Cookies Policy

Information about cookies

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to here as a "device") browser from a website's server and is stored on your device's hard drive. Each website or third-party service provider used by the website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser's preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a website or third-party service provider to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites or other third-party service providers. A cookie will contain some anonymous information such as a unique identifier and the site name and some digits and numbers. It allows a website to remember things like your preferences or what’s in your shopping basket.

What is a browser?

A browser is an application that allows you to surf the internet. The most common browsers are Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Most browsers are secure and offer quick and easy ways to delete information like cookies. Please see the section below Change your Browser Settings

What do cookies do?

Cookies record information about your online preferences and allow us to tailor the websites to your interests. Information supplied by cookies can help us to analyse your use of our sites and help us to provide you with a better user experience. For example, you may choose to personalise the content of a website in order to see the latest news and weather for your region. In order to do this, a cookie is placed on your device to remember where you live so that we deliver the information that has been requested by you. This is a prime example of how cookies are used to improve your experience of a website.

Change your Browser Settings

You can choose how cookies are handled by your device via your browser settings. The most popular browsers allow users to a) accept all cookies, b) to notify you when a cookie is issued, or c) to not receive cookies at any time. If you choose not to receive cookies at any time, the website may not function properly and certain services will not be provided, spoiling your experience of the website. Each browser is different, so check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences.

General Information - Types of Cookie

First-party Cookies

First-party cookies are set by the website you are visiting and they can only be read by that site.

Third-party Cookies

Third-party cookies are set by other organisations that we use for different services. For example, Snow Magazine uses external analytics services and these suppliers may set cookies on Snow Magazine’s behalf in order to report what’s popular and what’s not. The website you are visiting may also contain content embedded from, for example, Facebook or Instagram and these sites may set their own cookies.

Session Cookies

Session Cookies are stored only for the duration of your visit to a website and these are deleted from your device when your browsing session ends.

Persistent Cookies

This type of cookie is saved on your device for a fixed period. Persistent cookies are used where we need to know who you are for more than one usage session. For example, if you have asked us to remember preferences like your location or your username.

Web beacons, clear GIFs, page tags and web bugs

These are all terms used to describe a particular form of technology implemented by many websites in order to help them to analyse how their site is being used and, in turn, to improve your experience of their site. They may also be used to target any advertising being served on the web page you are viewing.

A web beacon (or similar) usually takes the form of a small, transparent image, which is embedded in a web page or an email. They are used in conjunction with cookies and send information such as your IP address, when you viewed the page or email, from what device and your (broad) location.

How does Snow Magazine use cookies?

Cookies enable us to identify your device, or you when you have logged in. We use cookies that are strictly necessary to enable you to move around the sites or to provide certain basic features. We use cookies to enhance the functionality of the website by storing your preferences, for example. We also use cookies to help us to improve the performance of our sites to provide you with a better user experience.

Typically, we use cookies to deliver the following services throughout the pages of our sites:

• To enable us to recognise your device so you don't have to give the same information repeatedly;
• To recognise that you may have requested that we remember your username and password so you don't need to enter your details each time you visit a site;
• To ensure that if you are purchasing a product or service via our sites, your experience is smooth and secure;
• To record what people like and don’t like on the site and the popularity of various elements of the site so that we can ensure that it works properly at points of high usage. Snow Magazine also uses a number of independent measurement, advertising and research companies. They gather information regarding the visitors to Snow Magazine on our behalf using cookies, log file data and code which is embedded on our website. Snow Magazine uses this type of information to help improve the services it provides to its users.
  
  Our sites contain advertising. Cookies may sometimes be used to deliver advertising and marketing messages relevant to you – a practice across the internet and known as behavioural marketing.

Advertising and Behavioural Marketing

Behavioural Marketing technology gives users and advertisers a more valuable and unique experience by delivering advertising and content that is more relevant to the user. The system we are using is a type of "onsite behavioural marketing" which uses cookies to discover general information about which pages on our sites you visit. It also looks at IP addresses to add general information about the country, city or region in which you are located, along with your domain name (e.g. what internet service provider you use). This information enables you to be grouped with other people of similar interests and places you in a "market segment".

We may then display advertisements on the sites which we believe people in your market segment will find relevant. We consider that this makes the advertising more interesting and useful to you, and also helps us increase the value we get out of the sites and from our advertisers, and therefore ultimately gives us a greater ability to invest in great content for the benefit of all our users.

It is important to note that at no time will we or our service providers attempt to identify you individually, and at no time do we know who you are or what pages you individually have been looking at - we simply aggregate the relevant information to create the market segments of groups of people. We will at all times seek to comply with the regulatory framework applicable to onsite behavioural targeting technology in our implementation of it.

How to opt out of Online Behavioural Advertising

The following table shows the 3 main associations that represent advertising networks. You can visit their websites to opt out of all cookies served by their members. Typically, they will scan your device for a few seconds to see what cookies are currently set and then provide you with the facility to opt out on an individual basis or completely from all cookies.

Alternatively, you can visit the following sites to opt-out of the main Ad networks used on Snow Magazine's website:

Cookies we set on our sites

We use cookies to manage and improve your website experience, the following lists the cookies currently in use:

cookieaccept
This cookie signifies whether you have accepted cookies or not.

nrid
This cookie is for private messages

General session / login
Two cookies with long unique hexadecimal names are used to manage session and login status

Cookies set on our site by our commercial service providers

We use a range of third-party services on our site - from statistics packages to advertising, video delivery, content delivery and even low level techie functions like load balancing our servers so that they are always available when you want to use them. Some of these services require the use of cookies to work properly. These services include:

Statistics / Analytics

Google

Google Analytics provides anonymous statistical information for us. They process IP addresses and information from other cookies used on our sites so we know how many page views we have, how many users we have, what browsers they are using (so we can target our resources in the right way to maximise compatibility for the majority of our users) and, in some cases, in which country, city or region they are located.

_ga / _gid
This cookie is associated with Google Universal Analytics. This cookie is used to distinguishes unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. It is set to expire after 2 years.

_gat
This cookie is associated with Google Universal Analytics, it is used to throttle the request rate - limiting the collection of data on high traffic sites. It expires after 10 minutes.

Find more information about google's privacy policy here: www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html

Marketing

Webgains

Webgains are our affiliate marketing partner
Find out more about their cookie policy here:www.webgains.com/public/privacy

Further Information

On a quarterly basis, we conduct an audit of all cookies being used across the website portfolio.

Please contact us if you would like more information on the cookies that we use and their purposes.