage, which serve similar purposes to cookies in tracking and improving user experience.

Why We Use Cookies

SmartEdge Institute uses cookies to enhance your experience on our portal and to help us understand how users interact with our content about smart home technologies, IoT systems, and automation. Cookies enable us to provide essential portal functionality, including user authentication, maintaining your login session, remembering your account preferences, and enabling security features that protect your account. They help us personalize your experience by remembering your language preferences, display settings, content recommendations based on your interests in specific smart home technologies, and your reading history for research articles. Cookies allow us to analyze portal performance and usage patterns, understand which content is most valuable to our users, identify technical issues and improve site speed, and track the effectiveness of our educational programs and webinars. They also help us improve our services through A/B testing of new features, gathering feedback on user satisfaction, and developing new resources based on user needs.

Types of Cookies We Use

We categorize our cookies based on their function and purpose. Strictly Necessary Cookies are essential for the portal to function properly and cannot be disabled in our systems. These include authentication cookies that verify your identity and maintain your login status, security cookies that protect against fraudulent activity and ensure secure connections, load balancing cookies that distribute traffic across our servers, and session management cookies that enable core portal features. Functional Cookies enhance portal functionality and personalization but are not strictly necessary. These remember your preferences such as language, timezone, and display settings, store your search history and content filters, enable social media sharing features, and remember your progress through educational content and courses. Analytics and Performance Cookies help us understand how visitors use our portal by collecting information about pages visited, time spent on the portal, navigation paths through content, error messages encountered, and devices and browsers used to access our services.

Third-Party Cookies

Our portal may use cookies from trusted third-party service providers to enhance functionality and analyze user behavior. Analytics services such as Google Analytics help us understand user demographics, behavior patterns, traffic sources, and content performance. These services may use cookies to track your activity across different websites. Social media platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter may place cookies when you use social sharing features on our portal, potentially tracking your activity across multiple sites. Video hosting services like YouTube or Vimeo may set cookies when you watch embedded videos about smart home demonstrations or IoT tutorials. Content delivery networks (CDNs) may use cookies to optimize content delivery speed and reliability. These third-party providers have their own privacy policies and cookie policies governing their use of cookies, and we encourage you to review their policies. We carefully select third-party partners and require them to comply with applicable data protection laws and respect user privacy rights.

Cookie Duration and Retention

Different cookies remain on your device for varying lengths of time depending on their purpose and type. Session cookies are temporary and automatically deleted when you close your browser. These are primarily used for maintaining your active session while navigating our portal and accessing secure areas. Short-term persistent cookies typically last from a few days to a few weeks and are used for features like remembering your recent searches, maintaining your "remember me" login preference for convenience, and storing temporary preferences during your visit. Medium-term persistent cookies may remain on your device for several months and help with personalizing your content recommendations based on reading history, remembering your language and regional preferences, and tracking your progress through educational courses and webinars. Long-term persistent cookies can last up to one year or longer and are typically used for analytics purposes to understand long-term user behavior trends, identify returning visitors versus new users, and measure the effectiveness of our content and educational programs over time. You can delete cookies at any time through your browser settings, which will reset your preferences and may affect portal functionality.

Managing Your Cookie Preferences

You have several options for controlling and managing cookies on our portal. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies by default, but you can modify your browser settings to decline cookies or alert you when cookies are being sent. In your browser settings, you can block all cookies, block third-party cookies only while allowing first-party cookies, delete cookies after each browsing session, or set exceptions for specific websites you trust. When you first visit our portal, we present a cookie consent banner allowing you to accept all cookies, accept only essential cookies, or customize your cookie preferences by category. You can change your consent choices at any time by accessing the cookie settings link in our portal footer. Please note that blocking or deleting certain cookies may impact your user experience and limit access to some portal features such as personalized content recommendations, saved preferences and settings, progress tracking in courses, and optimal site performance. Strictly necessary cookies cannot be disabled as they are essential for basic portal functionality and security. For mobile devices, you can manage cookies through your device settings or browser app preferences.

Do Not Track Signals

Some web browsers include a "Do Not Track" (DNT) feature that signals to websites that you do not want your online activities tracked. Currently, there is no universally accepted standard for how websites should respond to DNT signals, as different browsers implement DNT differently and there is no industry consensus on best practices. At this time, SmartEdge Institute does not respond to DNT signals from browsers. However, we are committed to respecting your privacy choices and provide multiple ways to control cookies and tracking through our cookie consent manager and your browser settings. We continuously monitor developments in privacy regulations and industry standards regarding DNT and similar privacy signals. As regulatory frameworks evolve, particularly regarding the ePrivacy Regulation in Europe and similar legislation worldwide, we will update our practices accordingly. You can still exercise control over cookies and tracking through the cookie management options described in this policy, including blocking third-party cookies, using browser privacy modes, and adjusting your consent preferences on our portal.

Cookies and Your Privacy Rights

Your use of cookies on our portal is governed by applicable data protection and privacy laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for users in the European Economic Area, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) for California residents, and other regional privacy regulations. Under these laws, you have specific rights regarding cookies and personal data collected through cookies. You have the right to be informed about the cookies we use and their purposes, which we provide through this Cookie Policy. You have the right to consent to or refuse non-essential cookies through our consent management system. You can withdraw your consent at any time by adjusting your cookie preferences. You have the right to access information about the data collected through cookies and request a copy of this data. You have the right to request deletion of data collected through cookies, subject to certain legal exceptions for data required for legitimate business purposes. Users in certain jurisdictions have the right to opt-out of the sale of personal information collected through cookies. For more information about how we collect, use, and protect your personal data, please refer to our Privacy Policy.

Changes to This Cookie Policy

SmartEdge Institute may update this Cookie Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technologies, legal requirements, or operational needs. When we make significant changes to how we use cookies or the types of cookies we employ, we will notify you by updating the "Last Updated" date at the top of this policy, displaying a prominent notice on our portal when you next visit, and potentially sending an email notification to registered users. We encourage you to review this Cookie Policy periodically to stay informed about how we use cookies and similar technologies to enhance your experience on our portal. Changes to this policy will become effective immediately upon posting unless otherwise specified. Your continued use of our portal after changes are posted constitutes your acceptance of the updated Cookie Policy. If you disagree with any changes, you should adjust your cookie preferences or discontinue using our portal. For major changes that materially affect how we use cookies for tracking or data collection, we may seek your renewed consent through our cookie consent banner.

Contact Us About Cookies

If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Cookie Policy or our use of cookies, please contact us:

SmartEdge Institute

280 Baizakov Street

Almaty, Kazakhstan

Phone: +7 (727) 312 77 00

Email: info@smartedgeinstitute.com