Cookies

What are cookies?

For almost any modern website to work properly, it needs to collect certain basic information on its users. To do this, a site will create files known as cookies - which are small text files - on its users' computers.

Cookies do a lot of different jobs which make your experience of the internet much smoother and more interactive. For instance, they are used to remember your preferences on sites you visit often, to remember your user ID and the contents of your shopping baskets, and to help you navigate between pages more efficiently. They also help ensure that the advertisements that you see online are more relevant to you and your interests. Some data collected is designed to detect browsing patterns and approximate geographical location to improve user experience.

Some websites may also contain images called 'web beacons' (also known as 'clear gifs'). Web beacons only collect limited information, including a cookie number, a timestamp, and a record of the page on which they are placed. Websites may also carry web beacons placed by third party advertisers. These beacons do not carry any personally identifiable information and are only used to track the effectiveness of a particular campaign (for example by counting the number of visitors).

How do we use cookies?

We use cookies for various reasons. They allow us to monitor traffic to the site and prevent fraud and other web-based attacks, to ensure users have the best content experience, and to analyse how our site is used.

We do our utmost to respect users' privacy. However, your experience of the site may be adversely affected if you opt out of cookies.