Cookies

What is a cookie?

A “cookie” is a piece of information that is stored on your computer’s hard drive and which records how you move your way around a website so that, when you revisit that website, it can present tailored options based on the information stored about your last visit. Cookies can also be used to analyse traffic and for advertising and marketing purposes.

Cookies are used by nearly all websites and do not harm your system.

If you want to check or change what types of cookies you accept, this can usually be altered within your browser settings. You can block cookies at any time by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

How do we use cookies?

We use cookies to track your use of our website. This enables us to understand how you use the site and track any patterns with regards how you are using our website. This helps us 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. We 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 our 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 us to monitor and improve the performance of our website. For example, they allow us to count visits, identify traffic sources and see which parts of the site are most popular.
  • Functionality cookies: These cookies allow our website to remember choices you make and provide enhanced features. For instance, we 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.

Cookie policy

This policy explains what cookies are, how the Society uses them on our websites and what you can do to manage how they are used.

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.
  • Improve the speed/security of the site.
  • Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook.
  • Continuously improve our website for you.

Granting us permission to use cookies.

If the settings on your browser that you are using to view this website 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.

How long do cookies last?

When a web server sends a cookie, it asks your browser to keep that particular cookie until a certain date and time. These dates can be:

  • Some date in the future – which might be a few minutes or a few hours from now (to track something like your shopping cart in an online store). The cookie might expire many years in the future, to keep track of your browser for a long time.
  • When you close your browser – this is called a session cookie, the next time you start your browser these will have vanished.
  • Some date in the past – this is how the server asks a browser to remove a previously-stored cookie.

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, how long they spend on the site, what page they look at, etc. This helps us to continuously improve our website. These analytics programs also tell us, 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 develop our services for you. Our site uses the following analytics programs:

Google Analytics

Other Data Collection Methods

There are many associated web sites or services that collect cookie information. For example, adverts and banners you see on some websites may reflect your shopping habits. This is how other companies use your data.

List of possible usages.

Our websites

Contact forms

This data is stored securely and is used to help with your enquiry. We also use this data to enhance your experience of our products and services. This data is never shared with third parties or anyone outside the society.

Mailchimp

Our websites collect your data and it is then passed directly to Mailchimp which stores your data securely. This allows us to manage our e-newsletters. This is never shared with anyone outside the Society.

Please read Mailchimps privacy policy – https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/

Google Search
https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en

Google Analytics
https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html

Google Tag Manager
https://www.google.com/analytics/tag-manager/use-policy/

Google Adwords
https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads

Google Remarketing
https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/143465?hl=en-GB

Survey Monkey
https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/legal/privacy-policy/

Social website cookies

So you can easily ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ our content on social network sites, we have sharing buttons on our site for Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

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.

Turning cookies off

You can usually switch cookies off by adjusting your browser settings to stop it from accepting cookies. Doing so, however, will likely limit the functionality of ours and a large proportion of the world’s websites as cookies are a standard part of most modern websites.