We are the publishing group Businesswoman Web. We, via our various subsidiary companies and brands, publish many national websites, regional websites and mobile applications, that millions of people enjoy every month.

In this Notice we will refer to the mobile applications published by Businesswoman Web and our subsidiary companies as Apps and use the term Sites to refer to our websites.

We are committed to managing that change in a way that still allows you free access to the content that matters to you, across our digital platforms. However, we also want you to feel in control of the information you generate when you use our Sites and Apps. The information generated from your browsing, helps us to understand how people use our websites, how we can improve them and also make sure advertisers get a good return on their investment. Their advertising funds our activities and the content you read for free.

Like most websites and mobile applications, we use automatic data collection technology when you visit one of our Sites or use one of our Apps (after asking for your consent). This notice explains how we use so called ‘cookies’ and other related technologies and how you can manage the behaviour of these cookies.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small data files sent from a website to your web browser. They are stored in your web browser’s cache and allow a website or a third party to recognise your browser or mobile device. Mobile devices and browsers can be shared by a number of people, so cookies are not always wholly related to individuals.

We use three major types of cookies:

Analytics Cookies hold information as you view different pages of the website and help us to build up a profile of how our readers use the website. They help us to make the website work as efficiently as possible and provide better content and services in the future. We may also use analytics cookies to measure the effectiveness of advertising on the Sites and the Apps and elsewhere on the internet.

Example: By seeing that more browsers and devices from London prefer football content on a Friday evening than Sunday morning, we may change when and how much content we produce for London football teams on a weekday as opposed to a weekend.

Personalisation and Service Cookies remember your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. They remember your registration and login details and your settings and preferences. They are used to ensure you don’t have to login every time you use your browser to comment on articles and to ensure interactive services work effectively. They are also used to recommend content we think you’ll be interested in, based on what you’ve looked at before.

Example: We run a poll on a particularly contentious local issue so we will use cookies to prevent a device or browser voting hundreds of times to influence the poll results.

Advertising Cookies are placed by us and our advertising partners to deliver more relevant advertising. Our Sites, Apps and services are predominately free to consume, and in exchange we sell our advertising space to allow us to create high quality content and bring you the services you value. Cookies are a vital part of that value exchange.

These cookies may gather information about your browsing activity on our sites and for third parties, across different Sites and across different visits. They allow us and advertisers to show more relevant ads and allow advertisers to manage how many times a device sees an advert. They might also allow the advertiser to tailor advertising to you when you visit our Sites. Advertising Cookies are usually stored until you delete them or they expire based on the time period set in each cookie, which is normally around 30 days.

The third party advertisers are required to follow the applicable laws. However, Businesswoman Web does not have control over the third party organisations that place cookies, who each have their own cookie and privacy policies.

Example: If a browser or device is recognised to enjoy lots of content about celebrities, we and/or our partners may show that browser or device adverts that relate to relevant lifestyle, tech and consumer goods.

Where you consent to the use of cookies we will use the cookie information in conjunction with some limited personal information that we hold about you, such as your email address and postcode, to display more relevant advertising to you.

Other technologies

In addition to cookies, there are similar technologies that may be used by the Sites and the Apps. These include:

Web beacons: These are tiny graphics with a unique identifier that are used to understand browsing activity. Web beacons are invisible when you open a web page.

Social widgets: These are buttons or icons provided by third-party social media providers that allow you to interact with those social media services when you view a web page or a mobile app screen. These social widgets may collect browsing data, which may be received by the third party that provided the widget, and are controlled by the third parties.

UTM codes: These are strings that can appear in a web address when a user moves from one web page or website to another. The string can represent information about browsing, such as which advertisement or publisher sent the user to the receiving website.