Cookie Policy

Security

Website Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

External Links

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website.

Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement.

You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

An introduction to cookies

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences. We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes. Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of our website.

Cookies deployed by our website:

Cookies are not deployed to:

Your consent for cookie deployment by our website.

Upon your first visit to our website, you may have noticed our banner alerting you to the use of cookies by our website. In compliance with the 2011 EU Cookie Law, our website operates on an ‘Implied Consent’ basis. This means that we will assume that you have opted-in for our website to deploy cookies until you choose to deactivate them within your browser settings or via the instructions below. By default, the majority of popular web browsers automatically permit websites to deploy cookies onto your device. Below you can learn more about the specific cookies deployed by our website, and how they can be disabled. For more information on the EU Cookie Law in the UK, we recommend visiting the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) website where you can find the latest information, guidelines and advice on the EU Cookie Law.

Cookies used by our website

Social Network Sharing

We encourage users to share our content and/or like our on profile on the popular Social Media websites Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn. In order to make ‘Social Sharing’ accessible, our website utilises widgets either provided directly from the Social Networks and/or via amalgamative widgets from third parties such as AddThis. Cookies and privacy implications from the social networks vary and will be dependent on your nominated privacy settings with each Social Network. Social Sharing buttons will only deploy cookies if you are signed to that respective Social Network at the time of being on our website.

Analytical Tracking

Our website has Google Analytics installed which allows us to track and compile anonymous visitor statistics. The information collected ranges from simple traffic volume to the type of browser you are viewing our website with. This information is valuable to us not just for marketing analysis and quantification, but to improve the usability, security and load speed of our website content. Google Analytics is a popular, secure, flagship webmaster product from Google. The privacy and security of Google Analytics data is a high priority at Google that you can read more about on Google’s Analytics Data Safeguarding page. Google also offer a Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on that will allow you to automatically Opt-out of all websites that track your activity via Google Analytics. No personal information is collected by Google Analytics.

Cookie Consent Check

As mentioned above, upon your first visit our website displays a banner at the top of the page alerting you about cookies being deployed by our website.

In order for our website to remember your choice of opting-in, we store an anonymous cookie to remove the alert banner for 28 days. To prevent this cookie being stored, simply do not accept and close the alert. If you have already accepted the alert and you wish to remove the cookie, please clear your cookies within your browser settings.

WordPress

Our website, either in full or in part, is built on the popular open-source CMS framework – WordPress. WordPress utilises cookies to allow visitors to register, login and comment on our website’s content. If you do not wish to participate in commenting on our website, WordPress will not deploy any cookies onto your device. Cookies will only be created by WordPress if you actively register or comment via the clear forms on our website.

Enquiry Forms

Visitors can choose to contact us via enquiry form(s) on our website. In order to prevent spam enquiries, we protect our forms with a ‘CAPTCHA’ challenge to ensure the submission is from a living person, rather than a computer bot. This CAPTCHA challenge creates a cookie that is used only to check the input response from the user is correct. The CAPTCHA cookie does not store any other information from your enquiry.

Google Maps/Places

Our website may have our Google Maps/Places profile embedded within an iframe. Google Maps creates cookies that enable the functionality of their powerful mapping software. No personal information is stored or shared on the cookies deployed by Google Maps/Places

Actual cookies deployed

Below is a table of information which lists all cookies deployed and used on our website.

Cookie Category Cookie Name Cookie Description
Google _utma A Google Analytics cookie, which keeps track of the number of  times, a visitor has been to the site, when their first visit  was, and when their last visit occurred.
Google _utmb A Google Analytics cookie, which creates a timestamp of the  exact moment when a visitor enters a site.
Google _utmc A Google Analytics cookie, which creates a timestamp of the  exact moment when a visitor leaves the site.
Google _utmv Used for reporting in Google Analytics classifying the visitor.
Google _utmz A Google Analytics cookie which tracks where the visitor came  from, what search engine was used, what link was clicked on,  what keywords used, and where in the world the site was  accessed from.
Google PREF, NID This cookie is set by Google Maps when you load a map of our  location
AddThis loc, uid/uit, psc, di/dt, atuvc/bt/ssc/ssh/sshs/xtc Allows users to share content via Social Networking websites  and email
WordPress wp-settings, wp-settings-time- This cookie verifies if you are logged into the website or not.
WordPress wordpress_, wordpress_logged_in WordPress cookie for a logged in user.
WordPress comment_author, comment_author_email, comment_author_url When you enter a comment on this site you will be asked to  provide certain information about yourself including your name,  email and website address.

Force24 Cookies & Tracking

 

Our organisation utilises Force24’s marketing automation platform.

 

Force24 cookies are first party cookies and are enabled at the point of cookie acceptance on this website. The cookies are named below:

 

 

They allow us to understand our audience engagement thus allowing better optimisation of marketing activity.

 

f24_autoId – This is a temporary identifier on a local machine or phone browser that helps us track anonymous information to be later married up with f24_personid. If this is left anonymous it will be deleted after 6 months . Non-essential, first party, 10 years, persistent.

 

f24_personId – This is an ID generated per individual contact in the Force24 system to be able to track behaviour and form submissions into the Force24 system from outside sources per user. This is used for personalisation and ability to segment decisions for further communications. Non-essential, first party, 10 years, persistent.

 

The information stored by Force24 cookies remains anonymous until:

 

 

The Force24 cookies will remain on a device for 10 years unless they are deleted.

 

Other Tracking

We also use similar technologies including tracking pixels and link tracking to monitor your viewing activities

 

Device & browser type and open statistics

All emails have a tracking pixel ( a tiny invisible image ) with a query string in the URL. Within the URL we have user details to identify who opened an email for statistical purposes.

 

Link Tracking

All links within emails and SMS messages sent from the Force24 platform contain a unique tracking reference, this reference help us identify who clicked an email for statistical purposes.

How to disable cookies

Most modern browsers allow you to control your cookie settings for all websites that you browse. You can disable cookie deployment completely by editing your browser settings, however in doing this you may be limiting the functionality that is displayed on our website. To learn how to disable cookies on your preferred browser we recommend reading this advice posted by Google.

If you are concerned about cookies tracking your movements on the Internet then you may be concerned about spyware. Spyware is the name given to a particular band of cookies that track personal information about you. There are many antispyware programs that you can use to prevent this from happening. Learn more about antispyware software – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware. As mentioned earlier in this page you can also disable Google Analytics on all websites by downloading the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.