WHAT DO COOKIES DO?
Cookies help to make the interaction between users and websites faster and easier. For example, when you make an enquiry online, cookies help our site remember the information you give us as you move through your application.
Some of the cookies we use help us understand how our customers use our website, for example the pages they visit and the links they click on, while others enable us to learn which advertisements bring customers to our website.
What our cookies don’t do is store any personal or confidential information about you.
Are cookies safe?
Yes, cookies are harmless text files. They can’t look into your computer or read any personal information or other material on your hard drive. Cookies can’t carry viruses or install anything harmful on your computer.
Why should I keep cookies switched on?
We advise you to keep cookies active during your visits to our website because parts of the site rely on them to work properly. For example, you may not be able to access your account if your cookies are disabled.
TYPES OF COOKIES WE USE
Like most websites, we use session cookies and persistent cookies. We use session cookies, which last only for the duration of your visit and are deleted when you close your browser. No personally- identifiable data is collected. We also use certain cookies that are persistent, meaning that they last beyond your session. Persistent cookies don’t use any personally identifiable information, but they do help our website remember you as a visitor each time you use the same computer to revisit us. Persistent cookies last for a pre-defined period unless they are deleted.
Some of our cookies are applied by our advertising partners to help manage our online advertising. Similarly, we also use analytics to allow us to track how popular our site is and to record visitor trends over time.
As well as using cookies from our advertising partners, from time to time we may also embed external content from other third party websites within our website. These include sites such as Youtube Facebook and Twitter, whose cookie usage policy you can view on their own websites.
COOKIES CURRENTLY USED ON THE WEBSITE
The current state of our cookie use, their purpose, intrusiveness & persistence is as follows:
There is no reason for visitors to the website to be concerned about the privacy implications of any of the cookies we use, but we recognise the importance of transparency as to the purpose & scope of the data stored in the cookies which are created or updated on your computer when you visit the website. As well as changing your privacy settings, you may choose to delete these cookies from your computer between visits to our website. You may also disable cookies in your web browser settings and this will not prevent you from accessing our website. However, certain parts of our website may not operate correctly without cookies enabled.
We recommend that if you have concerns about the privacy implications of the cookies we use, then you should investigate how to do this using the cookie management tools in your web browser.
In Detail: First party Cookies
First party cookies are specific to the host site that created them & cannot be accessed by any other web server.
Session IDs: Our web server may create session cookies which are essential for your use of some of the interactive elements of the website, such as contact forms.This type of cookie expires when you leave our website.
Analytics: We use Google Analytics, which creates a number of first- party cookies, all prefixed __utm:
The current state of our cookie use, their purpose, intrusiveness & persistence is as follows:
Full details of the cookies which Google Analytics uses can be found in Cookies & Google Analytics in documentation for Google’s Analytics tracking code. You can also read Google’s Privacy Policy for Google Analytics. If you wish to opt out of our use of Google Analytics you may wish to consider using the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on in order to maintain your experience for the rest of the website.
Content Management & site navigation: Our content management tool creates a number of first-party cookies:
These are session cookies which are deleted when you close your browser. The cookie helps our website to function correctly. This data is aggregated and not personally identifiable.
In all cases these first-party cookies do not store any personal or sensitive information, or anything that makes you personally identifiable to us.
We use the data that is collected using these first-party cookies to report, in aggregate, how our visitors find & use our website; we use those reports to understand overall visitor behaviour, & we use that understanding to update & improve our website.
In Detail: Third-party cookies
Third party cookies are cookies created by an external service when you use a page on our website. These cookies are specific to the third- party’s domain & accordingly the data held in them can be seen & managed by the third party & not by us. We control whether or not we use the third-party service with our website, & how it is integrated & presented on our website. We do not have control over the cookies themselves.
YouTube video: We may display videos hosted on the YouTube service & embed YouTube’s player in our web pages to allow you to watch the video without leaving our website. YouTube’s embedded player currently creates & updates a Flash LSO called s.ytimg.com. We have no direct control over YouTube’s use of the data stored in this object. For more information, please read YouTube’s privacy policy.
For more detailed information about all cookies visit www.allaboutcookies.org