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Complaints / FAQ / Cookies

 

Cookies are small files placed on Internet users' computers by websites to distinguish individual computer terminals.

 

 

Cookies are fundamental to providing user-friendly online services. The most common functions of e-commerce would be impossible without cookies.

 

 

Many online services rely on cookies. Cookies assist user navigation and provide useful information to webmasters about the use of their websites.

 

 

Many online services rely on cookies including; the management of online 'shopping baskets', the storage of browser preferences, computer's memorising usernames and / or passwords, controlling the number of times a user sees an advertisement and even setting a users personal privacy preferences when dealing with online traders.

 

 

There are two main types of cookies -navigational and advertising. Navigational cookies are a consumer tool to save information or preferences to help a user obtain the information they require. Advertising cookies are used to count the number of visits a users' computer terminal makes to a website and to avoid redisplaying the same advertisements.

 

 

Cookies make navigating the Internet easier for consumers. The information cookies provide to webmasters helps businesses provide the content consumers really want.

 

 

Businesses can assess the effectiveness of their website design as well as maximising the number and relevance of advertisements they offer users on their websites. Cookies also verify to businesses that a user is who they say they are - a key tool for e-commerce.

 

 

Cookies basically give the webmaster details of which individual terminals viewed what pages. They also allow websites to verify if a user is already "logged in" to a service to avoid asking them again and again for passwords and the like.

 

 

A user can see the cookies installed on their computer by looking in their Temporary Internet Files or cookies folder - depending on the Internet browser being used.

 

 

Information is available both in website privacy policies and as a function of cookie management tools available from third parties or already built into web browsers.

 

 

If a consumer manages their cookies and the information they supply about themselves to websites properly, webmasters should not have any information about a consumer that the consumer does not want to give them.

 

 

Consumers can set personal preferences and filter or accept particular cookies by using Internet browsers which offer extensive cookie management tools such as:

 

¨      the choice of prior consent to all cookies

 

¨      blocking/permitting all cookies from particular sources

 

¨      direct "one click" access to privacy policies.

Users can also delete cookies using their particular operating system's file management system and download cookie management tools from the Internet, either for free or at a small charge.

 

 

A business can analyse data that a consumer has provided via a website in association with cookies. However, any information gleaned by using cookies is exclusively useful to the server of the original website that installed the files. One webmaster's cookie cannot be read by the systems of another webmaster supporting a different website. Cookies can only be read by the server that first installed the cookie. Unauthorised sharing or collating of this information is prohibited by the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive.

 

If users do not want a particular business to analyse their personal data, then they have the choice not to provide their personal data to websites.

 

 

One webmaster's cookie cannot be read by the systems of another unrelated webmaster supporting a different website. Cookies can only be read by the server that first installed the cookie.

 

 

Without user input, the cookie can only record whether or not the individual terminal in question had visited the site before and the user's IP address. Any further information can only be collected when actively given by the consumer.

 

 

Without user input, the cookie can only record whether or not the individual terminal in question had visited the site before and the user's IP address. Any further information can only be collected when actively given by the consumer.

 

Companies can use the information gathered about uses of your individual computer terminal (not necessarily you) to target advertising at you. There is no point in either showing you the same advertising over and over again, nor showing you advertising completely unrelated to your interests

 

Cookies often do not record IP addresses. When they do, they have the purpose as the cookie itself - to distinguish the individual computer terminal and - possibly - which country it is in.

 

 

The IP address can at times show which country you are in, but not always.

 

 

Nothing apart from distinguishing the individual computer terminal to target advertising and distinguish which country the terminal is in.