COOKIES POLICY

WHAT ARE COOKIES
Cookies and other online tracking technologies are small bits of data or code that are used to identify your devices when you use and interact with our websites, apps and other services. They are often used for remembering your preferences, to identify relevant content for you, to remember you’re logged in and allowing you to interact with our products and services.

WHAT OTHER TECHNOLOGIES DO WE USE
As well as cookies, we use other types of tracking technologies:

Web Beacons and Tracking Pixels
These are bits of data that count the number of users who access a website or page and can also allow us to see if a cookie has been activated. Web beacons used on pages or in emails allow us to see how successful an article has been, or whether an email message was successfully delivered and read in a marketing campaign. Web beacons are also used to verify any clicks through to links or advertisements contained in emails. We may use this information to help us identify which emails are more interesting to you and to inform advertisers how many customers have clicked on their adverts (the information shared with advertisers is aggregated and does not identify you individually).

Flash Cookies
We may, in certain situations, use Adobe Flash Player to deliver special content, such as video clips or animation. To improve your user experience, Local Shared Objects (commonly known as Flash cookies) are used to provide functions such as remembering your settings and preferences. Flash cookies are stored on your device, but they are managed through an interface different from the one provided by your web browser.

Tracking URLs
Tracking URLs are a special web link that allows us to measure when a link is clicked on. They are used to help us measure the effectiveness of campaigns and advertising and the popularity of articles that are read or programmes that are viewed.

Device Fingerprinting
We may collect and analyse a device’s browser information to help identify that device, present content correctly, conduct analytics and help prevent and detect fraud.

If you Access our Services from a Mobile Device
We may collect a unique device identifier assigned to that device, geo-location data, and other transactional information for that device. We may also use the unique identifier to validate free trials, for example.

Essential Cookies and Similar Technologies
These are vital for the running of our services on our websites and apps. Without the use of these cookies, parts of our websites would not function. For example, we use these cookies to:

help us identify which of our readers, listeners or viewers have a subscription in order to access content they are entitled to on the website or app

tell if you are logged in to your account, which allows extra functionality, such as commenting on stories

identify and prevent threats to our sites or apps

protect your information and our business from outside threats

allow you to connect to our websites or apps

allow you to select and purchase products and services on our websites or apps

measure audiences across our websites or apps for industry reporting purposes

Analytics Cookies and Similar Technologies
These collect information about your use of our websites and apps, and enable us to improve the way they work. For example, analytics cookies show us which are the most frequently visited pages on The Sun or The Times websites allowing us to display the most popular articles more prominently. They help us record how you interact with our websites or apps, such as how you navigate around pages and from page to page, identifying improvements we can make to the customer journey. They also help identify any difficulties you have accessing our services, so we can fix any problems. Additionally, these cookies allow us to see overall patterns of usage at an aggregated level. This means we can highlight content and articles that we believe will be of interest to you. We provide personalisation by using cookies, IP addresses, web beacons, URL tracking and mobile app settings.

We may place cookies and similar technologies on behalf of comScore who help us measure the size and quality of our audiences across platforms. You can learn more and control how comScore use your information here.

Functional/Preference Cookies and Similar Technologies
These cookies collect information about your choices and preferences, and allow us to remember things like language, your username (so you can log in faster), text size and location, so we can show you relevant content to where you are. They allow us to customise the services you have accessed. We also use these cookies to provide you with services such as video clips.

Social media cookies
These cookies are used when you share information using a social media sharing button or “like” button on our sites or apps or when you engage with our content on or through a social site such as Facebook or Twitter. These cookies collect information about your social media interaction with our websites or apps, such as whether or not you have an account with the social media site and whether you are logged into it when you interact with content on our websites or apps. This information may be linked to targeting/advertising activities.

Tracking, Advertising Cookies and Similar Technologies
We use these types of technologies to provide advertisements that we think may be more relevant to your interests. This can be done by delivering online adverts based on your previous browsing activity, known as “online behavioural advertising” (OBA). Cookies are placed on your device which will remember the websites you have visited or content you have viewed. Adverts based on what you have been looking at are then displayed to you when you visit websites or apps which use the same advertising networks.

These cookies may also be used to:
track how many times adverts are seen by users;

determine if an advert lead to a click through to another website and lead to a sale or other action;

protect our advertisers’ brands; and

provide you with adverts based on your location, offers you click on, and other similar interactions with our websites and apps.

We sell space on our websites and apps to advertisers. The adverts they display on our websites or apps will often contain cookies. Our advertisers may use cookies or similar technologies to provide you with advertisements that they believe are relevant. They may use browsing data obtained to restrict the number of times you see particular adverts (frequency capping). You may also see adverts from these advertisers on other websites you visit.

Third parties that support our services by serving advertisements or providing other services, such as allowing you to share content or tracking aggregate service usage, may also use cookies and other technologies to collect information relevant to the provision of those services.

We do not control third party cookies or other technologies. Their use is governed by the privacy policies of third parties using such technologies. You should make sure you are aware of how third parties will use cookies and whether your cookie data will be transferred to a third country by checking the third party’s cookie policy.

We do offer you the opportunity to control some third party cookies from partners we work with. A list of the third parties who place cookies on our websites can be found by accessing our consent management platform on our websites.

We work with Google Marketing Platform to help us deliver relevant advertising. To find out more about how this works visit: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/

COOKIE CONTROLS
When you visit our sites for the first time you will be shown a consent management notice explaining the use of cookies by us, our partners and third parties. You’ll be able to learn more about the specific cookies in use and how to control them. We will remember your preferences and may ask you periodically to confirm these preferences. You are able to change your preferences at any time by scrolling to the bottom of the website page you are visiting and clicking on ‘cookie settings’.

Most modern browsers are set to accept cookies by default, but you can change your settings to notify you when a cookie is being set or updated, or to block cookies altogether. Please consult the “Help” section of your browser.

We participate in the IAB Europe Transparency & Consent Framework and operate a Consent Management Platform that helps us to comply with the framework’s Specifications and Policies.

In addition to being able to control cookies by changing the settings in your browser on your computer, or on your mobile device’s settings, you can also control which companies can set cookies and similar technologies on your devices, by visiting the following links (you’ll need to turn any cookie or ad blockers off for the control pages to show which companies you can opt-out of):

Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) Your Online Choices website provides more information about controlling cookies. It also provides an easy way to opt-out of behavioural advertising from each (or all) of the networks represented by the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliancewww.youronlinechoices.com/uk/your-ad-choices.

The Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) allows you to control behavioural advertising from each of the ad networks represented by the NAI: optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1#!%2F

The Digital Advertising Alliance’s self-regulatory program for online behavioural advertising control page allows you to control behavioural advertising from the ad networks it represents.

The News IQ website provides more information, and an easy way to opt-out: ncaudienceexchange.com/about/

Opt out of Ozone platform cookies here: www.ozoneproject.com/website-privacy

Opt out Octave Audio by emailing info@octaveip.comand putting ‘Octave Audio Opt Out’ in the subject line. You will also need to change your cookie settings.

Importantly, these ad networks set cookies to remember that you have chosen to opt-out. If you clear your cache the opt-outs will not be applied and you would need to opt-out again.

CONTROLLING FLASH COOKIES
You can manage the use of Flash technologies with the Flash management tools available at Adobe’s website, at www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/privacy.html.

CONTROLLING WEB BEACONS
You can prevent web beacons from tracking your activity, although you won’t be able to decline receiving them in emails. For information about managing your cookie options, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

Please note that by blocking any or all cookies, you may not have access to certain features, content, or personalisation available on our websites or apps.

RETENTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We will retain your information for as long as necessary for the uses set out in this Policy, or while there is a legitimate reason for doing so. If you ask us to delete your information before that time, we may not be able to do so due to legal, regulatory or contractual constraints. For example, we would need to retain your name and contact details for suppression purposes if you do not want to receive direct marketing from us.

If you ask for your account to be closed, we will do this as soon as is reasonably possible subject to any applicable terms and conditions relating to the account.

Personal information from closed accounts is retained in order to comply with legal obligations, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed and to resolve disputes.