Cookies and Privacy Policy

Cookies

Most websites you visit will use cookies in order to improve your user experience by enabling that website to ‘remember’ you, either for the duration of your visit (using a ‘session cookie’) or for repeat visits (using a ‘persistent cookie’).

Cookies do lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently, storing your preferences, and generally improving your experience of a website. Cookies make the interaction between you and the website faster and easier. If a website doesn’t use cookies, it will think you are a new visitor every time you move to a new page on the site – for example, when you enter your login details and move to another page it won’t recognise you and it won’t be able to keep you logged in.

Some websites will also use cookies to enable them to target their advertising or marketing messages based for example, on your location and/or browsing habits.

Cookies may be set by the website you are visiting (‘first party cookies’) or they may be set by other websites who run content on the page you are viewing (‘third party cookies’).  

What is in a cookie?

A cookie is a simple text file that is stored on your computer or mobile device by a website’s server and only that server will be able to retrieve or read the contents of that cookie. Each cookie is unique to your web browser. It will contain some anonymous information such as a unique identifier and the site name and some digits and numbers. It allows a website to remember things like your preferences or what’s in your shopping basket.

What to do if you don’t want cookies to be set

Some people find the idea of a website storing information on their computer or mobile device a bit intrusive, particularly when this information is stored and used by a third party without them knowing. Although this is generally quite harmless you may not, for example, want to see advertising that has been targeted to your interests. If you prefer, it is possible to block some or all cookies, or even to delete cookies that have already been set; but you need to be aware that you might lose some functions of that website.

www.aboutcookies.org, this web site explains how you can delete and control the cookies that are stored on your computer. All recent versions of popular browsers give users a level of control over cookies. Click here. External website. 

Cookies We Set

Google Analytics

To understand how people use our site, and to discover areas on our site with issues, we use Google Analytics. Most websites use some sort of analytics program like this. The data it collects helps us see things like how many people visit our site, which country they are from, how many pages they visited, how fast our site loaded, and so on. All data collected is completely anonymous, it does not identify you as an individual in any way.

If you want to opt out of Google Analytics please find out how here.

Google Maps

Various unique identifiers and a preference variable which stores your options such as preferred zoom level.

If you want to opt out of Google Maps cookies please find out how here.

Disqus

Unique numbers that identify your browser and interaction history, and a unique ID that identifies our service.

You can view the Disqus Privacy Policy here

Privacy Policy

WHAT PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION IS COLLECTED 

Should you send us an email via the contact form, your name, email address and message will be emailed to us (as you would expect). This information is kept private. We will store this information within our own email system so that we are able to respond to you.

Should you comment on a new article, FAQ or web page on this site, then your name, email address, IP address and message will be stored in our website database (as you would expect). This makes your name, website address and comment (but not your email address) viewable by the general public on the website.

The website does use some cookies when you browse this website. These are used to ensure proper running of this website, and also to help us improve your experience when browsing.

If you have chosen to share it with us, we use your email address to contact you in reply to your message, or to send you our newsletter. If you have entered your email address to leave a comment on the blog, it is used to identify your comment, however it is not displayed on the website or shared with any third party.

We do not share your personal information or email address with third parties.

You may opt-out of our emails at any time. An ‘unsubscribe’ link is included in all of our email newsletters.

Please use the contact page.

From time to time we may update this Privacy Policy in line with website changes that may affect the personal information we gather about you. It is assumed that you accept such changes if you continue to use the site and services. If you do not accept such changes then you should stop using this website and services, and contact us (details above) if you would like any information removed.