To make this site work properly, we sometimes place small data files called cookies on your device. Most websites do this too.
What are cookies?
- Cookies are simple text files. They are needed to help navigate automatic logins, password authentication, shopping cart functions, personal preference settings and a variety of other functions. Cookies make these functions smooth and hassle-free to the user.
- Cookies don’t search your computer for information. Cookies register the information you provide through your browser. When you enter personal and/or financial information on a website, the cookies store your information, both for ease of use on your next visit, and for ad tracking.
- Information stored by cookies is usually encoded; it is protected from potential computer hackers by security features (which you, the website owner, have put into place.)
- Cookies are necessary and enhance your browsing experience. Without cookies, you would have to reenter all of your information every time you revisited a site. A cookie will simply remember your information on the website to save you time.
- Cookies only store the information you provide. A cookie cannot “grab” your email address. A cookie can store your email address on the website—if you have typed in your email address; a cookie stores all information you voluntarily give when you visit a website.
- Cookies themselves contain very little information other than the URL of the website that created the cookie. Because there is so little information, a cookie can’t be used to identify you by name or other personal information. However, advances in technology have seen an increase in how companies can manipulate cookie information to create a profile of your web surfing habits. Again, this is a profile of a particular consumer’s surfing habits and product preferences, there is no name (your name) attached to the profile.
- Cookies are harmless. They cannot introduce viruses on your computer.
- Cookies are not the same thing as Spyware. A cookie stores your website surfing information; Spyware stores your Internet surfing information (every site you visit).
How do we use cookies?
We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.
Disabling Cookies
You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.
The Cookies We Set
In order to provide you with a great experience on this site we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.
Third Party Cookies
In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.
- This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.
- From time to time we test new features and make subtle changes to the way that the site is delivered. When we are still testing new features these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on the site whilst ensuring we understand which optimisations our users appreciate the most.
Example:
A number of our pages use cookies to remember:
- your display preferences, such as contrast colour settings or font size
- if you have already replied to a survey pop-up that asks you if the content was helpful or not (so you won’t be asked again)
- if you have agreed (or not) to our use of cookies on this site
Also, some videos embedded in our pages use a cookie to anonymously gather statistics on how you got there and what videos you visited.
Enabling these cookies is not strictly necessary for the website to work but it will provide you with a better browsing experience. You can delete or block these cookies, but if you do that some features of this site may not work as intended.
The cookie-related information is not used to identify you personally and the pattern data is fully under our control. These cookies are not used for any purpose other than those described here.
More Information
Hopefully that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren’t sure whether you need or not it’s usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site. However if you are still looking for more information then you can contact us through one of our preferred contact methods.