Cookies – what are cookies and why have a Cookie Policy?

A cookie is a small file which is placed on your computer by a site when you visit it. Basic cookies contain the site name and a unique user ID. The next time you visit that site, your browser checks to see if it has a cookie for it and sends the information contained in that cookie back to the site. The site then ‘knows’ that you have been there before, and can, for example, tailor your experience of the site. More sophisticated cookies allow you to do other things, like create accounts on a site or use an online shop.

Essential cookies

Some of the cookies websites place on your computer allow you to do important things like create an account, log in and out, use an online shop and post contributions. These facilities will not work without cookies.

How we use cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site.  It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

The cookies we set

This site offers newsletter or email subscription services and cookies may be used to remember if you are already registered and whether to show certain notifications which might only be valid to subscribed/unsubscribed users. This site offers e-commerce or payment facilities and some cookies are essential to ensure that your order is remembered between pages so that we can process it properly. When you submit data through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence. In order to provide you with a great experience on this site we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it.  In order to remember your preferences we need to set cookies so that this information can be called upon whenever you interact with a page.

Google re-marketing cookie

We use a cookie to track you on other sites and show adverts to you based on where you have visited on our site. We do this to remind you of our services in case you wish to come back and buy them. We only use these cookies for 30 days after your last visit to our website. We do not control these cookies, so these will be unaffected by the choice you make today. You may opt out of the use of cookies by visiting Google advertising opt-out page. Find out more about Google and its policies and principles as regards advertising.

Non-essential cookies

Google Analytics cookies help us to improve your experience of our site but are not essential to its basic functioning. We use these cookies to collect pseudonymised data about your computer, including, where available, your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration purposes and to measure our effectiveness. They also enable us to estimate our audience size and usage patterns. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns and does not identify any individual. We use also cookies to help us deliver a better and more personalised service. They allow us to:

• store information about your preferences, enabling us to customise our site according to your individual interests
• speed up your searches
• recognise you when you return to our site.

Third party cookies

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn cookies are examples of ‘third party’ cookies on our site. If you click a function on our website that is associated with these parties (eg to share or tweet a piece of information), they will place cookies on your computer. We do not take responsibility for these cookies, as to make use of these functions you will have already accepted the terms and conditions of use with the relevant party. In some special cases we use cookies provided by other trusted third parties.  The following cookie policy section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site. We embed videos on our site using Vimeo, which sets cookies on your computer once you click on the video player. As you do not have to sign up to Vimeo first in order to play these videos, you will not have accepted their terms and conditions. We do not take responsibility for these cookies; to find out more please visit Vimeo’s privacy policy. This site also uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience.  These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page. From time to time we test new features and make subtle changes to the way that the site is delivered.  When we are still testing new features these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on the site whilst ensuring we understand which optimisations our users appreciate the most. As we sell products it’s important for us to understand statistics about how many of the visitors to our site actually make a purchase and as such this is the kind of data that these cookies will track.  This is important to you as it means that we can accurately make business predictions that allow us to monitor our advertising and product costs to ensure the best possible price. Several partners advertise on our behalf and affiliate tracking cookies simply allow us to see if our customers have come to the site through one of our partner sites so that we can credit them appropriately and where applicable allow our affiliate partners to provide any bonus that they may provide you for making a purchase.

Can I refuse cookies?

Yes. You can use a setting on your browser which allows you to refuse to accept cookies. However, if you select this setting you will be unable to use certain parts of our site and it may not work smoothly. Different browsers have different instructions for managing cookies and you may also be able to accept certain cookies and not others. For example, you may be able to refuse third party cookies.

Changes to our Cookie policy

Any changes we may make to our cookie policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by email.

Contact

Please send any questions, comments and requests about this privacy policy to info@youthtalk.org.uk

Disclaimer

Our site may contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that they have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.