What are ‘cookies’?
Which cookies do Bellrock use and why?
Cookies are small text files which are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website or application. Your web browser (such as Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome) then sends these cookies back to the website or application on each subsequent visit so that they can recognise you and remember things like personalised details or user preferences.
Cookies are very useful and do lots of different jobs which help to make your experience on websites as smooth as possible. For example, they let you move between web pages efficiently, remembering your preferences and generally improving your experience.
Cookies are referred to as session or persistent cookies, depending on how long they are used:
- Session cookies only last for your online session and disappear from your computer or device when you close your browser.
- Persistent cookies stay on your computer or device after the browser has been closed and last for the period of time specified in the cookie. These persistent cookies are activated each time you visit the site where the cookie was generated.
Which cookies does Bellrock use and why?
When you use our digital products and services, the following categories of cookies may be set on your device:
‘Strictly Necessary’ Cookies
These cookies are essential in helping you to move around our websites and use their features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. Without these cookies, some functions of the website cannot be provided. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you’ve been on the internet. Some examples of these essential cookies include:
- Remembering previous actions (such as text you’ve entered in a registration form) when navigating back to a page in the same session
- Identifying you as being signed into Bellrock.fm and our other websites and keeping you logged in throughout your visit so that you don’t need to sign in each and every time you visit
- Remembering security settings which restrict access to certain content
Analytics Cookies
In order to keep Bellrock products and services relevant, easy to use and up to date, we use web analytics services to help us understand how people use them. For example, we can see which parts of our products and services are most popular, identify when errors occur, and test different versions of a page or feature to see which one works best.
These web analytic services may be designed and operated by other companies on our behalf. They do this using small invisible images known as ‘web beacons’ or ‘tracking pixels’ that may be included in the digital products and services. these are used to count the number of times something has been seen. These web beacons are anonymous and do not contain or collect any information that identifies you.
The web analytics services may also use cookies and similar technologies to make the information collected by the web beacons more useful. When you are viewing a website, a cookies is transferred to your browser by the web server and is stored on your computer. It can only be read by the server that gave it to you.
Cookies allow web analytics services to recognise your browser or device and, for example, identify whether you have visited our Digital Products and Services before, what you have previously viewed or clicked on, and how you found us. The information is anonymous and only used for statistical purposes. It allows us to track information, such as how many individual users we have and how often they visit our websites. It also helps us to analyse patterns of user activity and to develop a better user experience.
Web analytics data and cookies cannot be used to identify you as they never contain personal information such as your name or email address.
How to control your cookies
Please remember that Bellrock does not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you, as explained above, we use the data we get from the web analytics services to analyse how you and other people use our website in detail. These cookies are set to improve your experience on our websites and to enable you to benefit from specific features and to set preferences.
Managing cookies in your browser
These changes will apply to all websites that you visit (unless you choose to block cookies from particular sites).
Most modern browsers will allow you to:
- See what cookies you’ve got and delete them on an individual basis
- Block third party cookies
- Block cookies from particular sites
- Block all cookies from being set
- Delete all cookies when you close your browser
You should be aware that any preferences will be lost if you delete cookies. Ironically, this includes where you have opted out from cookies, as this requires an opt-out cookie to be set. Also, if you block cookies completely many websites will not work properly and some functionality on these websites will not work at all. We do not recommend turning cookies off when using our Digital Products and Services for these reasons.
If you are primarily concerned about third party cookies generated by advertisers, you can turn these off separately. This is discussed in more detail below. The following links take you to the Help’ sections for each of the major browsers so that you can find out more about how to manage your cookies.