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This page contains information on what cookies are, the types of cookies used on this website, how to switch cookies off in your browser, how to specifically switch off advertising cookies, and some useful links for further reading on the subject.
If it does not provide the information you were looking for, or you have any further questions about the use of cookies on HCM’s website, please email learn@h-c-m.co.uk
What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files that are stored by the browser (eg. Internet Explorer or Safari) on your computer or mobile phone. They allow websites to store things like user preferences. You can think of cookies as providing a ‘memory’ for the website, so that it can recognise you when you come back and respond appropriately.
How does HCM’s website use cookies?
A visit to a page on HCM’s website may generate the following types of cookies:
Site performance cookies
Site performance cookies are used to ensure our website functions correctly for you. Blocking these cookies may result in some parts of the site not working. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.
These cookies include: has_js, cookie-agreed, JSESSIONID
Anonymous analytics cookies
These cookies allow us to track how many individual users we have, and how often they visit the site. They also tell us whether or not you’ve visited the site before. Your browser will tell us if you have these cookies and, if you don’t, we generate new ones.
We cannot use these cookies to identify individuals. We use them to gather statistics to help us improve our site, for example, the number of visits to a page or how long is spent reading a page.
Google Products
Google Analytics uses cookies to help us analyse how our website is used. The information generated by these cookies about your use of this website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored on Google servers. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for us and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. We also use Google Analytics Demographics and Interest reporting. Visitors can opt-out by using the Ads Settings.
We also use separate Google products similar to Analytics. These are Tag Manager, which tracks actions on our site, and Search Console, to analyse website performance.
Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.
Visitors can also opt out using the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.
Further information about Google products and cookies: Google Privacy Policy | Google Analytics
These cookies include: _ga, _gat, _gid, collect
Advertising cookies
These cookies allow us to know whether or not you’ve seen an advert or a type of advert, and how long it is since you’ve seen it.
We also use cookies to help us use targeted advertising. These are set by other organisations so we can more accurately target advertising to you. For example, we may show you adverts relating to a specific course if you have recently visited information relating to that course on our site. These cookies are anonymous – they store information about what you are looking at on our site, but not about who you are.
DoubleClick
DoubleClick uses cookies to improve advertising. Some common applications are to target advertising based on what’s relevant to a user, to improve reporting on campaign performance and to avoid showing ads the user has already seen.
DoubleClick Floodlight tags help us track conversions (when someone clicks on an advert) and your actions on our site once you’ve clicked on one of our adverts. These tags also compile lists of users for use in future marketing campaigns.
Find out more about DoubleClick.
AdWords Remarketing
This is the technology we use to target audiences based on website behaviour across Google Search, the Google Display Network, Gmail and YouTube. It allows us to specify actions you can take on our website (such as viewing a course page, watching a video or submitting a form) and then target advertising at either people who have completed these actions, have not completed these actions, or those whose demographic profile matches those who have completed a particular action.
AdWords Remarketing is set up within JavaScript code on pages of our website. This code uses cookies to collect a user ID number and to collect, store and send other contextual information such as pages you have viewed, your device and the actions you’ve taken. Collecting personally-identifiable information (such as your name or email address), although possible, is forbidden by the AdWords terms of service and by data protection law.
Facebook
We also use Facebook cookies and pixels. Pixels are small blocks of code on webpages that do things like allow another server to measure viewing of a webpage and often are used in connection with cookies. Cookies and pixels are used to understand and deliver ads and make them more relevant to you. The user ID collected relates to your Facebook account and the data collected is used to advertise across Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. These pixels are also used to attribute website conversions back to advertising sources.
Further information can be found on the Facebook website.
These cookies include: ads/ga-audiences, fr, IDE, NID, sess, SEUNCY, TapAd_DID, TapAd_TS, TDCPM, TDID, test_cookie, tr, uuid2,
Other third party cookies
On some pages of our website, other organisations may also set their own anonymous cookies. They do this to track the success of their application, or to customise the application for you. Because of how cookies work, our website cannot access these cookies, nor can the other organisation access the data in cookies we use on our website.
For example, when you share an article using a social-media sharing button (for example, Twitter) on HCM’s website, the social sharing platforms that have created the buttons (Addthis and Sharethis) will record that you have done this and in some cases display a count of how many shares a certain page has had.
These Cookies include: _cfduid, _at.hist.#, __atuvc, __atuvs, __stid, _at.cww, at-lojson-cache-#, at-rand, bt2, di2, loc, mus, uid, uvc, vc, xtc, __sharethis_cookie_test__, _privy_41C1C357237979AE74F72568, _privy_a, _privy_b, _privy_match_session
How do I turn cookies off?
It is usually possible to stop your browser accepting cookies, or to stop it accepting cookies from a particular website.
All modern browsers allow you to change your cookie settings. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. To understand these settings, the following links may be helpful, or you can use the Help option in your browser for more details.
Cookie settings in Internet Explorer
Cookie settings in Safari web and iOS.If you are primarily concerned about third party cookies generated by advertisers, you can turn these off by going to the Your Online Choices site.
Useful links
If you would like to find out more about cookies and their use on the Internet, you may find the following links useful:
Microsoft Cookies guide | All About Cookies
The IAB has provided the following website to give information specifically about privacy issues around Internet advertising: youronlinechoices.co.uk/uk
For further legal information about privacy issues, you may find these links useful: The Information Commissioner’s Office
If you would like to contact us about cookies please email us at learn@h-c-m.co.uk