Cookies
To make this site work properly, this website sometimes place small data files called cookies on your device. Most big websites do this too.
What are cookies?
A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site.
It enables the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as login, language, font size and other display preferences) over a period of time, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you come back to the site or browse from one page to another.
A cookie can be classified by its lifespan and the domain to which it belongs.
By lifespan, a cookie is either a:
- session cookie which is erased when you close your browser or
- persistent cookie which remains on your computer/device for a pre-defined period of time.
How do we use cookies?
My site uses different types of cookies to improve your experience and to provide services. I use them to:
- Essential cookies to enable services you specifically asked for.
- Functionality cookies to recognise when you return to this website so that so you don’t have to log in again. And again. And again. So that it can remember your preferences so that you don’t have to set them every time.
- Analytics and performance cookies to count visitors and how my Site is being used and make it a better service for you. These help me understand my audience on an aggregate basis. For example number of visitors to a Site, where visitors are visiting from, how many pages they look at and how long they stay on a page or visit.
- To find out if my emails have been read and if you find them useful.
Third Party Cookies
We use third parties to deliver various services in our Sites. For example, I use Cloudflare for spam detection; Google for audience analytics, ad serving and targeting. I also use Facebook and Twitter for social logins. These service providers use cookies. We don’t have access to these cookies and each provider can only access their own.
Analytics
I use Google Analytics to help me understand how visitors engage with my Site. Google Analytics uses cookies to store non-personally identifiable information. You can find out more in Analytics cookies and privacy information.
How to control cookies
By using the Website you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with this policy. You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site and some services and functionalities may not work.
If you are primarily concerned about third party cookies generated by advertisers, you can manage your preferences by going to https://www.youronlinechoices.com/ie/.
You can easily accept or reject the cookies on this site by choosing the Accept or Refuse buttons at the bottom of the page upon initial page load. These cookies are currently set to expire monthly. So if you didn’t see it upon page load it will reset in a month. (I am considering reducing this to a week or fortnight.)