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Cookie Policy

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

How do I change my cookie settings?

You can change your cookie preferences at any time. You can then adjust the available sliders to ‘On’ or ‘Off’, then clicking ‘Save and close’. You may need to refresh your page for your settings to take effect.

Alternatively, most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

Find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:

To find information relating to other browsers, visit the browser developer’s website.

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Categories of cookies We Use

Necessary Cookies – These cookies are essential for you to be able to use and move around website or for you to use certain features. These cookies do not collect information that personally identify you.

Analytical Cookies – These cookies collect information about how you as the viewer makes use of the website: e.g. which pages you visit, how long you spend on the site. These cookies do not collect information that personally identify you. Cookies set by Google Analytics. Cookies set by Hotjar

Marketing cookies i.e. Third Party Cookies and Cookies used for advertising – These cookies collect information if you use social media sites: e.g. Facebook. These may track how you interact with our website which then show you relevant content elsewhere on the internet. These may also be used to choose the advertisements that are displayed to you on our website and other websites. Cookies set by Facebook

Cookies set by Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of our website. Google Analytics data is anonymous meaning that it cannot be used to track you in any way or personally identify you.

We also do not, under any circumstances, pass on or sell any data we collect either from Google Analytics or filled-in contact forms.

Google Analytics uses cookies to define user sessions, as well as to provide a number of key features in the Google Analytics reports. Google Analytics sets or updates cookies only to collect data required for the reports. Additionally, Google Analytics uses only first-party cookies. This means that all cookies set by Google Analytics for your domain send data only to the servers for your domain. This effectively makes Google Analytics cookies the personal property of your website domain, and the data cannot be altered or retrieved by any service on another domain.

The following table lists the type of information that is obtained via our Google Analytics cookies and used in Analytics reports.

Name

Description

Expiration

_ga

_gid

Used to distinguish users.

2 years from set/update

24 hours

__utma

This cookie is typically written to the browser upon the first visit to your site from that web browser. If the cookie has been deleted by the browser operator, and the browser subsequently visits your site, a new __utma cookie is written with a different unique ID. This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to your site and it is updated with each page view. Additionally, this cookie is provided with a unique ID that Google Analytics uses to ensure both the validity and accessibility of the cookie as an extra security measure.

2 years from set/update.

_gat_UA

__utmt

Used to throttle request rate.

1 minute

20 minutes

__utmb

This cookie is used to establish and continue a user session with your site. When a user views a page on your site, the Google Analytics code attempts to update this cookie. If it does not find the cookie, a new one is written and a new session is established. Each time a user visits a different page on your site, this cookie is updated to expire in 30 minutes, thus continuing a single session for as long as user activity continues within 30-minute intervals. This cookie expires when a user pauses on a page on your site for longer than 30 minutes. You can modify the default length of a user session with the setSessionsCookieTimeout() method.

30 minutes from set/update.

__utmc

This cookie operates in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine whether or not to establish a new session for the user. In particular, this cookie is not provided with an expiration date, so it expires when the user exits the browser. Should a user visit your site, exit the browser and then return to your website within 30 minutes, the absence of the __utmc cookie indicates that a new session needs to be established, despite the fact that the __utmb cookie has not yet expired.

End of browser session.

__utmz

This cookie stores the type of referral used by the visitor to reach your site, whether via a direct method, a referring link, a website search, or a campaign such as an ad or an email link. It is used to calculate search engine traffic, ad campaigns and page navigation within your own site. The cookie is updated with each page view to your site.

6 months from set/update.

__utmv

This cookie is not normally present in a default configuration of the tracking code. The __utmv cookie passes the information provided via the _setVar()method, which you use to create a custom user segment. This string is then passed to the Analytics servers in the GIF request URL via the utmcc parameter. This cookie is only written if you have added the _setVar() method for the tracking code on your website page.

2 years from set/update.

Cookies set by Hotjar

We use Hotjar to allow us to track how website visitors browse our website. The data is anonymous meaning that it cannot be used to track you in any way or personally identify you.

We also do not, under any circumstances, pass on or sell any data we collect.

Name

Description

Duration

_hjSessionUser{site_id}

Hotjar cookie that is set when a user first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID.

365 days

_hjSession{site_id}

A cookie that holds the current session data. This ensues that subsequent requests within the session window will be attributed to the same Hotjar session.

30 minutes

_hjClosedSurveyInvites

Hotjar cookie that is set once a user interacts with an External Link Survey invitation modal. It is used to ensure that the same invite does not reappear if it has already been shown.

365 days

_hjDonePolls

Hotjar cookie that is set once a user completes a survey using the On-site Survey widget. It is used to ensure that the same survey does not reappear if it has already been filled in.

365 days

_hjMinimizedPolls

Hotjar cookie that is set once a user minimizes an On-site Survey widget. It is used to ensure that the widget stays minimized when the user navigates through your site.

365 days

_hjShownFeedbackMessage

Hotjar cookie that is set when a user minimizes or completes Incoming Feedback. This is done so that the Incoming Feedback will load as minimized immediately if the user navigates to another page where it is set to show.

365 days

_hjSessionTooLarge

Causes Hotjar to stop collecting data if a session becomes too large. This is determined automatically by a signal from the WebSocket server if the session size exceeds the limit.

Session

_hjSessionRejected

If present, this cookie will be set to ‘1’ for the duration of a user’s session, if Hotjar rejected the session from connecting to our WebSocket due to server overload. This cookie is only applied in extremely rare situations to prevent severe performance issues.

Session

_hjSessionResumed

A cookie that is set when a session/recording is reconnected to Hotjar servers after a break in connection.

Session

_hjid

Hotjar cookie that is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID.

365 days

_hjRecordingLastActivity

This should be found in Session storage (as opposed to cookies). This gets updated when a user recording starts and when data is sent through the WebSocket (the user performs an action that Hotjar records).

Session

_hjTLDTest

When the Hotjar script executes we try to determine the most generic cookie path we should use, instead of the page hostname. This is done so that cookies can be shared across subdomains (where applicable). To determine this, we try to store the _hjTLDTest cookie for different URL substring alternatives until it fails. After this check, the cookie is removed.

Session

_hjUserAttributesHash

User Attributes sent through the Hotjar Identify API are cached for the duration of the session in order to know when an attribute has changed and needs to be updated.

Session

_hjCachedUserAttributes

This cookie stores User Attributes which are sent through the Hotjar Identify API, whenever the user is not in the sample. Collected attributes will only be saved to Hotjar servers if the user interacts with a Hotjar Feedback tool, but the cookie will be used regardless of whether a Feedback tool is present.

Session

_hjLocalStorageTest

This cookie is used to check if the Hotjar Tracking Script can use local storage. If it can, a value of 1 is set in this cookie. The data stored in_hjLocalStorageTest has no expiration time, but it is deleted almost immediately after it is created.

Under 100ms

_hjIncludedInPageviewSample

This cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that user is included in the data sampling defined by your site’s pageview limit.

30 minutes

_hjIncludedInSessionSample

This cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that user is included in the data sampling defined by your site’s daily session limit.

30 minutes

_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress

This cookie is used to detect the first pageview session of a user. This is a True/False flag set by the cookie.

30 Minutes

_hjFirstSeen

This is set to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether this was the first time Hotjar saw this user. It is used by Recording filters to identify new user sessions.

Session

_hjViewportId

This stores information about the user viewport such as size and dimensions.

Session

_hjRecordingEnabled

This is added when a Recording starts and is read when the recording module is initialized to see if the user is already in a recording in a particular session.

Session

Cookies set by Facebook

Used for re-targeting, optimisation, reporting and attribution of adverts on Facebook.

Name

Description

Expiration

_fbp

Facebook tracking pixel

3 hours

_fr

Facebook cookie

1 minute

Youtube

Pages on our website which contain YouTube videos will not set third-party cookies (we use YouTube-nocookie.com — you can read more here).

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