Cookies policy
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:
1) Essential cookies
2) Performance cookies
3) Functionality cookies
4) 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:
|
Cookie Name
|
Purpose
|
Expires
|
|
_utma
|
This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to our site
|
2 years
|
|
_utmb, __utmc
|
These cookies work together to calculate the average length of
time users spend on our site.
|
When you close the browser
|
|
__utmz
|
This cookie records information about how the page was reached
(for example via a search engine result or a direct link).
|
6 months
|
|
__utmmobile
|
This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to our
site.
|
2 years
|
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
GSM London
