Cookie Policy
What’s a Cookie?
A cookie is a small piece of data or a text file that is downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you access certain websites. Cookies may contain text that can be read by the web server that delivered the cookie to you. The text contained in the cookie generally consists of a sequence of letters and numbers that uniquely identifies your computer or mobile device; it may contain other information as well.Cookies are used by nearly all websites and do not harm your system.
How do I use Cookies?
I use cookies to track your use of our website. This enables me to understand how you use the site and track any patterns with regards to how you are using my website. This helps me to develop and improve our website as well as products and/or services in response to what you might need or want.Cookies are either:– Session cookies: these are only stored on your computer during your web session and are automatically deleted when you close your browser – they usually store an anonymous session ID allowing you to browse a website without having to log in to each page but they do not collect any personal data from your computer; or– Persistent cookies: a persistent cookie is stored as a file on your computer and it remains there when you close your web browser. The cookie can be read by the website that created it when you visit that website again. I use persistent cookies for Google Analytics.Cookies can also be categorised as follows:– Strictly necessary cookies: These cookies are essential to enable you to use the website effectively, such as when buying a product and / or service, and therefore cannot be turned off. Without these cookies, the services available to you on my website cannot be provided. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you have been on the internet.– Performance cookies: These cookies enable me to monitor and improve the performance of my website. For example, they allow me to count visits, identify traffic sources and see which parts of the site are most popular.– Functionality cookies: These cookies allow my website to remember choices you make and provide enhanced features. For instance, I may be able to provide you with news or updates relevant to the services you use. They may also be used to provide services you have requested such as viewing a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect is usually anonymised.
What types of Cookies do I use?
Analytics: These cookies store information like the number of visitors to the website, the number of unique visitors, which pages of the website have been visited, the source of the visit etc. These data help us understand and analyse how well the website performs and where it needs improvement. The below list details the cookies used on our website.Cookie nameLifespanCategoryDescription_ga2 yearsAnalytics CookiesThis cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports._gid1 dayAnalytics CookiesThis cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics. It appears to store and update a unique value for each page visited._gat10 minAnalytics CookiesThis cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics
What Cookies are used by our service providers?
My service providers use cookies and those cookies may be stored on your computer when you visit my website.I use Google Analytics. Google Analytics gathers information about the use of our website by means of cookies. The information gathered is used to create reports about the use of my website. You can find out more about Google’s use of information by visiting https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/ and you can review Google’s privacy policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy. The relevant cookies are: _ga, _gid, __ytmc, __utmc, __utmz, __utma and _gat.
How can I control the Cookie preferences?
Should you decide to change your preferences later through your browsing session, you can click on the “Privacy & Cookie Policy” tab on your screen. This will display the consent notice again enabling you to change your preferences or withdraw your consent entirely. In addition to this, different browsers provide different methods to block and delete cookies used by websites. You can change the settings of your browser to block/delete the cookies. To find out more on how to manage and delete cookies, visit wikipedia.org, www.allaboutcookies.org.