How GSM London uses 'Cookies' on its website
We use "cookies" and similar tools across our websites to improve their performance, help analyse our web page flow, customise our services, enhance your user experience and to measure our content and promotional effectiveness. This policy explains how we do that.
What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files which a website may put on your computer or mobile device when you first visit a site or page. The cookie will help the website, or another website, to recognise your device the next time you visit. Web beacons or other similar files can also do the same thing. We use the term “cookies” in this policy to refer to all files that collect information in this way.
There are many functions cookies serve. For example, they can help us to remember your username and preferences; analyse how well our website is performing, or even allow us to recommend content we believe will be most relevant to you.
Certain cookies contain personal information – for example, if you click to “remember me” when logging in, a cookie will store your username. Most cookies won’t collect information that identifies you, and will instead collect more general information such as how users arrive at and use our websites, or a user’s general location.
What information we collect
The information we collect will include the following:
- Log file information, including IP addresses. You can visit public areas of the site without identifying yourself or providing any personal information
- Tracking IP addresses (the computer's internet address)
- Monitoring how long a user spends on the site and which pages he/she visits - this helps us evaluate the use of different parts of the website
As a rule, we don't link IP addresses to anything that can identify you personally, ensuring you can remain anonymous. Nevertheless, we will attempt to use IP addresses to identify a user when we feel it is necessary to protect our services and other users.
What sort of cookies does GSM London use?
Generally, our cookies perform up to four different functions:
- Essential cookies
- Performance cookies
- Functionality cookies
- Behaviourally targeted advertising cookies
1. Essential cookies
Some cookies are essential for the operation of our website. For example, some cookies allow us to identify applicants and ensure they can access the online application pages. If a subscriber opts to disable these cookies, the user will not be able to access all of the content that this process entitles them to.
2. Performance Cookies
We utilise other cookies to analyse how our visitors use our websites and to monitor website performance. This allows us to provide a high quality experience by customising our offering and quickly identifying and fixing any issues that arise. For example, we might use performance cookies to keep track of which pages are most popular, which method of linking between pages is most effective, and to determine why some pages are receiving error messages.
We also use persistence cookies to track returning visitors. These are used to track returning visitors, and enable us to compare website traffic from month to month. They automatically expire after 12 months.
We use a third-party service—Google Analytics—to collect aggregate data about usage of our website. They use traffic log cookies to gain information about the use that is made of pages on our website. We use the information from cookies to generate reports on the usage of our website which are used for evaluation and analysis. The purpose is to improve our website by tailoring it to the needs of users. No data specific to any identifiable user is retained.
We do not control the use of these third-party cookies, and you should check Google's privacy policy if you have concerns. As a user you can opt out by visiting http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Full details on the cookies set by Google Analytics are published on the Google website. They use the following cookies:
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Cookie Name
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Purpose
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Expires
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_utma
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This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to our site
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2 years
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_utmb, __utmc
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These cookies work together to calculate the average length of time users spend on our site.
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When you close the browser
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__utmz
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This cookie records information about how the page was reached (for example via a search engine result or a direct link).
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6 months
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__utmmobile
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This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to our site.
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2 years
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3. Functionality Cookies
We use functionality cookies to allow us to remember your preferences. For example, cookies save you the trouble of typing in your username every time you access the site, and recall your customisation preferences, such as which regional edition of the website you want to see when you log in.
We also use functionality cookies to provide you with enhanced services such as allowing you to watch a video online or comment on a blog.
4. Targeting and Marketing Cookies
GSM London use display advertising and remarketing cookies to serve you with a richer customer experience. These cookies are used to highlight articles or site services that we think will be of interest to you based on your usage of the website. We also use geo-targeting cookies which support IP address recognition to detect the locations of browsers for our geo targeted marketing campaigns.
Placing cookies on your computer means we can show you adverts that you might be interested in, and allows us to control the number of times you see them and measure how effective the ad campaign has been. Advertising helps us to keep the site free for you to use.
As a user you can opt out by visiting:
Third party sites
We also use or allow third parties to serve cookies that fall into the four categories above. For example, like many companies, we use Google Analytics to help us monitor our website traffic. We may also use third party cookies to help us with market research, improving site functionality and monitoring compliance with our terms and conditions and copyright policy.
1) Links to other websites
Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, *.gsm.org.uk, you should note that we do not have any control over other websites. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.
2) Social media cookies
GSM London is active on a range of social media platforms. We have no control over the use of cookies on these third party sites. Please refer to the privacy policies of the individual social media sites.
Non-cookie based tracking
Email tracking whether users open our emails
We use a third party provider, Pinpointe, to deliver our marketing emails. We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies.
Our emails may contain a single, campaign-unique “web beacon pixel” to tell us whether our emails are opened and verify any clicks through to links or advertisements within the email. We may use this information for purposes including determining which of our emails are more interesting to users, to query whether users who do not open our emails wish to continue receiving them and to inform our advertisers in aggregate how many users have clicked on their advertisements. The pixel will be deleted when you delete the email.
By registering on our website, you are consenting to us tracking when you open an email. If you do not wish the pixel to be downloaded to your device, you should select to receive emails from us in plain text rather than HTML.
For more information, please see Pintpointe’s privacy policy including cookie statement.
Call tracking
GSM London uses call tracking software to enable us to track and measure our call volumes.
Can a website user block cookies?
As we’ve explained above, cookies help you to get the most out of our websites.
The first time you accessed our website after 22 May 2012, you should have seen an overlay which explained that by continuing to access our site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
We encourage you to accept the cookies we serve. Please remember that if you do choose to disable cookies, you may find that certain sections of our website do not work properly.
However, if you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our or any other website, you can do this through your browser settings. As each browser is different, here are some of the most common ones:
More Information
To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.
If you have any queries regarding this Cookie Policy please contact our Data Protection Officer by e-mail at [email protected]
This document was last updated on 20th January 2015