Law
On 25 May 2018, a new European Union (EU) data protection law – the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – takes effect. The GDPR gives individuals in the EU more control over how their data is used and places certain obligations on businesses that process information belonging to those individuals. We’ve updated our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy to take into account the new requirements of the GDPR.
What are cookies?
A cookie is a small text file, typically of letters and numbers, downloaded to your computer when you access websites. Typically, they contain the following information: a site name and unique user ID, the duration of the cookie’s abilities and effects, and a random number. As a rule, cookies cannot be used to reveal your identity or personally identifying information.
When you visit a website that uses cookies for the first time, a cookie is downloaded onto your computer. The next time you visit that website, your computer checks to see if it has a cookie that is relevant and sends the information contained in that cookie back to the website. The website then notes that you have been there before, and in some cases, tailors what pops up on screen to take account of that fact. They also might record how long you spend on each page on a site, what links you click, even your preferences for page layouts and colour schemes.
Generally, the role of cookies is beneficial, making your interaction with frequently-visited sites smoother with no extra effort on your part. Without cookies, online shopping would be much harder. Without cookies, some websites will become less interactive with the cookie option turned off.
Our use of cookies
We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. No information about you as an individual is collected
We use Google Analytics to understand how people use our website. Google Analytics will place cookies in the browser software of visitors to this website. These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.
We have included sharing buttons on our site so that you can easily share our content on social networks. Cookies are set by Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Google+. AddThis is the service that manages these buttons.
To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
To opt out of personalised advertising on this site, visit https://www.google.com/settings/ads/onweb/. Please note that turning off advertising cookies won’t mean that you are not served any advertising merely that it will not be tailored to your interests.
How to control cookies
You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish – for details, see aboutcookies.org. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site and some services and functionalities may not work.