Cookie Policy
WHAT'S 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 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. [We use performance cookies for Sumo and Google
Analytics.]
- 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.
- Advertising Cookies
Cookies are widely used in online advertising. Neither us, advertisers or our advertising
partners can gain personally identifiable information from these cookies.
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-adchoices
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.
[Please note that third parties who advertise on our website (including, for example,
advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may
also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be
analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies]
- Remarketing Cookies
You may notice that sometimes after visiting a site you see increased numbers of adverts
from the site you visited. This is because advertisers, including ourselves pay for these
adverts. The technology to do this is made possible by cookies and as such we may place a
so called “remarketing cookie” during your visit. We use these adverts to offer special offers
etc to encourage you to come back to our site. Don't worry we are unable to proactively
reach out to you as the whole process is entirely anonymised. You can opt out of these
cookies at anytime as explained above.
- Affiliate Cookies
We sometimes link to products available to purchase on other websites (such as Amazon)
using a special link called an 'affiliate link'. This link (and the affiliate cookie) tracks any
purchases you may make on the linked website. We then receive a portion of the purchase
amount, at no additional cost to you. Cookies are required to allow us to receive a small
commission from these partners and these cookies are usually provided by specialist
companies (known as affiliate networks). Neither us, the networks, or the partner advertising
or recommending our services are able to identify you personally. We ask you to support us
by allowing these cookies which ultimately help us to offer you the service we do at the price
we do. Our affiliate cookies are provided by Amazon Associates.
You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them below:
crumb - This cookie is set by websites that uses SquareSpace platform. The cookie is used to prevent cross-site request forgery (CSRF).
Google Analytics (Google) - _ga _gali _gat _gid - These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the website. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the website and blog, where visitors have come to the website from and the pages they visited.
YouTube cookies - PREF* VSC* VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE* remote_sid* - We embed videos from our official YouTube channel using YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode. This mode may set cookies on your computer once you click on the YouTube video player, but YouTube will not store personally-identifiable cookie information for playbacks of embedded videos using the privacy-enhanced mode. Read more at YouTube’s embedding videos information page.
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's and a large proportion of the world's websites as cookies are a standard part of most
modern websites
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.