Cookie Policy
Last updated: 13 September 2026
What is stored on your device, and by whom
Your browser keeps a small store of named values for each site, and a cookie is one of them: written by the server on one visit, sent back automatically on the next. It contains data, never a program. This site also uses local storage, a related browser facility that holds slightly larger records and is never sent to a server on its own. Anything set by cataniacarrental.com itself is first party; anything set by a service we rely on, and there is exactly one, is third party, which your browser can block separately.
The categories in use
Everything this site places on your device falls into one of the four rows below; the lifetime shown is the maximum, and a record no longer needed goes sooner.
| Category | What it does here | How long it lasts |
|---|---|---|
| Strictly necessary | The session cookie and its matching security token, which keep the search and enquiry forms working and stop another site from submitting them in your name. | Two hours of inactivity, then discarded |
| Results cache | Holds the last four sets of cars you fetched in local storage so that stepping back to them is immediate. Nothing in it leaves your device. | Five minutes per entry |
| Booking | Set by LocalRent when its reservation window opens, so that a booking begun on cataniacarrental.com can be attributed to it and the supplier can settle the commission that funds the site. | Set by LocalRent and stated in its own cookie notice |
| Measurement | No cookie at present. Visits are counted as totals from server logs, which record a page and a time rather than a person. | Not applicable |
Session records against persistent ones
The strictly necessary cookies are session records: they lapse after two idle hours and go when the browser closes. The results cache expires entry by entry after five minutes and is trimmed to four entries, so it never grows. The booking cookie is the only persistent record involved, and it is not ours to set or to read.
The one third party
LocalRent is the service behind the results grid and the reservation window. Its code is not embedded in the page you download; it is fetched the first time you touch a page that carries the search form, with a scroll, a tap or a key press, and it can write a cookie only once its reservation window has opened. Opening that window is the action that permits the booking cookie. A second outside service, if one ever arrives, gets its own row above before it is switched on.
Consent and the Italian rules
The Garante per la protezione dei dati personali, the Italian data protection authority, published its guidelines on cookies and other tracking tools in 2021. Technical records needed to deliver a service you asked for may be set without consent; anything used for profiling or measurement needs your agreement first. At the time of writing cataniacarrental.com sets only technical records of its own, which is why no consent banner greets you. If a measurement or advertising cookie is ever introduced, a consent control is added before it is written, and this page will list it.
Switching cookies off in your browser
The switches for all of this are in your browser rather than on cataniacarrental.com, and whatever you set there governs every site you open, not just this one. In current versions:
- Chrome: Settings, then Privacy and security, where third party cookies have their own switch and site data can be deleted one site at a time
- Safari: Settings, then Privacy, where blocking all cookies and preventing cross-site tracking sit together
- Firefox: Settings, then Privacy and Security, under Enhanced Tracking Protection and Cookies and Site Data
- Edge: Settings, then Cookies and site permissions, where stored cookies can be viewed and removed
- Any browser: a private or incognito window drops everything it stored when the window closes
Clearing site data also empties the results cache. Blocking the booking cookie costs you nothing here; the supplier may simply fail to attribute your booking to this site. Blocking the strictly necessary cookies is different: the enquiry form will fail with a page expired message, because the token that protects it can no longer be matched to your session.
Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control
Do Not Track is a header some browsers still attach to every request. No agreed rule ever defined what a site must do on receiving it, so in practice it changes little anywhere, and cataniacarrental.com does not react to it either. The newer Global Privacy Control signal is treated the same way for now. Since no optional cookie is set here today, neither signal has anything to switch off; the browser controls above are the reliable route, and they work whether or not a signal is sent.
Updates and questions
A new row in the table, a provider joining or leaving, or a change in the rules means a new version of this page, identified by the date under the heading. Personal data, and your rights over it, have a page of their own.
If a question about cookies on this site is not answered above, write to [email protected]; a person at Catania CarHire reads that inbox.