Cookie Policy

Last updated: 14 November 2026 · Version 3.2

1. Purpose of this policy

This Cookie Policy explains how Talk with Guest, Lda ("Talk with Guest", "Talkguest") uses cookies and equivalent technologies on the talk.mindbery.org marketing website and on the associated operator console. It complements the Privacy Policy and forms an integral part of the disclosures required by the ePrivacy legal framework and by the GDPR. The policy applies to visitors, prospective customers and existing subscribers of the Talkguest platform who navigate our public pages.

2. Legal framework

In Portugal, cookies and similar technologies are regulated by Lei n.º 41/2004 of 18 August, as amended by Lei n.º 46/2012, which transposes Directive 2002/58/EC (the ePrivacy Directive). The processing of personal data collected through cookies is subject to Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) and to Lei n.º 58/2019. Where a cookie is not strictly necessary to deliver the service explicitly requested by the visitor, Talk with Guest obtains prior informed consent before placement, in line with the guidelines issued by the European Data Protection Board and the interpretive notes published by the Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados.

3. What are cookies

A cookie is a small text file placed on the visitor's device by a website and read back on subsequent visits. Cookies allow websites to remember stateful information (such as authentication or language preferences), to measure audience and to serve tailored content. Equivalent technologies covered by this policy include HTML5 local storage, session storage, pixel tags, tracking beacons and browser fingerprinting techniques. Whenever this document refers to "cookies", the same rules apply to those equivalent technologies.

4. Categories used on talk.mindbery.org

Talk with Guest classifies cookies into four categories: strictly necessary, functional, analytics and marketing. Only the first category is placed without consent. All other categories are placed exclusively after the visitor gives affirmative consent through the cookie banner, and can be withdrawn at any moment through the preferences link located in the footer of every page.

The following sections list each cookie individually. For each cookie we indicate the technical name, the placement domain, the purpose, the retention period, and whether the cookie is first-party or third-party. This inventory is regenerated automatically before each release of talk.mindbery.org and audited by the Talkguest privacy team on a monthly basis, so that the descriptions here always match the actual behaviour of the site.

5. Strictly necessary cookies

These cookies are indispensable for the delivery of the website and cannot be disabled without breaking core functionality. The cookie tg_consent stores the visitor's choice on the cookie banner and expires after twelve months. The cookie tg_csrf stores a cross-site request forgery token used to protect form submissions and expires at the end of the browser session. The cookie tg_lang stores the preferred interface language and expires after twelve months. The cookie tg_session stores an opaque session identifier for authenticated users and expires after seven days of inactivity. None of these cookies are shared with third parties.

6. Functional cookies

Functional cookies improve the experience by remembering non-essential preferences. The cookie tg_theme remembers whether the visitor has requested light or dark presentation and expires after twelve months. The cookie tg_calc_state preserves the values entered in the return-on-investment calculator between pages and expires after thirty days. The cookie tg_video_muted remembers whether embedded product illustrations should start muted and expires after twelve months. Withdrawal of functional consent restores default behaviour.

7. Analytics cookies

Analytics cookies produce aggregate audience measurements. Talk with Guest uses a self-hosted instance of Plausible Analytics in the Frankfurt region, which relies on the first-party cookie _pa_ident with a lifetime of thirty days for deduplication, and on the cookie _pa_ref with a lifetime of ninety days for the attribution of the first traffic source. IP addresses are truncated at the last octet before storage. Data is retained for twenty-five months and is not used for individual profiling. Consent may be withdrawn without functional impact.

8. Marketing cookies

Marketing cookies support the measurement of paid acquisition campaigns and the display of relevant advertising on third-party networks. The cookie _ttq is placed by the LinkedIn Insight Tag on visitors who have granted marketing consent and expires after ninety days. The cookie _gcl_au is placed by Google Ads on visitors who have granted marketing consent and expires after ninety days. The cookie fr is placed by Meta Pixel on visitors who have granted marketing consent and expires after ninety days. Data collected through marketing cookies is shared with the respective providers under their published terms and is subject to Standard Contractual Clauses where applicable.

9. Third-party embeds

Certain pages of talk.mindbery.org include third-party embeds. Product illustrations are hosted on Vimeo in privacy mode, which does not place tracking cookies until the visitor initiates playback. The support widget provided by Intercom sets cookies only after the visitor opens the chat interface. The status page provided by BetterStack sets a first-party cookie to preserve the visitor's timezone preference. Where a third-party embed would set additional cookies, the embed is loaded through a click-to-load placeholder that requires an affirmative action by the visitor.

Additional detail on each provider used for marketing measurement is published under Settings, Consent Vendors, in the operator console. The information reproduced here reflects the deployed configuration on the date shown at the top of this page. Where a subscribing hotel operator wishes to place additional marketing tags on its own hotel pages that embed a Talkguest conversation surface, the operator remains solely responsible for obtaining and documenting the corresponding consent under its own privacy notice and cookie policy, and Talk with Guest does not deploy those tags on its behalf.

10. Managing consent

The first time a visitor arrives on talk.mindbery.org, a cookie banner appears at the bottom of the viewport. The banner offers three equally prominent options: "Accept all", "Reject non-essential" and "Preferences". The "Preferences" option opens a modal where each non-essential category can be toggled independently. No option is pre-ticked. The banner remains dismissible without accepting non-essential categories, in line with the CNPD guidance. The visitor's choice is stored in tg_consent and can be revisited at any moment through the "Cookie preferences" link located in the footer.

11. Browser-level controls

In addition to the on-site consent tool, visitors may configure their browser to refuse cookies, to warn before each placement or to delete stored cookies. Instructions are provided by each browser vendor. Blocking strictly necessary cookies may prevent authentication and language selection from working correctly. Blocking analytics or marketing cookies has no functional impact and is fully compatible with browsing the site.

12. Do Not Track and GPC signals

Talk with Guest honours the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal transmitted by supported browsers as a valid withdrawal of consent to analytics and marketing cookies. Upon receiving a GPC signal, non-essential cookies are removed and further placement is suppressed for the duration of the session. The legacy Do Not Track (DNT) header is also read for backward compatibility. In both cases the visitor's choice is stored in the consent cookie and can be revisited at any moment.

When consent is withdrawn, associated cookies are deleted at the next page navigation and any locally stored identifiers created for analytics or marketing purposes are cleared through a compensating server-side request. Withdrawal is as easy as granting: a single action in the preferences modal is sufficient. The consent record is timestamped and retained for evidentiary purposes for three years, in the form of a hash keyed on the visitor's device fingerprint and the version of the banner presented at the moment of the choice.

13. Retention and audit

The retention periods indicated for each cookie are maximum durations. Cookies may be deleted earlier if the visitor clears browser storage, if the consent choice changes or if the underlying purpose no longer applies. Talk with Guest performs an independent audit of cookies placed on talk.mindbery.org every six months. The audit report and the underlying automated scan of every public page are archived internally for evidentiary purposes and are made available to the CNPD on request.

14. Cookies on the operator console

The Talkguest operator console, hosted at app.talk.mindbery.org, is available only to authenticated hotel personnel and does not display marketing surfaces. The console uses strictly necessary cookies to preserve the authenticated session, to protect against cross-site request forgery, to persist the tenant selection when a user administers more than one hotel property, and to remember interface preferences such as sidebar collapse state, calendar zoom level and the default date range applied to reporting. No analytics or marketing cookies are placed on the console. In-product telemetry is collected server-side under the legitimate interest basis described in the Privacy Policy and does not rely on client-side storage beyond the strictly necessary cookies listed here.

15. Cookies set through guest-facing messaging

When a hotel guest opens a Talkguest-powered conversation from a hotel's own website, the guest's browser receives a first-party cookie under the hotel's domain named tg_gv, which stores an opaque conversation identifier and expires after thirty days. This cookie is strictly necessary to preserve continuity between messages and does not permit cross-site tracking. The hotel controller is responsible for disclosing this cookie in its own privacy notice; Talk with Guest publishes a suggested disclosure template in the operator console under Settings, Guest Experience. Where the conversation surface is embedded on a third-party page, the cookie is written in the top-level context of the parent page under strict SameSite policies.

16. Cookies and identifiable data

Some cookies covered by this policy contain, or are linked with, personal data within the meaning of Article 4(1) GDPR. Where this is the case, the processing is described in the Privacy Policy and the data subject may exercise the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection under sections ten and eleven of that policy. Requests should be sent to privacy@talk.mindbery.org. Where the visitor exercises the right to erasure, associated cookies are cleared on the next page load and the underlying server-side records are removed within thirty days.

17. Changes and contact

Any material change to the inventory of cookies, to the retention periods or to the vendors used is announced through an updated banner requesting fresh consent for the affected categories and by revising the version number at the top of this page. Non-material corrections are applied without prior notice. Questions on this Cookie Policy, or requests for the underlying audit report, may be addressed to privacy@talk.mindbery.org or, for matters concerning the exercise of GDPR rights, to the Data Protection Officer Rita Ferreira Marques at dpo@talk.mindbery.org. Postal correspondence should be directed to Talk with Guest, Lda, Rua Rodrigo da Fonseca 123, 1.º Esq, 1250-190 Lisboa. Guest Talk publishes further guidance and worked examples in the resources section of talk.mindbery.org.