What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small file that can be placed on your device that allows us to recognise and remember you. It is sent to your browser and stored on your computer’s hard drive or tablet or mobile device. When you visit our sites, we may collect information from you automatically through cookies or similar technology.
How do we use cookies?
We use cookies in a range of ways to improve your experience on our site, including
- Keeping you signed in
- Understanding how you use our site
- Showing you journalism that is relevant to you
Ultimately, this allows us to publish the journalism that you read on our sites and apps.
In the next section, we explain in more detail how we use cookies and similar technology on our sites and apps for a number of purposes.
Other organisations also collect user information on our sites through cookies, tags and pixels. Tags and pixels, also known as web beacons, are similar to cookies but are collected through embedded images.
Using cookies and other technology allows other organisations to help us to analyse how our site is being used, measure the number of visitors to the site, and display advertising.
Cookies that are used by the web are referred to as “first-party cookies” and those that are used by our partners are “third-party cookies”. Because of how cookies work, our website cannot access third-party cookies; nor can other organisations access the data in the cookies we use on our website. There are more details about both in the following sections.
What types of cookies do we use ?
We use four types of cookies, which we describe in this section.
- Essential – cookies that are essential to provide you with services you have requested.
- Performance – cookies which measure how often you visit our sites and how you use them.
- Functionality – cookies that are used to recognise you and remember your preferences or settings when you return to our site, so that we can provide you with a more personalised experience.
- Advertising – cookies that are used to collect information about your visit to our site, the content you have viewed, the links you have followed and information about your browser, device and your IP address.
How do we use cookies for advertising?
Cookies are a key part of how we deliver advertising on our sites. Among other uses, they allow us to show more relevant advertising to people who visit web by showing you adverts that are based on your browsing patterns and the way you have interacted with our sites and apps. We can then show you adverts which we believe may interest you.
As you browse our site, some of the cookies and similar technology we place on your device are for advertising, so we can understand what sorts of pages you read and are interested in. We can then display advertising on your browser based on these interests. For instance, if you have been reading a lot of food and drink articles, you may be shown more adverts for food and drink.
The advertising techniques we use do not collect information such as your name, email address, postal address or phone number. We sometimes use information such as your IP address and browser type and also sometimes share some limited aspects of this with third parties for advertising purposes.
How to manage advertising cookies
You can manage the use of cookies, including advertising cookies, and disable the sharing of data with partners for advertising purposes by using the steps set out here. In some cases you can turn off advertising cookies on a cookie-by-cookie basis, and we give the most common examples below.
You can find information about how to opt out of the cookies provided by our key partners here:
You can switch some cookies off through the Your Online Choices site. You may need to do this again each time you use a different IP address or device.
It is also possible to stop your browser from accepting cookies altogether by changing your browser’s cookie settings. You can usually find these settings in the “options” or “preferences” menu of your browser. The following links may be helpful, or you can use the “Help” option in your browser.
- Cookie settings in Internet Explorer
- Cookie settings in Firefox
- Cookie settings in Chrome
- Cookie settings in Safari web and iOS
Useful links
If you would like to find out more about privacy, cookies and their use on the internet, you may find the following links useful:
If you would like to contact us about cookies please email.
Changes to this Cookie Policy to date
- June 2018: updated information about how to opt out of the cookies provided by our key partners