This site uses cookies – small text files (pieces of software) that are placed on your device and which communicate with us and tell us things about how you use our website. For example, the cookies we directly use can tell us whether you are a first-time visitor to our website or a repeat visitor. This means that if you have visited our website within the last 12 months, we won’t show you notices which you have already read. This helps to improve your visiting experience because you’re not being forced to look at legal notices you’ve already seen. Also, we offer tools on our website which enable consumers to compare telecommunications services and, for example, check their usage of these services. These tools also use cookies where (as part of using the tools) the website visitor logs in and creates an account with us. These cookies store the visitor’s email address and enable us to recognise and verify the visitor (as a unique visitor) as they navigate through and use the different parts of the tools.
There’s one other type of cookie that we use, called Google Analytics. This is a service provided to us by Google, and operated by them. When you visit our website, Google Analytics places a cookie on your device, and it tracks when you visit, what pages of our website you visit and what things you click on. It also tracks what IP address you use to access our website and so potentially your location. (Please check Google’s privacy notice for more information.) We don’t receive this tracking information from Google. Also, we do not attempt to identify individual visitors and we do not use third-party advertisements or a third-party ad service on this site. Instead, Google provides us with anonymised, aggregate data based on the tracking information it collects: for example, what percentage of website visitors in a particular month were repeat visitors. Most web browsers are set to automatically accept cookies, but you can change the settings on your browser to reject all cookies, to be notified when a cookie is sent or to accept all cookies. Your browser’s privacy settings screens will tell you how to do this. Google has created a tool (called a browser add-on) to allow users prevent their data from being used by Google Analytics. For more information, see the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. However, you should note that if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.
We retain our cookies (those we directly use) for 12 months, and then, if you visit our website after 12 months, fresh cookies may be placed on your device, if you haven’t chosen to block them.