Cookie & Tracking Technologies Policy
How Aether POS uses cookies, local storage, and session tokens to secure terminals, preserve merchant state, and optimize performance.
1. Overview & Purpose of Cookies
Aether POS uses cookies, web beacons, local storage objects (LSOs), and secure session tokens across our web management console, merchant portals, and cloud-connected terminal interfaces.
These technologies are essential for authenticating authorized store personnel, maintaining secure register sessions, storing offline inventory buffers, and ensuring PCI-compliant data transmission across our point-of-sale infrastructure.
2. Categories of Tracking Technologies
- Strictly Necessary Cookies: Required to enable core POS functions such as merchant authentication, encrypted payment handshakes, session persistence, and CSRF security defenses. These cannot be disabled.
- Functional & Session Cookies: Store temporary UI state, local register register assignments, active shift counters, and offline cart buffers to guarantee uninterrupted checkout workflow.
- Performance & Telemetry Cookies: Aggregate anonymized system performance data, latency metrics, and API response speeds to help us optimize cloud-to-terminal sync speeds.
- Security & Anti-Fraud Tokens: Cryptographic device identifiers used to verify trusted terminal hardware and detect unauthorized admin access attempts.
3. Technical Inventory & Storage Controls
- Session & Authentication Storage
- Auth Tokens: Secure, HTTP-Only, SameSite=Strict JWT tokens used to authenticate register operators.
- Lifetime: Session-based or automatically invalidated after 12 hours of inactivity.
- Encryption: Token signatures are validated against hardware security modules (HSM).
- Local Register Buffering (IndexedDB / LocalStorage)
- Offline Sync Store: Holds encrypted product catalogues and local sales queues during network dropouts.
- Terminal Identifier: Unique hardware uuid stored locally to route printer and payment terminal pairings.
- Zero Credit Card Retention: Local browser storage never contains unencrypted PANs or CVV data.
- Analytical & Operational Telemetry
- System Health Logs: Captures network latency metrics and transaction sync duration.
- Crash Reporting: Tracks JavaScript runtime errors in the admin dashboard to deploy rapid patches.
4. Third-Party Integrations & Payment Gateways
When processing credit card payments or utilizing integrated hardware devices, trusted third-party payment gateways (e.g., Stripe, Adyen) may drop security cookies inside embedded iFrames or terminal SDKs. These cookies are strictly used for device fingerprinting, fraud prevention, and 3D-Secure 2.0 authentication required by banking acquirers.
5. Managing & Disabling Cookie Preferences
Store managers can control non-essential performance cookies through our Cloud Console settings. You can also adjust browser settings to block third-party cookies. However, disabling strictly necessary session cookies or local storage will prevent POS terminals from processing orders, pairing hardware, or syncing offline transactions.
6. Policy Updates & Governance
We periodically update this policy to reflect modifications to terminal software features, payment industry compliance guidelines (PCI-DSS), or global privacy regulations. Any updates will be reflected on this page with an updated revision date.
Data Governance & Privacy Office
If you have questions about our use of cookies, tracking technologies, or browser storage in Aether POS, reach out to our privacy compliance team: