COOKIES
WHAT ARE COOKIES?
Most websites you go on will use cookies to improve your user experience by allowing the website to ‘remember’ your preferences and activities, either for the length of your visit which is known as a session cookie or for recurrent visits which is known as a persistent cookie. There are a number of reasons cookies are used, such as allowing you to navigate between pages proficiently, keeping your preferences stored and improving your overall experience of a website. Cookies make the website activities faster, simpler and sometimes possible for you. If cookies are not used, the website will assume you are new visitor whenever you change to a different page on the website.
Cookies are also used on websites to enable them to analyses traffic through the site by observing at visitor activities and location, to improve the long-term visitor experience. This is known as a traffic cookie.
WHAT EXACTLY ARE COOKIES?
A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie or browser cookie, is a simple text file that is sent from a website’s server to a user’s device while a user is browsing a website. It is stored on a user’s device for a specific period, which is dependent on the type of cookie. Only that server will be able to retrieve or read the contents of that cookie and each cookie is unique to your web browser. It will contain some anonymous information such as a unique identifier and the site name and some digits and numbers. The website can then read the information on that cookie, allowing it to remember things like your preferences or what’s in your shopping basket.
For more information on cookies and cookie legislation, please visit the following sites:
- www.allaboutcookies.org
- www.youronlinechoices.eu
- www.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie
- www.aboutcookies.org
- www.ico.gov.uk
WHAT DOES SMILE HUB DENTAL CLINIC USE COOKIES FOR?
Smile Hub Dental Clinic uses cookies to improve functionality, performance and enable social media communication for users, while using the Smile Hub website. The following paragraphs are other types of cookies that are used by Smile Hub Dental Clinic and why we use them.
FUNCTIONALITY COOKIES
These cookies permit users to modify how a website appears for them. They can save usernames, regions, language and local language preferences.
PERFORMANCE COOKIES
This type of cookie gathers data in collective visitor’s website activities, which permits us to progress its performance over time. Performance cookies only collect anonymous data, and allow us to:
- Monitor the performance of our website
- Gather information about visitors website usage so we can improve it
- Test new features on a small sample of users
SOCIAL MEDIA COOKIES
These cookies permit you to link with social media, so you can share and promote your Smile Hub activity within Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc.
WHAT COOKIES DOES SMILE HUB DENTAL CLINIC USE?
Cookie name
Google Analytics:
__utma
__utmb
__utmc
__utmz
-------
exp_last_activity
exp_last_visit
exp_tracker
-------
(get identifier)
PREF
Expiry
2 years
1 day
End of session
6 months
-------
One year
One year
End of session
-------
6 months
-------
2 years
Purpose
We use Google Analytics to monitor traffic levels, search queries and visits to this website. Google Analytics stores IP address anonymously on its servers in the US, and neither Smile Hub Dental Clinic nor Google associate your IP address with any personally identifiable information. These cookies enable Google to determine whether you are a return visitor to the site, and to track the pages that you visit during your session.
-------
These cookies are used to track a user’s session, when they last visited or did something on the site. No personal information is stored in these cookies, only timestamps related to that browser session.
-------
A unique identifier used by Google applications to store user preference information on Smile Hub Dental Clinic.
-------
Google cookie to remember our users’ basic preferences, such as the fact that a user wants search results in English.
HOW TO MANAGE YOUR COOKIES
If you don’t want to receive cookies, you can adjust your browser so that it alerts you when cookies are sent to it or you can refuse cookies altogether. You can also delete cookies that have already been set. If you request to limit or block web browser cookies which are set on your device then you can do this through your browser settings; the Help function within your browser should tell you how. Alternatively, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org, which covers complete information on how to do this on a wide variety of desktop browsers.
