Cookie Policy

Date of last update: 17 September 2017

This cookie policy sets out how cookies are used on websites operated by Homehog.net and members of its group (our websites) including but not limited to:

'Cookies' are used on almost every website. They are small text files that are saved on your computer to help the website perform a number of functions. We use cookies for several reasons. For example, they allow us to keep you secure when you log in to your online account, provide online account application forms, monitor the number of people using our websites and help us understand more about the way in which people use our websites.

Cookies used by our websites

  • Do not store any personally identifiable information about you or information such as passwords.
  • Do not (and cannot) allow us to access other information stored on your computer.
  • Do not store any information about you that others could understand, or in any way compromise your security.
  • Do allow us to provide a service whereby people can access their account, place a deal or open a new account, securely.
  • Do allow us to monitor the number of people using our websites and monitor their activities.
  • Do allow us to see how people arrive at our site (e.g. search for ‘Homehog.net’ on a search engine, or click on an email we have sent).
  • Do allow us to gather technical information about people using our websites, such as their geographic location and the type of web browsers they are using.
  • Do allow us to display adverts on other websites, to people who have previously accessed our websites. We cannot identify individuals to whom adverts may be displayed.
  • Do allow us to display content on our websites more relevant to you and your preferences based on the information we hold and your behaviour on our websites.
  • Do allow our websites to recall certain settings and preferences to make using our website easier. We cannot identify what your individual preferences or settings are.

Types of cookie used on our websites

Session cookies are stored on your computer and remain available for the duration of your visit to our websites. When you close your browser, any session cookies that have been set will be automatically removed from your computer’s memory.

Persistent cookies are stored on your computer and remain there until they reach their expiration date or you choose to delete them. At this point, the browser will delete the cookie from your computer’s hard drive. Whilst the persistent cookie is present, the website that created it will have access to that cookie each time you return to that particular website.

We make use of both types of cookie in order to maximise the security of our services and to ensure you always get an optimal service from our websites. We do not use cookies to track your use of the internet after leaving our websites, nor do we store any information about you in cookies that others could read and understand.

First and third party cookies - whether a cookie is 'first' or 'third' party refers to the website/service placing the cookie. First-party cookies are those set by us. Third-party cookies are cookies that are authorised by us but provided via one of our suppliers. In some limited cases, we may use our suppliers to manage some of these cookies for us, but we never allow any third party to use these cookies for their own purposes.

How we classify the cookies we use

We use a system of classification developed by the International Chamber of Commerce. This allows us to classify the different types of cookies which we use on our websites and provide you with more information about why we use them.

Strictly necessary cookies are cookies that are essential in providing specific services you have requested from us. For example:

  • Remembering information you have entered on online application forms when you navigate to different pages in a single web browsing session.
  • Maintaining a logged-in session on our websites.

Performance cookies aim to improve our websites by collecting information about how you use our website. For example:

  • Counting the number of visitors and how they move around our websites.
  • Understanding what interests our users so that we can deliver the content and level of service you expect from us.
  • Helping us to improve our websites by measuring errors experienced by users of our websites.
  • Testing different designs or content on our websites.

Functionality cookies will typically be set because of an action you have taken on our websites but may also be set in the delivery of other services. For example:

  • Saving preferences when using interactive share charts.

Promotional cookies collect information about your browsing in order to deliver promotions relevant to you and your interests as well as your IP address in order to determine your geographic location and for fraud filtering. They are usually placed by third party advertising networks. They remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organisations such as media publishers.

These organisations do this in order to provide you with targeted adverts more relevant to you and your interests. This type of advertising can include targeting you based on what pages of our site you have visited and online behavioural advertising based on your browsing history.

We may from time to time use this type of cookie on our websites to deliver promotions relevant to you. Promotional cookies may also be used to limit the number of times you see a promotion as well as help measure the effectiveness of the promotion.

Our websites use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. ('Google'). The cookies used by Google Analytics are third party cookies referred to above, and help our websites analyse how you use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of our websites (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information to provide us with reports on website activity and other services relating to website activity. For more information about how Google uses your data please see Google’s Privacy & Terms.

Social Sharing Cookies provide you with additional functionality to share content from our web pages to social media websites and email using the social media widgets or buttons found on our websites. Use of these widgets or buttons may place a cookie on your device to make their service easier to use and to ensure your interaction is displayed on webpages (e.g. the social share count cache is updated). We encourage you to review each provider's privacy information before using any such service.

Managing your cookies

Most web browsers allow you to manage cookies via the browser settings. For example you may choose to delete existing cookies, prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie or disable cookies altogether.

You can use the following links to find out more about managing these settings in your browser. If your browser is not listed below you can normally use the 'Help' functionality on your browser to find out about how it handles cookies.

You can also opt out of receiving targeted advertisements by visiting the NAI website opt-out page here: http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/ or the DAA opt-out page here: http://www.aboutads.info/ or, for EU users, the EDAA opt-out page here: http://youronlinechoices.eu/.

To provide website visitors with more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics, Google have developed the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on which can be found here. The add-on communicates with the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics. The Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on does not prevent information from being sent to the website itself or to other web analytics services.

If you wish to opt out of any other internet based advertising cookies that we use to show you relevant promotions please visit the National Advertising Initiative’s consumer opt-out site to remove them and prevent these cookies from being allowed onto your machine in the future. http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices.

By using our websites you are agreeing to the placement of cookies on your computer.

Changes to this Cookie Policy

We reserve the right to revise or supplement this Cookie Policy from time to time. You should bookmark and periodically review this page to ensure that you are familiar with the most current version of this Cookie Policy and so you are aware of what the cookies on our websites are used for. You can determine when this Cookie Policy was last revised by checking the "Date of last update" legend at the top of this Cookie Policy.