What Are Cookies

Cookies are small text files which are downloaded to your computer, tablet or mobile phone when you visit a website or application. The website or application may retrieve these cookies from your web browser (eg Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome) each time you visit, so they can recognize you, remember your preferences and provide you with a more secure online experience.

Generally, cookies are very useful and are a common method used by almost every website you visit because they help to make your online experience as smooth as possible. For security reasons, many websites will not function at all without the use of cookies (or other similar technologies, such as “web beacons” or “tags”).

Cookies generally do not hold any information to identify an individual person, but are instead used to identify a browser on an individual machine.

If you prefer, you can restrict, block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings but that may mean that the website won’t work properly

For more information about cookies and their impact on you and your browsing visit www.aboutcookies.org.

Different kinds of cookies

Necessary cookies

These cookies are essential in helping you to make use of the features and services we offer on our websites. Without these cookies, the services you want to use cannot be provided. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used to identify you, and they do not monitor or remember where you have been on the internet.

Functional cookies

These cookies allow us to provide you with a better online experience when you use our website. They do not gather or store any information which would allow us to identify you personally.

Performance cookies

Performance cookies help us to understand how our customers use our site, so we can keep our products and services relevant, easy to use and up to date. For example, we can see which products and services are most popular, identify when and where errors occur, and test different versions of a page in order to provide an improved online experience.

Sometimes, the services we use to collect this information may be operated by other companies on our behalf. They may use similar technologies to cookies, known as “web beacons” or “tags”. These are anonymous and, as they are only used for statistical purposes, they do not contain or collect any information that identifies you.

Targeting cookies

The purpose of these cookies is “behavioural advertising” (also known as “behavioural targeting” or “remarketing”), which is a means of showing you relevant products and services based on what you appear to be interested in. Although these cookies can track your visits around the web they don’t know who you are. Without these cookies, online advertisements you encounter will be less relevant to you and your interests.

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.

Third party analytics are used to track and measure usage of this site so that we can continue to produce engaging content. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site or pages you visit which helps us to understand how we can improve the site for you.

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 optimizations our users appreciate the most.

As we sell products it’s important for us to understand statistics about how many of the visitors to our site actually make a purchase and as such this is the kind of data that these cookies will track. This is important to you as it means that we can accurately make business predictions that allow us to monitor our advertising and product costs to ensure the best possible price.

We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on this site that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work the following social media sites including; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, will set cookies through our site which may be used to enhance your profile on their site or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies.

Managing cookies

Most internet browsers allow you to erase cookies from your computer hard drive, block all cookies (or just third-party cookies) or warn you before a cookie is stored on your device.

Please note, if you choose to block all cookies, our site will not function as intended and you will not be able to use or access many of the services we provide. If you have blocked all cookies and wish to make full use of the features and services we offer, you will need to enable your cookies. You can do this in your browser (see below).

Rather than blocking all cookies, you can choose to only block third-party cookies which will still allow our website to function as intended.

How to manage cookies on your PC

To enable cookies on our website, follow the steps below.

Google Chrome

  1. Click “Tools” at the top of your browser and select “Settings”.
  2. Click “Show advanced settings”, scroll down to the section “Privacy” and click “Content Settings.”
  3. Select “Allow local data to be set”. To only accept first-party cookies, check the box next to “Block all third-party cookies without exception”

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0

  1. Click “Tools” at the top of your browser and select “Internet Options”, then click the “Privacy” tab.
  2. Check that the level of your privacy is set to Medium or lower, which will allow the use of cookies in your browser.
  3. If set above medium level it will prevent the use of cookies.

Mozilla Firefox

  1. Click “Tools” at the top of your browser and select “Options”.
  2. Then select the “Privacy” icon.
  3. Click the “Cookies” and select “Allow pages to create a cookie.”

Safari

  1. Click the gear icon at the top of your browser and select “Settings”.
  2. Click the “Privacy” tab, then select the option “Disable the use of cookies by third parties and advertising cookies.”
  3. Click “Save”.

How to manage cookies on your Mac

To enable cookies on our website, follow the steps below.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 on OSX

  1. Click on “Explorer” at the top of your browser and select “Settings”.
  2. Scroll down to the “Cookies” section in the “Received Files”.
  3. Select “Do not ask.”

Safari on OSX

  1. Click “Safari” on the top of your browser and select “Settings”.
  2. Click the “Privacy” and then “Enable cookies.”
  3. Select “only the pages you have visited.”

Mozilla and Netscape on OSX

  1. Click “Mozilla” or “Netscape” at the top of your browser and select “Settings”.
  2. Scroll down to the “Cookies” under “Privacy & Security”.
  3. Select “Allow cookies only to the original site.”

Opera

  1. Click “Menu” on the top of your browser and select “Settings”.
  2. Then select “Options” tab and the “Advanced”.
  3. Select “Enable cookies.”

Last modified: May 24, 2018