What are Cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer when you visit a website. They are typically used to help the website recognise you when you return, or to keep track of the items that you have indicated your interest in. Cookies pose no risk or harm to you or your computer. Cookies help to enhance your visit by creating tailored browsing, specific to your requirements.

‘Session’ cookies are temporary bits of information that are erased once you exit your Web browser window or otherwise turn your computer off. Session cookies are used to improve navigation on web sites and to collect statistical information.

‘Persistent’ cookies are more permanent bits of information that are placed on the hard drive of your computer and stay there unless you delete the cookie. Persistent cookies store information on your computer for a number of purposes, such as retrieving certain information you have previously provided (e.g. login passwords), helping to determine what areas of the Web site visitors find most valuable, and customising the web site based on your preferences.

Our cookies help us:

  • Make our website work as you’d expect
  • Remember your settings during and between visits
  • Improve the speed/security of the site
  • Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook
  • Continuously improve our website for you
  • Make our marketing more efficient

We do not use cookies to:

  • Collect any personally identifiable information (without your express permission)
  • Collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)
  • Pass data to advertising networks
  • Pass personally identifiable data to third parties
  • Pay sales commissions

Granting us permission to use Cookies

If the settings on your software that you are using to view this website (your browser) are adjusted to accept cookies we take this, and your continued use of our website, to mean that you are accept this. Should you wish to remove or not use cookies from our site you can learn how to do this below, however doing so will likely mean that our site will not work as you would expect.

More about our Cookies

Third party functions
Our site, like most websites, includes functionality provided by third parties. A common example is an embedded YouTube video. Our site includes the following which use cookies:

cookies will likely break the functions offered by these third parties.

Social Website Cookies

So you can easily Like or share our content on the likes of Facebook and Twitter we have included sharing buttons on our site. Cookies are set by:

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.

Visitor Statistics Cookies

We use cookies to compile visitor statistics such as how many people have visited our website, what type of technology they are using (e.g. Mac or Windows which helps to identify when our site isn’t working as it should for particular technologies), how long they spend on the site, what page they look at etc. This helps us to continuously improve our website. These so called ‘analytics’ programs also tell us if how people reached this site (e.g. from a search engine) and whether they have been here before helping us to put more money into developing our services for you instead of marketing spend.

Turning Cookies Off

You can usually switch cookies off by adjusting your browser settings to stop it from accepting cookies (Learn how here). Doing so however will likely limit the functionality of our’s and a large proportion of the world’s websites as cookies are a standard part of most modern websites.

It may be that you concerns around cookies relate to so called “spyware”. Rather than switching off cookies in your browser you may find that anti-spyware software achieves the same objective by automatically deleting cookies considered to be invasive. Learn more about managing cookies with antispyware software.

Useful sites

Information Commissioner’s Office
Aboutcookies.org
Wikipedia

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