Cookies Policy
A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so that the website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the website. The cookie will collect information relating to your use of our sites, information about your device such as the device’s IP address and browser type, demographic data and, if you arrived at our site via a link from third party site, the URL of the linking page. If you are a registered user or subscriber it may also collect your name and email address, which may be transferred to data processors for registered user or subscriber verification purposes.
Cookies record information about your online preferences and help us to tailor our websites to your interests. Information provided by cookies can help us to analyse your use of our sites and help us to provide you with a better user experience.
Cookies are either ‘session’ or ‘persistent’ cookies, depending on how long they are stored for:
– Session cookies are only stored for the duration of your visit to a website and are deleted from your device when you close your browser;
– Persistent cookies are saved on your device for a fixed period of time after the browser has closed and are activated each time you visit the website where the cookie was generated.
In addition to cookies, our websites also use web beacons. A web beacon is a line of code which is used by a website or, less frequently, a third party ad server to measure a user’s activity, such as interaction with an advert or purchase of a product. A web beacon is often invisible because it is only 1 x 1 pixel in size with no colour. A web beacon can also be known as a web bug, 1 by 1 GIF, invisible GIF and tracker GIF.
How Do We Use Cookies?
We, together with our trusted partners, use cookies for the following purposes:
1. Essential and Functional Cookies
We use these cookies to enable certain online functionality including:
– identify returning users, registrants and subscribers and to allow them to be presented with a personalised version of the site;
– eliminating the need for returning users to re-enter their login details;
– commenting on our sites;
If you would prefer to disable essential and functional cookies, please see the opt out notes below.
Analytical Performance Cookies
We use these cookies to measure users’ behaviour to better develop our websites. By using web analytics services provided by Google Analytics and comScore Digital Analytix we can analyse which pages are viewed and how long for and which links are followed, and we can use this information to provide more content which is of interest. We also use this analysis to report on our performance and to sell advertising.
3. Behavioural Advertising Cookies
We use these cookies to:
– manage online advertising and revenue share arrangements. Our approved, advertising partners, primarily Doubleclick, Audience Science and AdMeld, use cookies together with web beacons to provide advertising to you and to enable us to manage our relationship with those advertisers by, for example, tracking how many unique users have seen a particular advertisement or followed a link in an advertisement.
– to measure general user behaviour across our sites and third party sites to build a profile based on users browsing patterns so that we and third parties can target advertising to users that will be more relevant to users’ interests. This means that if, for example, users visit a page with a review about a particular camera then the cookie will collect this information and we may target adverts for that camera to those users and, if users visit third party sites that are part of the same advertising network, those third parties may target adverts for that camera to those users.
– to create profiles that trusted third parties can buy to allow them to better target their advertising with more relevant content.
If you would prefer to opt out of behavioural advertising cookies please see opt out notes below.
We also include web beacons (also known as clear GIFs or web bugs) in our emails to track the success of our marketing campaigns. This means that if you open an email from us we can see which of the pages of our Website you have visited. Our web beacons do not store additional information on your device but, by communicating with our cookies on your device, they can tell us when you have opened our email.
The information generated by the cookie about your use of our sites (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored on servers in the United States and/or United Kingdom. They may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on their behalf. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by those service providers in the manner and for the purposes set out above.
We cannot control nor do we have access to any cookies placed on your computer by third party advertisers and sponsors.
4. Other Third Party Cookies
You may notice on some pages of our websites that cookies have been set that are not related to us. When you visit a page with content embedded from, for example, YouTube or Facebook, these third party service providers may set their own cookies on your device. We do not control the use of these third party cookies and cannot access them due to the way that cookies work, as cookies can only be accessed by the party who originally set them. Please check the third party websites for more information about these cookies.
Some of our websites use Adobe Flash Player to deliver video and game content to users. Adobe utilise their own cookies, which are not manageable through your browser settings but are used by the Flash Player for similar purposes, such as storing preferences or tracking users. Flash Cookies work in a different way to web browser cookies; rather than having individual cookies for particular jobs, a website is restricted to storing all data in one cookie. You can control how much data, if any, may be stored in that cookie but you cannot choose what type of information is allowed to be stored. You can manage which websites can store information in Flash cookies on your device via the Adobe website.
Opting Out Of Behavioural Advertising Cookies:
If you would like to disable “third party” cookies generated by advertisers or providers of targeted advertising services, you can turn them off by going to the third party’s website and getting them to generate a one-time “no thanks” cookie that will stop any further cookies being written to your machine. Here are links to the main third party advertising platforms we use, each of which have instructions on how to do this: