1. What are Cookies?

Cookies are small text files containing a string of characters that can be placed on your computer or mobile device that uniquely identify your browser or device. What are cookies used for?

Cookies are not dangerous. They are not computer programs and cannot be used to circulate viruses.

Cookies allow a site or services to know if your computer or device has visited that site or service before. Cookies can then be used to help understand how the site or service is being used, help you navigate between pages efficiently, help remember your preferences, and generally improve your browsing experience. Cookies can also help ensure marketing you see online is more relevant to you and your interests.

2. Types of Cookies.

There are generally four categories of cookies: “Strictly Necessary”, “Performance”, “Functionality”, and “Targeting”. We routinely use all four categories of cookies on the Service. You can find out about each cookie category below.

Strictly Necessary Cookies. These cookies are essential, as they enable you to move around the Service and use its features, such as accessing logged in or secure areas.

Performance Cookies. These cookies collect information about how you have used the service, for example, information related to the unique username you have provided, so that less strain is placed on our backend infrastructure. These cookies may also be used by our backend infrastructure to help us route traffic between servers and monitor the loading times for different people. This may include information about your browser and/or device.

Functionality Cookies. These cookies allow us to remember how you’re logged in, whether you chose to no longer see advertisements, whether you chose to accept cookies on the site and to provide related content to articles you have viewed or to assist with posting and/or sharing content on social media sites.

Targeting Cookies. We, our advertising partners or other third party partners may use these types of cookies to deliver advertising that is relevant to your interests. These cookies can remember that your device has visited a site or service, and may also be able to track your device’s browsing activity on other sites or services other than our own. This information may be shared with organizations outside of our own, such as advertisers and/or advertising networks to deliver the advertising, and to help measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, or other business partners for the purpose of providing aggregate service usage statistics of aggregate service testing.

3. Why we use Cookies.

We use cookies for the following reasons.

To improve your overall experience
To record site analytics and usage data
To provide targeted adverts

4. Cookies that we use.

As mentioned in section 2. above, we routinely use all of the 4 general cookie categories (“Strictly Necessary”, “Performance”, “Functionality” and “Targeting”). While cookies of these types may not be present at all times on any/all pages, they may be cookies that we either plan on using, or use only in certain aspects of our service.

Most, if not all, of our pages will contain cookies that fall within the “Targeting” and “Performance” cookie categories. The most commonly found cookies for this will be provided by Google Analytics.

4a. Google Analytics

The common cookies used by google analytics on and within our sites are as follows:

Cookie NameExpirationDescription
_ga2 yearsUsed to distinguish.
_gat10 minutesUsed to throttle request rate.
_utma2 years from set/updateUsed to distinguish users and sessions.
_utmt10 minutesUsed to throttle request rate.
_utmb30 minutes from set/updateUsed to determine new sessions/visits.
_utmcEnd of browser sessionUsed for historical interoperability.
_utmz6 months from set/updateStores the source of user acquisition.
_utmv2 years from set/updateUsed to store visitor-level custom data.
Note: If you wish to opt-out of providing analytics data for Google Analytics, you may do so at the following link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Note2: Further and more detailed information on how google analytics uses cookies may be found here:https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage?csw=1#HowGAUsesCookies

5. How long will Cookies stay on my device?

The length of time a cookie will stay on your computer or mobile device depends on whether it is a “persistent” or “session” cookie. Session cookies will only stay on your device until you stop browsing. Persistent cookies stay on your computer or device until they expire or are deleted.

6. How do I change my cookie settings?

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 and how to manage and delete them, visit http://www.aboutcookies.org/ orhttp://www.allaboutcookies.org/

Note: These sites are in no way endorced by our selves and we are not responsible for the content they may contain. We feel that these sites provide an adequate description and source of information about the use of cookies and how they work.

7. Closing Notes

While this policy defines some specific cookies that we use, we are in no way limited or bound to use only the cookies that have been mentioned. The cookies that we use may change on an infrequent basis, but they will always conform to the categories explained in section 2. above (“Strictly Necessary”, “Performance”, “Functionality” and “Targeting”).