What is a cookie?
A cookie is a simple text file that is downloaded and stored on your computer by your web browser, each time you visit a website. Each cookie is unique to your web browser, and only your web browser will be able to retrieve and/or read the contents of cookies on your computer. The web browser will store cookies and then send them back to the relevant website on subsequent visits so that it remembers you.
Cookies contain anonymous information such as a unique identifier, the website name and some digits and numbers. We use a mixture of ‘session’ cookies, cookies stored in your web browser for a limited time while you are accessing our website, and ‘persistent’ cookies, those which are stored for days (sometimes months) and which are activated each time you revisit our website.
Why use cookies?
Most websites you visit will use cookies in order to improve your user experience, namely by enabling that website to recognise you and remember things like personalised details or user preferences. And when we say ‘you’, we mean your computer.
An example of how and why we use cookies is when we show you event announcements on our homepage. We don’t want to bombard you with the same announcement lots of times, so we set a cookie in your browser so it remembers you have seen the ad once or twice already.
What cookies are used on this website?
Experience cookies: These cookies are used to optimise a user’s experience of a website, by enhancing the performance and functionality of our website. They allow us to improve the content that we offer you by understanding how you like to use it (for example we can see the areas of our website that you like best). In addition customer tracking services may be implemented on our website by other companies on our behalf. “Tracking” enables us to count the number of times you have seen something, which in turn means we can make sure that we don’t show you the same event announcements twice (as mentioned above).
Marketing Cookies: These cookies are used to anonymously track and target each unique visitor to a website, either on the website alone or from a third party advertising campaign to the website. We use these cookies to understand your previous web browsing activity, and we might share this info with our trusted partners. This allows us (and our partners) to understand anonymous things about you, such as your demographics (i.e. age, gender, music preferences) and in turn this allows us to ensure that you see adverts that are interesting and relevant to you. Marketing Cookies may also be placed on your device by us or our third party service providers for these purposes.
Our cookies or someone else’s?
In most cases the cookies are set by our website, www.theo2.co.uk. However cookies may also be set by third parties where third party applications are embedded in our website such as:
- YouTube, if you watch a video,
- User Voice, if you comment on our feedback forum, and
- AddThis, if you share a page on your social network.
Whilst these cookies will fall into one or both of the two categories mentioned above we are unable to access, or control the use of, these cookies. You should check the third party websites for more information about these cookies.
How to configure your cookie preferences
Please remember that cookies on our website are there to improve your experience in using our website (without them, online advertisements you encounter will be less relevant to you and your interests) and do not collect any personal identifiable information from you. However there are ways in which you can control and manage the cookies on your device. Most modern web browsers will allow you to:
- See what cookies you’ve got and delete them on an individual basis.
- Block third party cookies.
- Block cookies from particular sites.
- Block all cookies from being set.
- Delete all cookies when you close your browser.
Every web browser (such as Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome and Firefox) lets you change your cookie preferences. The links below take you to the ‘Help’ sections for each of the major web browsers so that you can find out more about how to manage your cookies.
Internet Explorer
Click here
Safari
Click here
Google Chrome
Click here
Firefox
Click here
Alternatively for more detailed information and guidance on the use of cookies please see the ICO website for further information.
You can opt-out of each cookie category (except strictly necessary cookies) by clicking on the button below: