What are cookies and how do they benefit you?
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile device when you browse websites.
Cookies are not actual programs or software. When you visit a website it stores a snippet of text from
your visit; the next time you visit, this text is retrieved by the website so they can recognise you.
Cookies have different uses depending on the website visited. Cookies allow websites to store such
things as user preferences. You can think of cookies as providing a 'memory' for the website, enabling
it to recognise a user and respond appropriately. Cookies on our website do NOT store any personally
identifiable information such as names, addresses, email addresses or phone numbers.
For more details see, What are
Cookies?
Our cookies help us:
- Make our website work as you'd expect
- Remember your settings during visits
- Allow you to share pages (names/blog articles) with social networks like
Facebook or Twitter
- Continuously improve our website for you
We do not use cookies to:
- Collect any personally identifiable information - we will always ask for
your express permission if we
ever
do collect this information
- Collect any sensitive information, without your express permission
What information is kept by the cookie? A cookie will typically hold:
- The name of the website that it has come from
- How long the cookie will stay on your computer or phone
- A value – usually a randomly generated unique number
How long do cookies stay on my computer?
Session cookies – these only last until you close your browser. They are not stored on your hard drive.
They are generally used to track the pages that you visit so that information can be customised for you
for that visit.
Persistent cookies
These are stored on your hard drive until you delete them or they reach their expiry date. These may, for
example, be used to remember your preferences when you use the site.
Granting us permission to use cookies
CookiesIf the settings on the software you are using to view this website (i.e. browser e.g. Internet
Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox etc) are set up to accept cookies we take this, and your
continued use of our
website, to mean that you accept our use of cookies. Should you wish to remove or not use cookies from our
site you can
disable cookies through Internet Options' on your browser menu at any time, however please be aware that
doing so will
probably mean that our site may not work as well as you would expect. Our use of cookies falls into a few
categories
such as:
- Website function cookies
- Social media cookies
- Third party and advertising cookies
- Analytics cookies
More about Our Cookies
Website function cookies such as session or preference cookies. We use cookies to make our website
function including:
- Holding information once you've logged in to save you having to re-login
each time you visit a
different
page during your session
- Once you log off or close the browser the session cookie will be removed
Third-party functions
Our site, like most websites, includes functionality provided by third parties. A common example is an
embedded YouTube
or Vimeo video. Disabling these cookies is likely to break the functions offered by these third parties
Social media website cookies
To facilitate easy sharing or liking of content on social network platforms such as Facebook and Twitter,
we have
included sharing buttons on our site. We also use Facebook Pixel and Twitter Universal Website tag in
order to make our
ads more useful through tailored audiences.
The privacy implications on this will vary from social network to social network and will be dependent
on the privacy settings you have chosen on these networks. If you are a Facebook user you can find
more info about their privacy policy here or opt-out from this link. For Twitter users - read their
privacy policy or opt-out here.
Anonymous visitor & behaviour statistics cookies
Analytics programs use cookies to compile website statistics for us to use to improve our site. Unless you
explicitly give us your information by filling in a form or calling us,
all data that analytics programs collect is stored anonymously where we only see totals and not specific
individual data. Examples include:
- How visitors reach our website (e.g. from a search engine, an advert, from
social media site etc)
- The activity of users on the site such as the number of pages viewed, time
spend on individual
pages, the pages visitors leave our site on
- How often visitors return to our site
- Visitor technology used (e.g. browser, operating system, device etc)
These statistics help us make our site as user-friendly as possible, to ensure a good experience for all
visitors. We
use Google Analytics which is a program that helps us measure site usage details including the
examples above (details of how to opt-out are further below).
Site improvement cookies
We regularly test new designs or site features on our site. We do this by showing slightly different
versions of our
website to different people and anonymously monitoring how visitors respond to these different
versions. Ultimately this
helps us to offer you a better website. We use: Google Search Console.
Google Advertising
Some of our business partners or third parties use cookies or other tracking technologies on our
site, including:
- Third party vendors, including Google, show ads on sites on the internet
-
Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to
our website
We have no access to or control over these cookies. Users may opt out of Google's use of cookies by
visiting the Google advertising opt-out page.
We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits and compile aggregate data
about site traffic
and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may
contract with
third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service
providers are not
permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our
business.
You may opt out of the DoubleClick cookie by visiting the Google advertising opt-out
page. If you wish
to block unwanted or personalized Google ads in your browser you can opt-out from this
link.
Google Analytics
This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (‘Google’).
Google Analytics uses
cookies (text files placed on your computer) to help the website operators analyse how users use the
site. The
information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be
transmitted to and
stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of
evaluating your
use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other
services relating to
website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where
required to do so
by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. Google will not
associate your IP
address with any other data held by Google. By using this website, you consent to the processing of
data about you by
Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above. In order to be able to better understand
customers across
devices we have activated Google Signals. This feature generates reports which include only aggregated
data from users
who have turned on their Ads
Personalization. No data for individual users is ever exposed. You can
read Google
Analytics' privacy policy here and if you
wish to opt-out you can download and install Google's Browser Add-on.
Hotjar
We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience.
Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users'
behavior and their devices (in particular device's IP address (captured and stored only in anonymized
form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers),
browser information, geographic location (country only), preferred language used to display our website).
Hotjar stores this information in a pseudonymized user profile.
Neither our website or Hotjar will ever use this information to identify individual users or to match it
with further data on an individual user. For further details,
please see Hotjar’s privacy policy by clicking on this link.
You can opt-out of creation of a user profile, Hotjar’s storing of data about your usage of our site and
Hotjar's use of tracking cookies on other websites by following this opt-out link.
Turning cookies off
You can switch cookies off by adjusting your internet browser settings to stop it accepting cookies. There
are many different browsers and versions.
Some of the most common browsers and versions and listed below. Click the name of your preferred browser
below to learn how to disable and manage cookies.
If you version of browser is not listed, please visit your preferred search engine.
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