When you visit or interact with our sites, services, applications, tools or messaging, we or our authorised service providers may use cookies, web beacons and other similar technologies for storing information to help provide you with a better, faster, safer and more personalised experience and for statistical purposes.

This page is designed to help you understand more about these technologies and our use of them on our sites and in our services, applications and tools. Below is a summary of a few key things you should know about our use of such technologies.

Our cookies and similar technologies have different functions. They are either necessary for the functioning of our services, help us improve our performance, give you extra functionalities, or help us to serve you relevant and targeted content. We use cookies and similar technologies that only remain on your device for as long as you keep your browser active (session) and cookies and similar technologies that remain on your device for a longer period (persistent). You are free to block, delete or disable these technologies if your device permits so. You can manage your cookies and your cookie preferences in your browser or device settings.

Where possible, security measures are set in place to prevent unauthorised access to our cookies and similar technologies. A unique identifier ensures that only we and/or our authorised service providers have access to cookie data.

Service providers are companies that help us with various aspects of our business, such as site operations, services, applications, advertisements and tools. We use some authorised service providers to help us to serve you relevant content on our services and other places on the internet. These service providers may also place cookies on your device via our services (third party cookies). They may also collect information that helps them identify your device, such as IP-address or other unique or device identifiers.

What are cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies?

Like most sites, we use technologies that are essentially small data files placed on your computer, tablet, mobile phone or other devices (referred to collectively as a ‘device’) that allow us to record certain pieces of information whenever you visit or interact with our sites, services, applications, messaging and tools.

The specific names and types of the cookies, web beacons and other similar technologies we use may change from time to time. In order to help you better understand this policy and our use of such technologies we have provided the following limited terminology and definitions:

Cookies: small text files (typically made up of letters and numbers) placed in the memory of your browser or device when you visit a website or view a message. Cookies allow a website to recognise a particular device or browser. There are several types of cookies:

• Session cookies expire at the end of your browser session and allow us to link your actions during that particular browser session.
• Persistent cookies are stored on your device in between browser sessions, allowing us to remember your preferences or actions across multiple sites.
• First-party cookies are set by the site you are visiting
• Third-party cookies are set by a third party site, separate from the site you are visiting.

Cookies can be disabled or removed by tools that are available in most commercial browsers. The preferences for each browser will need to be set separately and different browsers offer different functionality and options.

Web beacons: small graphic images (also known as ‘pixel tags’ or ‘clear GIFs’) that may be included on our sites, services, applications, messaging and tools, that typically work in conjunction with cookies to identify our users and user behavior.

Similar technologies: technologies that store information in your browser or device, utilising local shared objects or local storage, such as flash cookies, HTML 5 cookies and other web application software methods. These technologies can operate across all of your browsers, and in some instances may not be fully managed by your browser and may require management directly through your installed applications or device. We do not use these technologies for storing information to target advertising to you on or off our sites.

We may use the terms ‘cookies’ or ‘similar technologies’ interchangeably in our policies to refer to all technologies that we may use to store data in your browser or device or that collect information or help us identify you in the manner described above.

Your choice and our use of cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies

We offer certain site features, services, applications and tools that are available only through the use of these technologies. You are always free to block, delete or disable these technologies if your browser, installed application or device so permits. However, if you decline cookies or other similar technologies, you may not be able to take advantage of certain site features, services, applications or tools. You may also be required to re-enter your password more frequently during your browsing session. For more information on how you can block, delete or disable these technologies, please review your browser or device settings.

Generally, these technologies allow our sites, services, applications and tools to store relevant information in your browser or device and later read that information in order to identify you to our servers or internal systems. Where applicable, we protect our cookies and other similar technologies to help ensure that only we and/or our authorised service providers can interpret them by assigning them a unique identifier that is designed for interpretation only by us. We do not store any of your personal information on any of our cookies or other similar technologies.

Any personal information that we collect and store through use of these technologies is first obtained through notice and consent. We obtain your consent by providing you with transparent notice of use of the technologies and providing you with the opportunity to make a choice to disable these technologies as set forth above.

Our uses of such technologies fall into the following general categories:

1. Operationally necessary. We may use cookies, web beacons or other similar technologies that are necessary to the operation of our sites, services, application, and tools. This includes technologies: that allow you access to our sites, services, applications and tools; that are required to identify irregular site behavior, prevent fraudulent activity and improve security or; that allow you to make use of our functions such as saved search, donations or similar functions.
2. Performance related. We may use cookies, web beacons or other similar technologies to assess the performance of our websites, applications, services and tools, including as part of our analytic practices, to help us understand how our visitors use our websites, determine if you have interacted with our messaging, determine whether you have viewed an item or link, or to improve our website content, applications, services or tools.
3. Functionality related. We may use cookies, web beacons or other similar technologies that allow us to offer you enhanced functionality when accessing or using our sites, services, applications or tools. This may include identifying you when you sign into our sites or keeping track of your specified preferences, interests or past items viewed so that we may enhance the presentation of content on our sites.
4. Personalisation or targeting related.We may use first-party or third-party cookies and web beacons to deliver content, including content relevant to your interests, on our sites or on third party sites. This includes using technologies to understand the usefulness to you of the marketing and content that have been delivered to you, such as whether you have clicked on a marketing advertisement.

Use of these technologies by authorised third-party service providers

We may work with third-party companies, commonly known as service providers, who are authorised to place third-party cookies, web beacons or similar technologies for storing information on our sites or in our services, applications and tools with our permission. These service providers help us to provide you with a better, faster and safer experience.

These service providers may use these technologies to help us deliver our own content and compile anonymous site metrics and analytics. We do not permit any of these service providers to collect any of your personal information on our sites or in our services, applications or tools for their own purposes. These service providers are subject to confidentiality agreements with us and other legal restrictions on their use or collection of any personal information. Third party cookies are covered by the third-parties’ privacy policy.