Cookies in use

(erm…work in progress!)

What are cookies

Cookies are small files that get put on your computer by websites as you surf them.  These cookies can store lots of information which can have privacy implications.  We like to think all the  cookies used on this site are fairly innocuous but that’s for you to judge.

Anonymous tracking software

We use Google Analytics (just like virtually everybody else) a service provided by Google.  They gather anonymous data of how people are using this site and then provide us with visitor statistics, details of page views etc etc.  You can think of it as being a bit like CCTV but one that automatically blurs your face so we can see what people have done, bit not who.  If you are anti-Google you can opt-out of being tracked by Google Analytics at http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout (we’d prefer you didn’t though as this data is seriously helpful to us in improving our website)

We also use a thing called Tynt. Bad name and we aren’t totally sure about the product. We will get back to you on this one in due course.

Pretty-much-anonymous tracking software

A very nifty tool called Click Tale takes little videos as you view this site.  Again it is completely anonymous with one exception: if you submit an enquiry to us then, believe it or not, we can actually play back your user session.

Don’t worry though we don’t have a camera looking at you – it just records keyboard strokes and mouse movements which can be really helpful in making our forms easier to understand.  Further if you don’t fill out a form at any point we will never know who you or nor will Click Tale (who will never know who you are).

Click Tale are hot on data privacy and protection, so much so we were sufficiently impressed to blog about it.  You should also check out their privacy policy. It’s a tool we love and we would be delighted to show you it in action.

Of course if this is all too much for you, you can disable ClickTale.

Website widgets

There’s so many great free toys you can add to websites these days and rarely can we resist – anything from Twitter buttons to software that power’s blog comments.  Collectively they make our website more interesting to you as a site visitor (and hopefully beloved customer). Sadly most of these come with cookies – that’s the “price of free”.  So hand’s up, there are more third parties tracking data on this site than we would like and each of them are setting cookies as you surf this site.  They are:

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Slideshare
• ShareThis
• AddtoAny
• Disqus
• Facebook
• Twitter

We are working hard to work out what they all do but we are pretty confident that they all collect data anonymously unless you are already logged into their service.  They probably just collect details of pages visited, anonymise it, aggregate it with  several thousand or million others people’s anonymous data and then look at pretty graphs.  In many cases the cookies are used to generate identical information to Google Analytics (see above) and indeed use Google Analytics, so opting-out of Google Analytics will also opt you out of these cookies too. We are working to find out more about each of the cookies used.

If you have any views on the cookies we are using, we would welcome your input!

Don’t want any cookies ever?

While we’d love to offer a cookie-free version of our site we are a small company and simply don’t have the resources to provide and maintain one.  Unfortunately if you are really anti-cookie then there is no option except to not use our site.  You can remove any cookies we have already put on your machine within your browser settings – pressing Ctrl+Shift+Delete may work in many cases.  We will be sorry to see you go!