WHAT ARE COOKIES?
A cookie is a small amount of information that’s downloaded to your computer or device when you visit certain websites. We use a number of different cookies on our website, including strictly necessary, performance, advertising, and social media or content cookies. Cookies make your browsing experience better by allowing the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as login and region selection). This means you don’t have to re-enter this information each time you return to the site or browse from one page to another. Cookies also provide information on how people use the website, for instance whether it’s their first time visiting or if they are a frequent visitor.
WHAT COOKIES DO WE USE AND WHY?
Some cookies are necessary to allow you to browse our website, use its features, and access secure areas. The use of these cookies is essential for the website to work. For example, we use user-input cookies for the duration of a session to keep track of a user’s input when filling in forms that span several pages.
We also use functional cookies to remember choices you’ve made or information you’ve provided, such as your username, language, or the region you are in. This allows us to tailor your website experience specifically to your preferences. For example, authentication cookies are functional cookies that are used for the duration of a session (or persistent, if you agree to the “remember me” function) to allow users to authenticate themselves on subsequent visits or to gain access to authorised content across pages. The functional cookies we use include:
User-centric security cookies to detect authentication abuses for a limited persistent duration, like repeated failed login attempts. These cookies are set for the specific task of increasing the security of the service.
Load balancing session cookies are used for the duration of the session to identify the same server in the pool for the load balancer to redirect user requests appropriately.
User interface customisation persistent cookies are used to store a user’s preference regarding a service across web pages. This may use reporting and analytics cookies to collect information about how you use our website and how often. These cookies only gather information for statistical purposes and only use pseudonymous cookie identifiers that do not directly identify you. The performance cookies we use include:
First party analytics cookies – We use these cookies to estimate the number of unique visitors, to improve our website, and to detect the most searched for words in search engines that lead to our webpage. These cookies are not used to target you with online marketing. We use these cookies to learn how our website is performing and to help make relevant improvements to your browsing experience.
Third party analytics cookies – Certain plug-ins we may use on our site include the use of Google Analytics and other third-party analytics providers. This helps us to measure how users interact with our website content. These cookies “remember” what our users have done on previous pages and how they’ve interacted with the website. For more information on Google Analytics, visit Google’s information page. For instructions on how to opt out of Google Analytics visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
Advertising cookies – We do not use advertising cookies on our site and do not share your information with advertisers.
Social and Content cookies – These cookies may be placed by social media plugins (for example the Facebook ‘like’ button), and other tools meant to provide or improve the content and engagement on our website (for example services that allow the playing of video files, or that create comments sections).
Please note that some of these third party plugins and services place cookies that are also used for things like behavioural advertising, analytics, and/or market research. You can choose to disallow, disable or delete third party cookies via the settings menu in your web browser.