Cookie Policy

What are Cookies?

Cookies are tiny text files that are placed on your computer, mobile phone, or other device, and help provide you with the best experience we can. They are used by most websites to help personalise your web experience. Some features will not function if you do not allow cookies.

Our cookies help us:

Make our website work as you’d expect.

Save you having to login every time you visit the site.

Remember your settings during and between visits.

Improve the speed/security of the site.

Allow you to share pages with social networks like Twitter.

Continuously improve our website for you.

Granting us permission to use cookies.

If the settings on your software that you are using to view this website (your browser) are adjusted to accept cookies we take this, and your continued use of our website, to mean that you are fine with this. Should you wish to remove or not use cookies from our site you can remove them, however doing so will likely mean that our site will not work as you would expect.

It is only once you sign up and provide consent that the system will look to personalise the experience for you with best matching content and other recommendations.

Which cookies do we use and why?

Across the site we use the minimum number of cookies, with no third party analytics tracking, e.g. Google Analytics. There are however some key social, audio and video embeds which are used on the site and these in turn use cookies, we recommend that you use privacy and ad blocking plugins to minimise the number of third party cookies, none of which are required for westcoasttoday.co.uk.

1. Strictly necessary

Strictly necessary cookies are essential in helping you to move around our websites and use their features, such as accessing secure areas of the website and shopping. These cookies don’t gather any information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you’ve been on the internet.

We use these Strictly Necessary cookies to:

Remember things like information you’ve entered on order forms when you navigate to different pages in a single web browser session.

Remember the goods and services you ordered when you get to the checkout page.

Identifying you as being signed in and keeping you logged in throughout your visit so that you don’t need to sign in each and every time you visit.

Using our site indicates that you accept the use of ’Strictly Necessary’ cookies.

Accepting these cookies is a condition of using the website, so if you prevent them we cannot guarantee how our site will perform for you.

Here is a list of the cookies we have defined as ’Strictly Necessary’:

Host: westcoasttoday.co.uk

Cookie names: JSESSIONID

Purpose: To keep track of user sessions on the site and identify your user session on the server level.

Host: westcoasttoday.co.uk

Cookie name: VISITOR

Purpose: To keep track of your visit and enable core actions such as shopping carts, form entry, logins, free content access and similar.

Host: westcoasttoday.co.uk

Cookie name: VISITORLOGIN

Purpose: To facilitate cross domain logins.

Host: westcoasttoday.co.uk

Cookie name: USER

Purpose: To allow you to be logged in and manage your preferences as well as all aspects of ensuring full delivery of the logged in user experience.

Host: westcoasttoday.co.uk

Cookie name: USERSECURE

Purpose: To facilitate encrypted logins.

2. Functional

These cookies allow websites and applications to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. They do not gather any information about you that could be used for selling advertising or remembering where you’ve been on the internet, but do help with serving advertising.

Some examples of how we do this include:

Remembering your preferences and settings.

Show you when you’re logged in to the website.

Supporting social media components, like Facebook or Twitter (where a website uses a plugin from these third party platforms, for example).

Remembering if you’ve been to the site before so that messages intended for first-time users are not displayed to you.

Remembering your search settings.

Making our shopping basket and checkout work.

Remembering if you have accepted our terms and conditions.

Using our site indicates that you accept the use of ’Functional’ cookies.

Accepting these cookies is a condition of using the website, so if you prevent them we cannot guarantee how our site will perform for you.

Here is a list of the cookies we have defined as ’Functional’:

None

3. Performance (analytical)

’Performance’ cookies collect information about how you use our website e.g. which pages you visit, and if you experience any errors. These cookies don’t collect any information that could identify you - all the information collected is anonymous and is only used to help us improve how our website works.

Some examples of how we do this include:

Provide statistics on how our website is used.

See how effective our adverts are (we don’t use this information to target adverts to you when you visit other websites).

Provide feedback to partners that one of our visitors also visited their website. This can include details of any products bought. This lets our partners improve their website, but we don’t allow our partners to reuse this information for further advertising.

Help us improve the website by measuring any errors that occur.

Using our site indicates that you accept the use of ’Performance’ cookies.

Accepting these cookies is a condition of using the website, so if you prevent them we cannot guarantee how our site will perform for you.

Here is a list of the cookies we have defined as ’Performance’:

None

4. Target or Advertising (3rd party)

’Targeting’ cookies are linked to services provided by third parties, such as ’Like’ buttons and ’Share’ buttons. The third party provides these services in return for recognising that you have visited our website.

An example of this includes:

Link to social networks like Facebook, who may subsequently use information about your visit to target advertising to you on other websites

We use third party services provided by third parties like YouTube or Vimeo who may subsequently use information about your visit to target advertising to you on other websites

You can control whether or not these cookies are used, but preventing them may stop us from offering you some services. All of these cookies are managed by third parties, and you may alternatively use the third parties’ own tools to prevent these cookies.

Here is a list of the cookies we have defined as ’Targeting’.

None

Third Party Cookies

Some third party content may be embedded in pages on westcoasttoday.co.uk and these may have the ability to track and personalise your experience for the embedded content. Examples of third party cookies are:

Hosts: player.vimeo.com, av.vimeo.com

Cookie names: c_user, datr, act, locale, lu, p, presence, s, xs, aka_debug

Purpose: When users view a web page on your site with an embedded Vimeo video, Vimeo creates these cookies

Host: soundcloud.com

Cookie name: __utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmz

Purpose: Soundcloud can be used to share music and audio files. They use google analytics to capture visitor information

Host: youtube.com

Cookie name: PREF, use_hitbox, PRVISITOR_INFO1_LIVEEF

Purpose: When you view a web page on your site with an embedded YouTube video, YouTube creates these cookies

Host: twitter.com

Cookie name: personalization_id

Purpose: When you view a web page on your site with an embedded Twitter card, Twitter creates this cookie.

How you can control cookies

1. Browser controls

Most modern browsers offer you ways to control or block cookies. These browser controls will usually be found in the “options’ or “preferences” menu. For more help, you may take a look at the “Help” settings or review these website for more details - www.aboutcookies.org/Default.aspx?page=1

2. Ad cookies and targeting

You can find more information, or turn off targeting by member companies, at YourOnlineChoices UK www.youronlinechoices.com/uk.

About this policy

If our use of cookies changes, we will post the changes to this policy. Please check frequently as online data collection practices and our use of them continue to evolve. To contact us about this policy, you may email editor@westcoasttoday.co.uk