Our websites and cookies
Website cookies are small computer files that get sent down to your PC, tablet or mobile phone by websites when you visit them. They stay on your device and get sent back to the website they came from, when you go there again. Cookies store information about your visits to that website, such as your choices and other details. Some of this data does not contain personal details about you or your organisation, but it is still protected by this Privacy Policy. By using our website you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device, however you can block these cookies using your web browser settings. We may use these different types of cookies on our website…
SESSION COOKIES (TEMPORARY ONLY)
Session cookies last only for the duration of your visit and are deleted when you close your browser. These facilitate various tasks such as allowing a website to identify that a user of a particular device is navigating from page to page, supporting website security or basic functionality.
Many of the cookies we use are session cookies. For example, they help us to ensure the security of your session and can also keep you signed in to our website while you move between pages or service your online account. Our session cookies used for security are designed to be very difficult to use except by us when you have an active session. They contain no personal information that can be used to identify an individual.
PERSISTENT COOKIES (LAST FOREVER UNLESS CLEARED BY YOU)
Persistent cookies last after you have closed your browser and allow a website to remember your actions and preferences. Sometimes persistent cookies are used by websites to provide targeted content based upon the browsing history of the device. We use persistent cookies in a few ways, for example - to remember you have visited our website before and to prevent us showing you a ‘Cookie Information’ banner being shown every time you revisit the website. We also use persistent cookies to allow us to analyse customer visits to our site. These cookies help us to understand how web visitors arrive at and use our site so we can improve our online service.
FIRST AND THIRD PARTY COOKIES
Whether a cookie is a first or third party cookie depends on which website the cookie comes from. First party cookies are those set by or on behalf of the website visited. All other cookies are third party cookies. We use both first party and third party cookies.
PERFORMANCE COOKIES
These cookies collect information about how visitors use a web site, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies don't collect information that identifies a visitor although they may collect the IP address of the device used to access the site. All information these cookies collect is anonymous and is only used to improve how a website works, the user experience and to optimise our content messages.
FUNCTIONALITY COOKIES
These cookies allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your name in a form). They may also be used to provide services you have requested such as watching a video. The information these cookies collect is anonymised (i.e. it does not contain your name, address etc.) and they do not track your browsing activity across other websites.
TARGETING COOKIES
These cookies collect several pieces of information about your browsing habits. If we use them they are usually placed by advertising networks. They remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organisations such as media publishers. These organisations do this in order to provide you with targeted adverts more relevant to you and your interests. This type of advertising is called online behavioural advertising and place an icon in the top right-hand corner of an advert. This icon when clicked, will take you through to the website Your Online Choices where there is more help and guidance for you to Opt-out of this type of advertising. You can block these cookies using your browser settings.
Unless you decide to comment on our blog post, to contact us or to purchase from us, you can browse our websites without giving away any information about you other than your IP address. Recording of your IP address is necessary for technical purposes related to administration of our servers. We will also use it to collect general, statistical information about you (e.g. to get information about the region from which you connect with our websites). We will not be able to identify you based only on your IP address.
In summary, we use cookies for these primary purposes:
- to improve user experience, e.g. to make it possible for you not to fill in a web form each time you complete a form on our website, if you already did that in the past. Thanks to cookies you can also seamlessly place an order in our ordering system, or log in to your user accounts without having to retype your credentials. These kinds of cookies are necessary for our websites to work properly, but you can disable some of the functionality that use cookies (such as the “Keep me logged in” functionality) without any consequences.
- to collect anonymous and aggregated statistical data about users’ visits on our website. We use this data to analyse how our website is used and to improve it using Google Analytics and/or other web traffic analytics tools.
- to advertise our products and services online. We use tracking and remarketing cookies from Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Facebook Conversion Tracking and Facebook Custom Audiences to advertise our products online. We make use of all targeting features available in Google AdWords including: demographic and location targeting, remarketing, affinity audiences, custom affinity audiences, in-market audiences, similar audiences (learn more about cookies used in ads by Google and about cookies used by Facebook). You can customise Google Display Network advertisements using the Google Ads Settings or block it by installing Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.
Unless you set up your internet browser (e.g. Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome) not to accept cookies, it may accept the use of them without prompting you. You can always disable cookies in your browser’s preferences even if you have consented to the use of cookies in the past. You may also delete cookies stored on your computer at any given time. Please note that disabling cookies may negatively impact your online experience on our websites and prevent you from using certain websites or logging in to our web applications.