Privacy and Confidentiality
Cookies
What do I need to know about cookies?
Cookies are small pieces of data that are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website or application. We use them to:
- Remember information about you.
- Help us understand how people are using our services, so we can make them better
- To deliver advertising
How we use cookies?
We use different types of cookies for different things, such as:- Analysing how you use the website
- Giving you a better, more personalised experience
What happens if third party cookies are disabled on my browser?
If third-party cookies are disabled on your browser, some features may not work quite as you'd expect. This is because, some services rely on cookies to work properly (like personalisation). If your browser is blocking third-party cookies, some of these features can't work properly so you may experience problems with our website.How do you use cookies for advertising?
Your browsing activity may be tracked across different websites and different devices or apps. If you are not signed in to a web service, we may attempt to match your browsing activity on one device, such as your laptop, with your browsing activity on another device, such as your smartphone, so that we can improve the relevance of the advertising delivered to you. To do this our technology partners may share data, such as your browsing patterns, geo-location and device identifiers, and will match the information of the browser and devices that appear to be used by the same person. Our advertising is delivered to you through our approved specialist advertising partners. The cookies accompanying the ads allow them and our advertisers to monitor the effectiveness of the ads. Our Advertisers and their agents may also use cookies that they have set on your device when you were browsing other websites. They do this so that they know you have seen a particular advert or to match you with their database. This helps them to do things like cap how many adverts you see across the internet and, if you have taken part in market research, the research company may record that you have seen a particular advert. Any company we allow to add tags or code to our website is vetted to ensure that they handle your data responsibly. However, their use of the data is within their control and is subject to their own privacy practices (see below a list of our key advertising partners). We take reasonable measures to protect our users’ data and ensure that it is used in-line with our policies.Our key advertising partners are listed below. These companies are under contract but the data they collect will also be subject to their privacy policies and they may allow other companies to use cookies and tracking technologies to collect information about your website usage and your interaction with their adverts. Click on their name to find out more and to opt-out from your data being used by them for OBA purposes.
If at any time you do not want information about your browsing behaviour to be used for the purposes of delivering advertising to you on this website, you can "opt out" as described below. You can also opt-out with the links provided above. If you do choose to opt-out you will continue to see adverts but they may be less relevant to you as they will not be tailored to your interests
Privacy Policy
What kinds of information do we collect:
Information you’ve provided to us:
We collect information about you when you provide it to us, like when you send a message to our support team through our contact form.Information from your device:
We collect information from and about the device you are using when you interact with one of our websites, apps or other products/services, including adverts. This may include:- Device Type: Information about your operating system, hardware, software, browser type in order to tailor the experience to your device (e.g. screen resolution).
- Device Operations: Information about your operations and behaviours performed on your device to tailor the experience based on how you or similar users have interacted with our content.
- Unique identifiers: device IDs in order to save your preferences against an identifier to refer to on subsequent pages.
- Device Settings: Information from your device’s setting such as access to your GPS location/Information related to the location of your device so that we know which version of the website to serve you.
- Network/connections: Your IP address, so that we can recognise if you have visited us before and allow your device to communicate with our websites and apps.
- Cookies: Data from cookies or similar technologies placed on your device which tells us about your use of our websites and/or selected third party websites. Please see our "Cookies" section on thie page for more information about our use of cookies and other similar technologies.
Social media:
If you log-in to our websites through a social media site, such as Disqus, you are granting permission to Disqus to share your user information with us. This will include your name, email address, location, plus any other information you have permitted to share with third parties.How we may use your information
By using our websites, apps and other products and services, we may process your information for the purpose of providing you with such products and services and managing our relationship with you, which shall include (without limitation):- communicating with you in relation to your account (if you have one) or service, service updates or other non-marketing communications;
- delivering customer services and support;
- dealing with, and responding to you about a comment you have submitted for or on our message boards and other such user generated content facilities;
- maintaining records of our communications with you if you get in contact with us;
Tailored advertising:
We use advertising to fund some of our websites and apps. Some advertising is "contextual" meaning it is shown due to the particular webpage you are presently viewing. Other advertising, known as “online behavioural advertising” is shown to you based upon your likely interests, which are inferred from your device’s browsing history. This information is collected through the use of cookies and similar technologies. For more information on controlling your tailored advertising preferences, please see our Cookies section. Sometimes we allow advertisers to show advertisements directly on our website and apps, which are tailored to you based upon information they have obtained, such as your browsing history on their own websites. Other times we will arrange for our customers to be shown advertisements on our own or other websites or apps. These advertisements are tailored to you with information we have obtained from your browsing on our websites and apps via cookies. Where we arrange for our customers to be shown advertisements, we use technological and contractual mechanisms to protect your cookie data and to ensure that your browsing data used for advertising is not used by advertisers or other website owners for other purposes, such as linking online behavioural advertising data with your contact details, unless you have provided the advertiser or other website with your express permission to do this. When you are shown an advertisement, our advertising systems do not know who you are or your contact details (such as your name, email address or postal address). Demographic information from your registration on our websites and apps (such as your age, gender and city) may also be used to tailor the advertising we arrange to be shown. Your demographic information is not shared with advertisers. We may also target advertising on social media sites.Location based services and advertising:
Where we provide services that utilise your device's location, your location will be determined either from a lookup of your IP address in a "GeoIP" database which lists information provided by your ISP (usually your closest town or borough) or your precise location directly from the device (such as through GPS or Wifi on mobile devices) where you have granted permission for us to access this location information via your device settings. We use such information to provide you with a more tailored, relevant experiences when using our websites/apps. Where you have granted permission to access your device’s location and consented to us to use your data for advertising purposes, this location information may be used to tailor the advertising you receive, including showing you certain advertisements when you are in the vicinity of a particular location.Measurement and analytics
We may use certain information (such as the websites that you visit and advertisements you see or click on) to help advertisers and other promotional partners measure the effectiveness and distributions of their advertisements and promotions.Improving our services and products
We may use your information to monitor and improve our products, content and services. This may include (without limitation):- developing the design and style of the our products and services to make improvements
- carrying out statistical, technical and logistical analysis to inform our strategic development
- blocking disruptive use and ensuring the security of our products and services