Privacy Policy
We will not disclose any information you provide about yourself to any third parties unless we have to do so in the ordinary course of our commercial relationship with you (including, without limitation, for marketing purposes) or to administer this Website. We are aware of and we will comply with our obligations under current data protection legislation in the UK. If you have any questions about our use of your personal details then please contact us.
Cookies
Designed to improve the user experience, cookies are a simple way of enabling websites to store information about visitors - helping them get the most out of their time online. By logging a short text file, the cookie allows the website to ‘remember’ the user next time they visit the site, making it easier to access the information they require.
Cookies can store a user’s log-in details, for example, meaning they don’t have to enter their password every time they visit the site, known as ‘persistent cookie’. Similarly, a ‘session cookie’ temporarily stores information for the duration of a single visit. Without this sort of cookie, the website would believe the user to be a new visitor on every page they turned to, requiring them to log in time and time again.
Cookies can also remember a user’s preferences and browsing habits, which is used by websites to tailor the adverts and marketing information a user sees based on their previous data. These cookies can also be set by other websites whose content is hosted on the page being viewed, known as ‘third party cookies’.
Use of cookies
We want to make the use of our website easy, useful and reliable. To do this we sometimes place small amounts of information on your device. These include small files known as cookies in this case 1st Party Cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally but they do make your experience as a visitor better, but we can control these and turn them off if you prefer.
The site deploys a number of third party generated cookies because of the integration of various third party applications on the site and these we do not have control over.
The cookies of which we are aware include:
From Google
| Cookie name | Purpose/Description | Expiry |
|---|
| _utma |
Identifying Unique Visitors
This cookie is typically written to the browser upon the first visit to your site from that web browser. If the cookie has been deleted by the browser operator, and the browser subsequently visits your site, a new __utma cookie is written with a different unique ID. This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to your site and it is updated with each page view. Additionally, this cookie is provided with a unique ID that Google Analytics uses to ensure both the validity and accessibility of the cookie as an extra security measure.
|
2 years from set/update. |
|---|
| __utmz |
Tracking Traffic Sources & Navigation
When visitors reach your site via a search engine result, a direct link, or an ad that links to your page, Google Analytics stores the type of referral information in a cookie. The parameters in the cookie value string are parsed and sent in the GIF Request (in the utmcc variable). The expiration date for the cookie is set as 6 months into the future. This cookie gets updated with each subsequent page view to your site; thus it is used to determine visitor navigation within your site.
|
6 months from set/update. |
|---|
| PREF |
Google's safebrowsing api / g+ |
12 months |
|---|
| HSID |
These cookies are used by GoogleMaps to deliver maps and track usage of their service. |
Not Set |
|---|
| SSID |
These cookies are used by GoogleMaps to deliver maps and track usage of their service. |
Not Set |
|---|
| APISID |
These cookies are used by GoogleMaps to deliver maps and track usage of their service. |
Not Set |
|---|
| SAPISID |
These cookies are used by GoogleMaps to deliver maps and track usage of their service. |
Not Set |
|---|
| NID |
These cookies are used by GoogleMaps to deliver maps and track usage of their service. |
Not Set |
|---|
| BEAT |
These cookies are used by GoogleMaps to deliver maps and track usage of their service. |
Not Set |
|---|
| ULS |
These cookies are used by GoogleMaps to deliver maps and track usage of their service. |
Not Set |
|---|
These cookies provide us with information about the numbers of visitors and how they reached us, they also recognise location when used with Google maps and allow the pages to be liked using Google+.
We do not have control over the cookies deployed by Google we are forced to accept them to take advantages of the services this company provides which we believe to be of value to our visitors - their privacy policy which governs their use of cookies can be found here.
From Facebook
| Cookie name | Purpose/Description | Expiry |
|---|
| datr |
This identifies the web browser being used to connect to Facebook independent of the logged in visitor. This cookie plays a key role in Facebook’s security and site integrity features |
24 months |
|---|
| lu |
This is used to manage how the login page is presented to the visitor. The lifetime is the same as c_user |
2 years |
|---|
| c_user |
This contains the user ID of the currently logged in visitor. The lifetime of this cookie is dependent on the status of the "keep me logged in" checkbox. If the checkbox is set, the cookie expires after 30 days of inactivity, otherwise the cookie is a session cookie and will therefore be cleared when the browser exits |
Set by visitor |
|---|
| xs |
This contains the session number, a session secret and an optional "secure" flag (if visitor has enabled secure browsing feature). The lifetime is the same as c_user |
Set by visitor |
|---|
These cookies allow integration with Facebook so that pages can be liked and shared.
We do not have control over the cookies deployed by Facebook we are forced to accept them to take advantages of the services this company provides which we believe to be of value to our visitors - their privacy policy which governs their use of cookies can be found here.
From YouTube
| Cookie name | Purpose/Description | Expiry |
|---|
| VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE |
This cookie is set by YouTube when you load a video embedded on one of our pages |
240 days |
|---|
| user_hitbox |
This cookie is set by YouTube when you load a video embedded on one of our pages |
|
|---|
| PREF |
This cookie is set by YouTube when you load a video embedded on one of our pages |
10 years |
|---|
These cookies allow integration with YouTube so that pages can be liked and shared.
We do not have control over the cookies deployed by YouTube we are forced to accept them to take advantages of the services this company provides which we believe to be of value to our visitors - their privacy policy which governs their use of cookies can be found here.
General Cookie advice
You can restrict or block the cookies used by the I-COM website through your browser settings but this will impact your user experience. The Help function within your browser should tell you how.
Alternatively, you can visit www.aboutcookies.org which provides directions on how to block cookies on all major browsers. This site also explains how you can delete cookies that have already been stored on your computer as well as general information about cookies.
You should be aware though that restricting cookies may impact on the functionality of the websites you visit.
What’s in a cookie?
In its simplest form, a cookie is a small file containing a series of numbers and digits, which is saved onto a computer or mobile device by a website server. Completely unique to that device’s web browser, the cookie contains an identifying code which can only be accessed and read by the server that put it there. The file contains basic information that enables the website to recall any preferences or customised information set during the previous visit.
What to do if you don’t want cookies to be set
On the whole, cookies are quite harmless as they contain only anonymous strings of text. Some people, however, are uncomfortable at the thought of external websites being able to store data on their devices or pass it to third parties for advertising purposes. The good news is that it is relatively simple to block and delete cookies via a computer or mobile device’s control panel – the down side of this being that functionality will be impaired across a great many websites.
