What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files that are sent by a website to a web browser and contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive. This enables the website to identify and track the web browser. Cookies can, among other functions, enable a website to recognise a device each time it visits, remember user preferences and recommend content. Cookies in themselves do not identify the individual user, but rather the computer used. However, some cookies will contain personal information such as a username.
Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a more personal user experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our website. By continuing to browse and use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Different cookies do different things, and some are essential to the operation of a website whilst others are not.
The different types of cookies are:
- Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services.
- Analytical/performance cookies. These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
- Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website, enabling us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
- Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visits to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information (in anonymised form) with third parties for this purpose.
To the extent that any personal information is collected through our use of cookies, our Privacy Policy will apply to our processing of that personal information.
What cookies do we use?
You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below:
Cookie | Description | Duration | Type |
---|---|---|---|
IDE | Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile. | 1 year | Advertisement |
__gads | This cookie is set by Google and stored under the name dounleclick.com. This cookie is used to track how many times users see a particular advert which helps in measuring the success of the campaign and calculate the revenue generated by the campaign. These cookies can only be read from the domain that it is set on so it will not track any data while browsing through another sites. | 1 year | Analytics |
_ga | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site’s analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors. | 2 years | Analytics |
_gid | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form. | 1 day | Analytics |
_gat_UA-159928301-1 | This is a pattern type cookie set by Google Analytics, where the pattern element on the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to. It appears to be a variation of the _gat cookie which is used to limit the amount of data recorded by Google on high traffic volume websites. | 1 minute | Performance |
What about third-party cookies?
Please note that third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.
Can I refuse or opt out of cookies?
Most browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually change your browser settings to limit or prevent cookies. You can find out how to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics by visiting http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. Unless you have adjusted your browser settings so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies as soon as you visit our website.
If you set your browser to not accept cookies, it may result in certain sections of our website not working properly and certain personalised services not being provided to users of your computer. More information about cookies generally can be found at: http://www.allaboutcookies.org