We care about privacy and about being clear and transparent in how we collect and use your personal data. We use the information collection online to help us improve your experience of visiting our website and to develop and enhance our services to you.
This policy gives you information about the cookies we use and the purposes for using those cookies.
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small file that websites store on your computer or mobile device. Each cookie contains anonymised information about how you use our website and applications and this allows us to improve your user experience.
Cookies and personal data
Under the GDPR, any cookie or other identifier that is uniquely attributed to a device or user and capable of identifying an individual, or treating them as unique even without actually identifying them, counts as processing of personal data.
Types of cookies and what they do
The length of time a cookie stays on your device depends on its type.
We use two types of cookies on our website - session cookies and persistent cookies
Some cookies only exist whilst you remain on the site and are erased when you close your browser; these are known as session cookies.
Others remain on your machine or device between sessions allowing us to recognise you when you return to the site; these are known as persistent cookies.
Broadly speaking, cookies also have four different functions and can be categorised as: -
‘Strictly necessary’ cookies, ‘performance’ cookies, ‘functionality’ cookies and ‘targeting’ or ‘advertising’ cookies.
You may also have heard of first and third-party cookies. Whether a cookie is ‘first’ or ‘third’ party refers to the website (domain) placing the cookie. First-party cookies are set by a website that is being visited by the user at the time. Third-party cookies are those set by a domain other than that being visited.
We do not use ‘targeting’ or ‘advertising’ cookies on our site.
Strictly necessary cookies are essential to navigate around a website and use its features. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you've been on the internet.
An example of how we use ‘strictly necessary’ cookies is:
Setting unique identifiers for each unique visitor, so site numbers can be analysed.
Performance cookies collect anonymous data for statistical purposes on how visitors use a website, they don’t contain personal information, and are used to improve the user experience of a website.
Here are some examples of how we use performance cookies:
Gathering data about visits to the website, including numbers of visitors and visits, length of time spent on the site, pages clicked on or where visitors have come from.
Information supplied by performance cookies helps us to understand how you use the website; for example, whether or not you have visited before, what you looked at or clicked on and how you found us. We can then use this data to help improve our services. We use Google Analytics to provide this service for us and when this is the case, these cookies may be set by a third-party company (third party cookies).
Functionality cookies allow users to customise how a website looks for them: they can remember usernames, and can be used to provide more personal services to the user.
Here is an example of how we use functionality cookies:
Remembering if you've been to the site before so that messages intended for first-time users are not displayed to you.
We use:
Cookie Name | About this cookie | Expires |
PLAY_SESSION | This session cookie keeps track of your session when you use our website. This is a ‘strictly necessary’ first party cookie and is essential to allow you to browse the site and is set automatically by the server. | This session cookie is deleted when you close your browser. |
acceptedCookies | This cookie is set when you close the cookie message popup, so it does not appear again on successive visits. This is a ‘strictly necessary’ first party cookie. . | 1 year |
Google Analytics
We use this free tool to collect and analyse site statistics. Google uses persistent cookies to track data. These cookies are used for the statistical collection of data such as visits and page hits. Google Analytics’ cookies store IP addresses but we cannot link those addresses to any individual or path through the website. Google uses cookies to read information and evaluate visitors’ use of the website in the form of statistical reports that we can access. The Google analytics’ code is incorporated into our site’s code so that our site serves the cookies, but Google has access to the cookies. These will only be set if you approve their use in our cookie consent bar / pop up – see the section ‘can I block cookies – your choice’.
Find out more information on Google Analytics and the cookies it uses.
We use gtag.js and this sets the following cookies.
Cookie Name | About this Cookie | Expires |
_ga | Used to distinguish users | 2 years |
_ga_ | Used to persist session state | 2 years |
_gid | Used to distinguish users | 24 hours |
_gat | Used to throttle request rate | 1 minute |
AMP_TOKEN | Contains a token that can be used to retrieve a Client ID from AMP Client ID Service. Other possible values indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID from AMP Client ID service | 30 seconds to 1 year |
_gac_ | Contains campaign related information for the user. If you have linked your google analytics and AdWords Accounts, AdWords website conversion tags will read this cookie unless you opt-out. | 90 days |
What about third-party cookies?
Third parties, for example, external services like web traffic analysis services, also use cookies. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies. They are used, for example, to track how many users have seen a particular ad and to ensure that you see ads that are relevant to you. These cookies are placed by the relevant third party and we have no control over these cookies other than allowing them to be served.
Can I block cookies – your choice
You can decide whether to accept or reject cookies – it’s your decision. A message appears on the bottom of our website which allows you to manage cookies. Strictly necessary cookies remain pre-ticked as without them, the site will not work correctly.
William Smith Group 1832 Limited - Cookie Management
Cookies set by other websites
We want to encourage better sharing and more engaging content by making the most of social channels. We use a number of social channels and link to these from our website.
Once you land on these pages, they will have their own cookies set. Information on these is below but more information can be found in these channels own cookie policies.
Facebook Cookies Policy
Twitter Cookies Policy
Linkedin Cookies Policy
Instagram Cookies Policy
Google+ Cookies Policy
HubSpot Cookies Policy
Helpful resources and how to control cookies
For more information on cookies, please visit the ICO website
Please also refer to our Privacy Policy which can be found on our website.
