What Are Cookies & Why Are They Beneficial?
Since 26th May 2011 under the EU Cookie Law (e-Privacy Directive) we are required to inform you that our website uses cookies, like most other websites do. Cookies are used to remember things & to help provide you with the best experience whilst using our website. Cookies are small files that are placed on your computer or mobile device when you browse websites.
Cookies often store your settings for a website, such as your preferred language or location. When you return to the site, your browser sends back the cookies that belong to the site. This allows the site to present you with information customized to fit your needs.
Cookies can store a wide range of information, including personally identifiable information (such as your name, address, email address, or telephone number). However, this information can only be stored if you provide it – websites cannot gain access to information you didn’t provide to them, and they can’t access other files on your computer.
How Do Cookies Help?
- They make our website work as you’d expect
- They improve the speed & security of the website
- They continuously improve our website for you
- They make our marketing more efficient (ultimately helping us to offer the service we do at the price we do)
Our Cookies Don’t..
- Collect any personally identifiable information (without your express permission)
- Collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)
- Pass personally identifiable data to third parties
Granting Us Permission To Use Cookies:
If the settings on your web browser are adjusted to accept cookies we take this, and your continued use of our website, to mean that you are happy with 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 website will not function as you would expect.
More About Cookies:
There is no way to prevent these cookies being set other than to not use our site.
Third Party Functions:
Our website, like most websites, includes functionality provided by third parties. A common example is an embedded YouTube video. Disabling these cookies will likely break the functions offered by these third parties.
Anonymous 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, on an anonymous basis, 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.
Affiliate Cookies:
We have a number of partners who promote our service on a success-only basis (i.e. instead of paying for advertising, we pay them commissions on sales). Cookies are required to allow us to reward these partners and these cookies are usually provided by specialist companies (known as affiliate networks). Neither us, the networks, or the partner advertising or recommending our services are able to identify you personally. We ask you to support us by allowing these cookies that ultimately help us to offer you the service we do at the price we do.
Turning Off Cookies:
You can usually switch cookies off by adjusting your browser settings to stop it from accepting cookies, you can learn how here. Doing so however will likely limit the functionality of ours and a large proportion of the world’s websites as cookies are a standard part of most modern websites.
Here are links to information about cookie settings relating to the most commonly used browsers:
- Cookie settings in Internet Explorer
- Cookie settings in Firefox
- Cookie settings in Chrome
- Cookie settings in Safari web
- Cookie settings in iOS
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.
Our policy is to keep the use of cookies to a minimum, using them only where they provide a clear benefit in terms of user experience or useful anonymous user patterns.
Cookies In Use On Our Website:
Google Analytics Cookie – These enable us to recognise repeat visitors to the site. By matching an anonymous, randomly generated identifier, we’re able to record specific browsing information such as how you arrive at the site, the pages you view, options you select, and the path you take through the site. By monitoring this information we’re able to make improvements to our sites. We use Google Analytics software to analyse page use, page interactions and the routes our customers take through our site. We don’t record any personal information you provide.
Session Cookie – These enable you to carry out some essential functions on our sites, such as maintaining log in details for the session or a transaction. They also help by minimising the need to transfer information across the internet. They are not stored on your computer and they expire when you terminate your browser session.