Our cookie policy How Which? uses cookies and what they are.
What is a cookie?
Cookies are little data files which are sent to your browser from a website that you visit. They are stored on your computer's hard drive.
How do we use them?
At Which? we use a variety of cookies as they perform different functions, from remembering that you are logged in during visits to what your screen name is. They also help us to identify which of our articles are the most popular and what type of journey a visitor has through our site. If you visit a webpage where we have an advert, a cookie will also be placed on your browser so that when you arrive at our website we can recognise that you've seen an advert of ours elsewhere.
Cookies help us arrange the content and layout of our site and recognise those computers that have been to our site before or have seen one of our adverts elsewhere. They therefore play an important role in helping us to enhance the usability and performance of our site.
A list of all the cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use can be found in our cookies list.
What is a Flash cookie?
This is a type of cookie which is collected via Adobe Flash media player (also called a Local Shared Object) – a piece of software which you probably have on your computer to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts. Currently, Which? does not use this type of cookie.
Have a look at Adobe's website if you want to control Flash cookies on your computer. If you’ve got a Firefox browser you can also get an add-on to detect and delete Flash cookies.
Can I opt out of cookies?
Yes. There are a number of options available. You can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to only allow “trusted” sites to set them, or to accept only those cookies from those websites which you are currently on.
However, please note – if you do delete all your cookies, some features of our website, such as remembering your login details, will not function as a result.
We like the website www.aboutcookies.org which is run by the law firm Pinsent Masons. Not only does it have the recipe for ‘the world’s finest cookies’, it also gives you detailed step by step guidance on how to control and delete cookies depending on your browser type. You can then adjust your browser settings to your preferred level of protection.
What is a web beacon?
Web beacons are usually 1 pixel size transparent images that help website owners track the activity of users on certain website pages. They can also send the tracking server (ie. us, or our technology partners) information in cookies – such as whether an HTML email with a web beacon in it has been opened. We don’t use web beacons in this way yet – but if we will in the future we’ll let you know. However, we do use beacons together with cookies to help us understand how you interact with our website, to help us improve your experience and to better manage site content.
Our main technology partners
We work with the following companies in maintaining and improving our website. A brief description of what they do is found below. We ensure that any company which works with us and collects personal data satisfies the data protection requirements. If you have any more questions, please do contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
Add This Limited
Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
ADTECH
Adtech serve some of the internal Which? promotional banners. We do not take advertising from third parties, so on our site you will only find Which?'s own services advertised.
DC Storm
DC Storm provides us with our web analytics data – this means detailed information on the performance of our site, such as how many visits have been made to each page. Any data passed to DC Storm is anonymised statistical data.
Doubleclick and Mediaplex
Mediaplex and Doubleclick are used by our marketing agencies to report on the response to our banner advertising campaigns. These cookies are triggered from the point when our adverts are seen online (impressions). They assist our marketing colleagues in tracking the effectiveness of the money we spend on our banner advertising. Any data passed to Doubleclick and Mediaplex is anonymised statistical data.
GetShopped
GetShopped provide the shopping cart facilities on the online bookshop.
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics to better understand how our customers navigate to and through our website, how long customers spend visiting our content items and how often they return to visit our website. Google Analytics also assists our marketing colleagues to track the effectiveness of the money we spend on our digital marketing campaigns. Where a customer chooses to try our services, we are keeping an aggregate record of how long this takes.
Omniture Limited
Omniture provides us with our web analytics data – this means detailed information on the performance of our site, such as how many visits have been made to each page.
Pluck UK Limited
Pluck provides the software which we use for all our membership generated content pages – such as our product review commenting feature. They help manage the software on our behalf so they can tell us related statistics - like how many people have left comments on a certain product.
SLI Systems Limited
SLI provide the software for the ‘search’ function on our site. When you visit the search box at the top of our site and put in your search term, they will manage this process. They provide us with all search related data – such as what the most popular search terms are.
Summit Media Ltd
Summit Media Ltd provides ‘Pay Per Click’ advertising, mostly via Google Adwords management. This means they help us manage our adverts at the top and on the right-hand-side of Google search results pages. If a user then clicks on a Google advertising link, a cookie will help us recognise that they came from Google when they arrive to our site. We then have to pay Summit Media Ltd a fee, who in turn pay Google.
the OTHER media Limited
the OTHER media provide build and hosting services to Which? and help us to maintain the software that runs our website. They provide us with reporting statistics where required, and will serve cookies on our behalf to enable any site personalisation and log in functionality.
WordPress
WordPress provide the platform for the content of the online bookshop.