Cookies policy


About cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small data files sent by a website’s server to a web browser, processor memory or hard drive and stored there. They can be used for a range of different purposes, such as customising a website for a particular user, helping a user navigate a website, improving that user’s website experience, and storing that user’s preferences and login information.

Essential and non-essential cookies

Cookies can be classified as either ‘essential’ or ‘non-essential’.

Essential cookies: these are cookies that are either:

  • used solely to carry out or facilitate the transmission of communications over a network; or
  • strictly necessary to provide an online service (e.g. our website or a service on our website) which you have requested.

Non-essential cookies: these are any cookies that do not fall within the definition of essential cookies, such as cookies used to analyse your behaviour on a website (‘analytical’ cookies) or cookies used to display advertisements to you (‘advertising’ cookies).

Session and persistent cookies

Cookies can be classified as either ‘session’ or ‘persistent’, depending on how long they last after they are placed on your browser.

Session cookies: session cookies last for as long as you keep your browser open. They expire when you close your browser.

Persistent cookies: persistent cookies expire at a fixed point in time or if you manually delete them from your browser, whichever occurs first.

First and third party cookies

Cookies can be classified as ‘first party’ or ‘third party’.

First party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by our website domain.

Third party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by third party website domains.

If you require further information about cookies in general, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org

List of cookies used

We use the following cookies on or in relation to our website:

Name of Cookie: has_js
Essential or Non-essential? Essential
Type of cookie: Essential (Javascript)
First or Third party? First party
Session or Persistent? Session
Expiry Time: End of browser session.
Purpose: Registers whether or not the user has activated JavaScript in the browser.

Name of Cookie: SESS#
Essential or Non-essential? Essential
Type of cookie: Essential
First or Third party? First party
Session or Persistent? Persistent
Expiry Time: 23 days.
Purpose: Preserves users states across page requests.

Name of Cookie: __utm.gif
Essential or Non-essential? Non-essential
Type of cookie: Analytical
First or Third party? Third party
Session or Persistent? Session
Expiry Time: End of browser session
Purpose: Google Analytics Pixel (Tracking Code) that logs details about the visitor's brow ser and computer.

Name of Cookie: __utma
Essential or Non-essential? Non-essential
Type of cookie: Analytical
First or Third party? First party
Session or Persistent?
Expiry Time: 2 years
Purpose: Collects data on the number of times a user has visited the web site as w ell as dates for the first and most recent visit. Used by Google Analytics.

Name of Cookie: __utmb
Essential or Non-essential? Non-essential
Type of cookie: Analytical
First or Third party? First party
Session or Persistent? Session
Expiry Time: End of browser session
Purpose: Registers a timestamp with the exact time of when the user leaves the web site. Used by Google Analytics to calculate the duration of a web site visit.

Name of Cookie: __utmc
Essential or Non-essential? Non-essential
Type of cookie: Analytical
First or Third party? First party
Session or Persistent? Session
Expiry Time: End of browser session
Purpose: Registers a timestamp with the exact time of when the user leaves the web site. Used by Google Analytics to calculate the duration of a web site visit.

Name of Cookie: __utmt
Essential or Non-essential? Non-essential
Type of cookie: Functional
First or Third party? First party
Session or Persistent? Session
Expiry Time: End of browser session
Purpose: Used to throttle the speed of requests to the server.

Name of Cookie: __utmz
Essential or Non-essential? Non-essential
Type of cookie: Analytical
First or Third party? First party
Session or Persistent? Persistent
Expiry Time: 6 months
Purpose: Collects data on where the user came from, what search engine was used, what link was clicked and what search term was used. Used by Google Analytics.

Essential cookies

These are cookies which are strictly necessary for our website to be able to operate or to provide you with a service on our website which you have requested. We use the following essential cookies on our website:

  • first party session cookie used to detect when a user’s browsing device is javascript-enabled. These cookies are has_js.
  • first party session cookie preserves users states across page requests. These cookies are SESS# which expire after 23 days.

Legal basis for processing: we process information about you contained in or obtained from essential cookies in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation).
Legitimate interests: ensuring our site functions properly and providing you with online services you have requested.

How to opt out of essential cookies

Most browsers allow you to block all cookies, including essential cookies. Please note, however, that if you block all cookies, parts of our website and its functionality may not work or display properly.

You can delete existing cookies from your browser by clearing your browsing data and ensuring that the option to delete cookies is selected.

For more detailed information on how to accept and reject cookies, including guidance for specific browsers, please see the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Non-essential cookies

We use the following types of non-essential cookies on our website:

  • Functional cookies
  • Analytical (or performance) cookies

Functional cookies

These are cookies that are designed for purposes such as enhancing a website’s functionality. These are either not strictly essential for the website or functionality which you have requested to work, or are cookies which serve non-essential purposes in addition to their essential purpose. We use the following functional cookies on our website:

  • a first-party session cookie used to throttle the speed of requests to the server. This cookie is called __utmt

How to opt in or out from functional cookies

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Processing information about you contained in or obtained from functional cookies

Legal basis for processing: we process information about you contained in or obtained from functional cookies in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation). We will only process such personal information if you have consented to us placing cookies on your computer or device.

Legitimate interests: improving your website experience and providing the website functionality you have requested.

For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of functional cookies, please see the section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: http://www.gsn-online.com/privacy-policy

Analytical (or performance) cookies

Analytical (or performance) cookies track and gather data about what a user does on a website. These cookies are not essential for our website or its functionality to work. We use the following analytical cookies on our website:

  • We use Google Analytics Javascript library cookies to help us understand how you engage and interact with our website, including how you came to our website, which pages you visited, for how long, what you clicked on and your location (based on your IP address). The Google Analytics cookies used on our website are: __utma which is a persistent cookie and expires after 2 years, __utmz which is a persistent cookie and expires after 6 months, and __utmb and __utmc which are session cookies. We also use the Google Analytics cookie __utmt, which is explained in more detail in the ‘functional cookies’ section above.

The information we collect using analytical cookies is collected on an anonymised basis.

More information

Google Analytics cookies are classified as first party cookies as they are set by our website domain, although Google collects and processes information from our use of Google Analytics. To find out more about how Google handles information collected from Google Analytics, see Google Analytics’ privacy policy, which is available here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245

For information on how Google uses data from cookies it uses, please visit www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/

How to opt in or out from analytical cookies

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

To opt out of Google Analytics tracking across all websites in general, you can do so here: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Processing information about you contained in or obtained from analytical cookies

Legal basis for processing: we process information about you contained in or obtained from analytical cookies in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation).

Legitimate interests: analysing how individuals use our website to help us improve our website and business. For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of analytical cookies, including profiling, please see the section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: http://www.gsn-online.com/privacy-policy

 

Other technologies

Google Pixel

We use a Google pixel on our website. __utm.gif is a single-pixel GIF-image tracking code which allows us to track and monitor your use of our site, including your ID, browser information and your use of our ecommerce functionality.

Google aggregates data gathered from our use of this pixel on our website with data it gathers from the Google Analytics cookies (see above) in order to provide the most accurate and useful analytical information to us about how users interact with our website so that we can improve our products and services. You can find out more about how Google handles information collected from Google Analytics, see Google Analytics’ privacy policy, which is available here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245

How to opt in or out

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Legal basis for processing: we process the information we gather from the use of web beacons in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation).

Legitimate interest: analysing how individuals use our website to help us improve our website and business. For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of analytical cookies, including profiling, please see the section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: http://www.gsn-online.com/privacy-policy

How to accept or reject cookies

There are a number of different ways in which you can accept or reject some or all cookies. Some of the main methods of doing so are described below.

You are welcome to block the use of some or all of the cookies we use on our website. However, please be aware that doing so may impair our website and its functionality or may even render some or all of it unusable.

You should also be aware that clearing all cookies from your browser will also delete any cookies that are storing your preferences, for example, whether you have accepted cookies on a website or any cookies that are blocking other cookies.

You can find more detailed information about cookies and adjusting your browser settings by visiting www.allaboutcookies.org

Accepting or rejecting cookies

Cookie control tool

You can accept or reject non-essential cookies by using our cookie management tool.

Browser settings

You can accept or reject some or all cookies (for example, blocking all third party cookies) by adjusting your browser settings. If you do not know how to do this, the links below set out information about how to change your browser settings for some of the most commonly used web browsers:

Some browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox, allow you to change your settings to browse in ‘incognito’ mode, limiting the amount of data placed on your machine and automatically deleting any persistent cookies placed on your device when you finish your browsing session. There are also many third party applications which you can add to your browser to block or manage cookies.

Existing cookies

To clear cookies that have previously been placed on your browser, you should select the option to clear your browsing history and ensure that the option to delete or clear cookies is included when you do so.

Google Adsettings

You can manage and opt out of personalisation of advertisements by Google by visiting Google’s ad settings page here https://adssettings.google.com/ and by:

  • - unticking the button entitled ‘Also use Google Account activity and information to personalize ads on these websites and apps and store that data in your Google Account’; and
  • - switching the ‘Ads Personalisation’ setting off (i.e. by ensuring the switch at the top of the page is set to the left/grey and not the right/blue).

Alternatively, you can install a free browser plugin here: https://support.google.com/ads/answer/7395996

Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on

You can opt out of Google Analytics tracking by installing the browser add-on which is available here: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Copyright

The copyright in this Cookies Policy is either owned by, or licensed to, us and is protected by copyright laws around the world and copyright protection software. All intellectual property rights in this document are reserved.