Cookies

This site sets five cookies. Four are needed for it to work at all; one remembers whether you chose the light or dark theme. There are no advertising cookies, no analytics, and nothing is shared with anyone else.

Everything this site stores

None of these are sent to another website: they are marked SameSite=Lax, so your browser only hands them back to this site. The sign-in cookie is also marked HttpOnly, which means no script on the page can read it — not even ours.

Your choice

Accept and Essential only both keep the four essential cookies, because without them you could not sign in, keep a basket, or submit a form safely. The difference is that "Essential only" tells us not to add anything optional later without asking you again.

You have not answered yet, so nothing optional is stored.

You can change your mind at any time:

Accept Essential only Ask me again

Saved.

Your browser can also block or delete cookies itself, under its privacy settings. If you delete the essential ones you will be signed out and your basket will be emptied, but nothing will break permanently.

What this site does not do

• No advertising or marketing cookies.
• No analytics, and no third-party tracking scripts.
• Nothing is sold or handed to advertisers.
• No profile is built about you across other websites.

Some pages embed video or music from YouTube, Aparat or Spotify. Those players are only loaded when you press play, and once you do, that company sets its own cookies under its own policy — not ours.

Paying is the same arrangement. Card details are handled by Stripe, on Stripe's own page — you are sent there to pay and sent back afterwards. Stripe sets its own cookies while you are on that page, under its own policy, and they are stored against Stripe's address rather than this one. This site never sees your card number, and none of the five cookies above have anything to do with payment.

Which rules this follows

Aydin Shaterian Music Studio is registered in the United States, but visitors arrive from everywhere, so the site is built to whichever rule is strictest rather than the one that happens to apply where the server sits.

Europe and the UK

Cookies themselves are governed by the ePrivacy Directive — in the UK, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations — and the standard of consent it requires comes from the GDPR and UK GDPR. Both say the same two things that matter here: consent must be given before anything optional is stored, and refusing must be as easy as agreeing.

That is why the banner has an "Essential only" button sitting beside "Accept", the same size and the same prominence, and why nothing at all is written to your device until you press one of them.

United States

The CCPA and CPRA in California, and the similar laws in Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia and elsewhere, are built around the sale and sharing of personal information for advertising. This site does neither, so there is no "Do Not Sell or Share" link — there would be nothing behind it. The Global Privacy Control signal is honored automatically regardless.

Why each cookie is allowed

Under the ePrivacy rules a cookie needs consent unless the site genuinely cannot do what you asked without it. That splits the table above into two groups:

• Strictly necessary — no consent needed. The session and login cookies, the CSRF token that stops forms being forged, the basket, and the record of your cookie choice itself. Without these you could not sign in, buy anything, or have your refusal remembered.
• Optional — consent required. Only the theme cookie, which remembers whether you chose light or dark. It is not set until you accept, and choosing "Essential only" deletes it.

The record of your choice is itself strictly necessary — without it the banner could not know you had already answered, and would ask again on every page.

Your rights

Aydin Shaterian Music Studio is registered in the United States, and visitors come from elsewhere too, so we work to whichever rule is stricter rather than the minimum.

If you are in Europe or the UK, nothing optional is placed on your device until you have said yes. That is why the theme is only remembered once you press the button, and why choosing "Essential only" removes it again. You can withdraw at any time using the buttons above, and it takes effect immediately.

If you are in California, Colorado, Connecticut or another US state with a privacy law, those laws center on the sale and sharing of personal information. We do neither — there are no advertising cookies, no analytics and no third-party trackers on this site, so there is nothing to opt out of. We still honor the Global Privacy Control signal automatically if your browser sends one.

Everywhere, you may ask what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted — the privacy page sets out what is held and for how long. In the UK and EU the GDPR also gives you the right to object, to restrict processing, and to receive your data in a portable form.

If you are in the UK or EU and think this site has handled your information wrongly, you may complain to your national data protection authority — the Information Commissioner's Office in the UK, or the supervisory authority in your own country. Raising it here first is welcome but not required.

This page describes what the site actually does. It is not legal advice, and it is written to be checked against the code rather than taken on trust.

Questions

If anything here is unclear, or you want to know what is held about you, get in touch.