Cookies and how they Benefit You
Our website uses cookies, as almost all websites do, to help provide you with the best experience we can.
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites
Our cookies help us:
- Make our website work as you’d expect
- Remember your settings during and between visits
- Offer you free services/content (thanks to advertising)
- 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 (ultimately helping us to offer the service we do at the price we do)
We do not use cookies to:
- Collect any personally identifiable information (without your express permission)
- Collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)
- Pass personally identifiable data to third parties
- Pay sales commissions
You can learn more about all the cookies we use below
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 fine 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 site will not work as you would expect.
More about our Cookies
Website Function Cookies
Our own cookies
We use cookies to make our website work including:
- Remembering your search settings
- Allowing you to add comments to our site
There is no way to prevent these cookies being set other than to not use our site.
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: Facebook, Twitter and Google+
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.
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.
We use:
Google Analytics – https://www.google.com/analytics/
Advertising Cookies
Cookies are widely used in online advertising. Neither us, advertisers or our advertising partners can gain personally identifiable information from these cookies. We only work with advertising partners who work to accepted privacy standards such as http://www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/iab-good-practice-principles
You can learn more about online advertising at http://www.youronlinechoices.com . You can opt-out of almost all advertising cookies at http://www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/your-ad-choices although we would prefer that you didn’t as ultimately adverts help keep much of the internet free. It is also worth noting that opting out of advertising cookies will not mean you won’t see adverts, just simply that they won’t be tailored to you any longer.
We use:
- DoubleClick – Privacy Policy owned by Google
- Atlas Solutions – Privacy Policy
- Appnexus – https://www.appnexus.com/en/company/cookie-policy
- Quantserve – https://www.quantcast.com/opt-out/
- Caslemedia – http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1#!/
Banner Adverts
We fund our site by showing adverts as you browse our site. These adverts are usually managed by a partner specialising in providing adverts for multiple sites. Invariably these partners place cookies to collect anonymous data about the websites you visits so they can personalise the adverts to you, ensure that you don’t see the same adverts too frequently and ultimately report to advertisers on which adverts are working. Our partners include:
- Google Ads
Cookies in Use
| Cookie | Type | Duration | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| @@History/@@scroll|# | HTML | Persistent | Used by Google Ads |
| ck1 | HTTP | 179 days | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of displaying targeted ads. |
| CMDD | HTTP | Session | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of displaying targeted ads. |
| CMID | HTTP | 1 year | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of displaying targeted ads. |
| CMPRO | HTTP | 3 months | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of displaying targeted ads. |
| CMPS | HTTP | 3 months | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of displaying targeted ads. |
| CMSC | HTTP | Session | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of displaying targeted ads. |
| CMST | HTTP | Session | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of displaying targeted ads. |
| d | HTTP | 3 months | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of generating reports for optimising the web site content. |
| dpixel | Pixel | Session | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of displaying targeted ads. |
| drtn# | HTTP | 179 days | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of displaying targeted ads. |
| DSID | HTTP | Session | Used by Google DoubleClick for re-targeting, optimisation, reporting and attribution of online adverts. |
| everest_g_v2 | HTTP | 694 days | Used for targeted ads and to document efficacy of each individual ad. |
| everest_session_v2 | HTTP | Session | Used for targeted ads and to document efficacy of each individual ad. |
| flashtalkingad1 | HTTP | 2 years | Used to register what ads the user has seen. |
| gglck | HTTP | 29 days | Used for targeted ads and to document efficacy of each individual ad. |
| GPS | HTTP | Session | Registers a unique ID on mobile devices to enable tracking based on geographical GPS location. |
| id | HTTP | 1 year | Registers a unique ID that identifies a returning user’s device. The ID is used for targeted ads. |
| IDE | HTTP | 1 year | Used by Google DoubleClick to register and report the web site user’s actions after viewing or clicking one of the advertiser’s ads with the purpose of measuring the efficacy of an ad and to present targeted ads to the user. |
| IRfOHaDQqEm | HTTP | Session | Used by Wordpress. |
| KADUSERCOOKIE | HTTP | 3 months | Registers a unique ID that identifies the user’s device during return visits across web sites that use the same ad network. The ID is used to allow targeted ads. |
| KTPCACOOKIE | HTTP | Session | Registers a unique ID that identifies the user’s device during return visits across web sites that use the same ad network. The ID is used to allow targeted ads. |
| lyJDuhXxZ | HTTP | Session | Used by Wordpress. |
| mc | HTTP | Session | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of displaying targeted ads. |
| mdata | HTTP | Session | Registers a unique ID that identifies a returning user’s device. The ID is used for targeted ads. |
| NID | HTTP | 6 months | Registers a unique ID that identifies a returning user’s device. The ID is used for targeted ads. |
| pcs/activeview | Pixel | Session | Registers a unique ID that identifies a returning user’s device. The ID is used for targeted ads. |
| PREF | HTTP | 8 months | Registers a unique ID that is used by Google to keep statistics of how the visitor uses YouTube videos across different websites. |
| rlas3 | HTTP | 179 days | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of displaying targeted ads. |
| rtn1-z | HTTP | 179 days | Collects anonymous data on the user’s visits to the web site, such as the number of visits, average time spent on the web site and what pages have been loaded with the purpose of displaying targeted ads. |
| sGZwli | HTTP | Session | Used by Wordpress. |
| test_cookie | HTTP | Session | Used to check if user’s browser support cookies. |
| trk | Pixel | Session | Registers a unique ID that identifies a returning user’s device. The ID is used for targeted video ads. |
| uuid | HTTP | 3 months | Registers a unique ID that identifies a returning user’s device. The ID is used for targeted video ads. |
| VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | HTTP | 179 days | Tries to estimate the users’ band width on pages with integrated YouTube videos. |
| xbQgWzvZPBjUkGIc | HTTP | Session | Used by Wordpress. |
| YSC | HTTP | Session | Registers a unique ID to keep statistics of what videos from YouTube the user has seen. |
| __utm.gif | Pixel | Session | Google Analytics Tracking Code that logs details about the visitor’s browser and computer. |
| __utma | HTTP | 2 years | Google Analytics Tracking Code that logs details about the visitor’s browser and computer. |
| __utmb | HTTP | Session | Registers a timestamp with the exact time of when the user accessed the web site. Used by Google Analytics to calculate the duration of a web site visit. |
| __utmc | HTTP | Session | Registers a timestamp with the exact time of when the user leaves the web site. Used by Google Analytics to calculate the duration of a web site visit. |
| __utmt | HTTP | Session | Used to throttle the speed of requests to the server. |
| __utmz | HTTP | 6 months | Collects data on where the user came from, what search engine was used , what link was clicked and what search term was used. Used by Google Analytics. |
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 site and a large proportion of the world’s websites as cookies are a standard part of most modern websites
You can manage cookie usage through your browser settings. The help function in your preferred browser should provide you with the correct information. Some browsers provide helpful cookie guides:
- Chrome: https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95647&p=cpn_cookies
- Firefox: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Cookies
- Internet Explorer: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278835
- Safari 5 for Mac: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Safari/5.0/en/9277.html
- Opera: http://help.opera.com/Linux/10.50/en/cookies.html
Alternatively, http://www.allaboutcookies.org provides advice on how to do this, and further information on cookies and how to manage them.
In addition Google Analytics and AppNexus Platform offer provide their own opt-out options:
N.B. In the case of some mobile devices, it may be necessary to consult the device’s instruction manual to manage cookies effectively.
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.
The cookie information text on this site was derived from content provided by Attacat Internet Marketing http://www.attacat.co.uk/, a marketing agency based in Edinburgh. If you need similar information for your own website you can use their free cookie audit tool.