Cookies Policy

Cookie Policy

Last Updated: August 2024

AstrophotographyExpert.com (“AstrophotographyExpert” “we”) is committed to protecting your personal information when you are using our digital platforms, including our website and mobile apps. We strive to make your experience on our digital platforms enjoyable, relevant, and customized to your preferences and interests. We do this by using cookies.

This policy provides the following information:

  • Information about cookies and other online tracking technologies
  • How we use cookies
  • Analytics on our websites and emails
  • Advertising
  • Your preferences
  • Contacting us

This policy may be updated occasionally to keep up with legal and/or business developments. The date of the most recent changes will appear at the top of the page.

Information about Cookies and Other Online Tracking Technologies

Web Browser Cookies

When you visit a website, the website’s server will send your computer or mobile device a small amount of data stored on your web browser—a cookie. A cookie contains anonymous information such as a unique identifier, the website name, and some digits and numbers. It is used to record your online behavior and preferences.

Different Types of Cookies:

  • First-party cookie: Set by the website you are visiting and can only be read by that website.
  • Third-party cookie: Set by other companies who provide services to the website you are visiting, for example, analytics companies or advertising networks.
  • Session cookie: This cookie is set for the duration of your visit to the website and will be deleted from your device when your browsing session ends.
  • Persistent cookie: Set for a fixed period of time if the website you are visiting needs to remember you over multiple sessions (for example, if you have asked the website to remember your location or username).

Local Storage

Local or HTML5 storage is like a browser cookie, as the data is stored in your browser. Unlike cookies, however, the storage limit is greater, and data is not transferred to the website server. This allows usage and preference data (alongside the unique ID usually stored in a cookie) to be stored locally in your browser rather than on other systems and servers.

Tracking Technologies: Web Beacons, Pixels, GIFs, Page Tags, Script

These terms describe a type of technology used in emails, web pages, and mobile apps to better understand how you interact with an email, website, or application. Usually, this is in the form of a small transparent image file or a line of code that records, for example, when you’ve opened an email, which web pages you visited or elements of a page you viewed, when and for how long, and whether you viewed and/or clicked on an ad.

They may also target advertising on the web page you are viewing. These tracking technologies are often used in conjunction with cookies.

In this policy, we refer to all these cookies and other technologies as “cookies,” except where otherwise stated.

What Cookies Do

Cookies record your online identity and remember your online behavior and preferences. For example, cookies may capture the following information:

  • Browser information: browser type, language, and history;
  • Device information: IP address, device make, device model, device operating system/version, and data connection type;
  • Internet service provider information and
  • Interaction information: domain name, referring website address, date/time of website visit, page view data, search keywords, referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, geolocation data, click data, types of ads viewed.

Cookies are used for various purposes, such as keeping you logged in, remembering what is in your online shopping basket, delivering location-specific information such as news and weather, tailoring advertising to your interests, and so on. These cookies improve your website experience.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies to improve your experience across our digital platforms. We do this by making our website and apps functional, secure, and convenient for you to use and by showing you relevant and interesting content and advertising.

We use cookies to deliver the following services on our digital platforms:

  • To recognize your device so you don’t have to give the same information repeatedly;
  • To remember your username and password (if requested) so you don’t need to enter your details each time you visit the website;
  • To provide a smooth and secure experience if you are purchasing a product or service via our digital platforms;
  • To select and deliver content that is interesting and relevant to you;
  • To record what people like and don’t like on the website and the popularity of different sections of the website so that we can ensure it works properly at points of high usage;
  • To collect, measure, and analyze statistical information about email delivery rates, website traffic, and use (for further information, see “Analytics on our websites and emails” section);
  • To detect and track fraudulent or illegal activity;
  • To select and deliver advertising that is interesting and relevant to you (for further information, see “Advertising on our websites” section); and
  • To link you to other affiliate websites and services.

We use third parties to deliver some of these services to you, who will also drop their cookies.

We also need to drop a cookie to record your permission to use cookies on our digital platforms (for more information, see the “Your preferences” section).

Analytics on Our Websites and Emails

We use Google Analytics and other providers to provide statistical information about use and traffic on our websites, emails, mobile apps, and social media platforms. These services use IP addresses and other information from cookies to tell us, for example, the number of page views, number of users, what browsers users are using, and location data of users.

This statistical information allows us to understand our audiences, reach our target audiences, develop and customize our products and services, maximize compatibility for most of our users, and determine how much to charge for advertising.

Find out more information about our providers below:

We use pixels in our emails as an essential quality control measurement.

Our pixels don’t store any information on your device, and the pixel will be deleted if you delete emails from us.

A pixel is an HTML code snippet or image loaded when you open an email or interact with links within that email. When you open one of our emails, the pixel is processed by your email provider (e.g. Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook). Our provider’s pixel server log files register and note this action.

The pixel information is aggregated to help us to:

  • Check whether our subscribers have received their subscribed emails and whether our emails are being read. (If we can see our emails are not being opened, we may reduce the number of emails we send);
  • See which of our webpages get visited via links in the email (so we can see whether our emails are generally successful and interesting for our subscribers (if they aren’t, we’d rather know)); and
  • Ensure we’re not storing email addresses longer than we need to (we talk more about retention periods in our Privacy Policy).

Find out more about our providers below:

Advertising

We show you ads on our digital platforms. Cookies help to make these ads relevant and interesting to you. If you do not allow cookies, you will still see ads; just less personalized to you.

Ads on our websites are served by some third-party providers, including Double Click (Google) and other vendors who have signed up for the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework.

These providers will drop their own cookies on our websites, which allow them to deliver ads and make ads more relevant to you (e.g., if you use our websites from outside the UK, you may get ads from your local country). Cookies are also used to monitor the performance and effectiveness of the ad served. Some providers may use other third parties to perform this monitoring function.

Find out more information about our providers below:

Online Behavioural Advertising

We use behavioral advertising on our digital platforms. Online behavioral advertising (or interest-based advertising) serves ads that are more relevant to you and your interests. We do this based on our legitimate business and operational interests. This type of advertising uses cookies to discover general information about your web browsing history, including the websites you visit. It also looks at IP addresses to add general information about the country, city, or region in which you are located, along with your domain name. This information allows you to be grouped with people of similar interests and places you in a “market segment”.

We use third parties, including Permutive, to provide these services. These providers drop their cookies to capture the information above and to create aggregated and anonymous profiles of those who see ads or visit websites. From time to time, these providers may also ask

if you would like to participate in surveys on our websites. These are voluntary and can be opted out of at any time. As part of these surveys, they may collect socio-demographic and interest information, which will only be used anonymously as part of a market segment. You will never be explicitly targeted as an individual based on any responses.

We may then display ads that we believe people in your market segment will find relevant. We also share these anonymous segments with our advertising partners so that they can deliver more relevant advertising on other websites. We believe this makes the advertising you see more interesting and relevant and also helps us increase the value we get out of the website and from our advertisers. This ultimately gives us more to invest in great content on our digital platforms to benefit all our users.

Unless you have consented to receive targeted marketing communications in accordance with our Privacy Policy, we and our service providers will not attempt to identify you individually. At no time do we know who you are or what pages you have been looking at individually—the relevant information is aggregated to create market segments for groups of people.

Find out more information about our providers below:

You can also find out more information about online behavioral advertising and to choose other ad preferences here: http://www.youronlinechoices.com/uk

Your Preferences

We ask for your permission for us and our partners to use cookies across our digital platforms (other than where we have a legitimate interest to do so).

When you visit our websites or mobile apps, a pop-up will ask for your permission. You may not see this pop-up if you have already set your preferences in your browser or if you have already accepted all cookies on other websites.

You can also choose other preferences about the type of cookies set and by whom by clicking the “Set Preferences” button in the pop-up. If you wish to change your mind about your selected preferences, you can either click on the “Change cookies preferences” button on this web page or the “Cookies” button, which hovers in the bottom right-hand corner of each webpage you visit.

If you give us permission, we will use cookies by this policy and applicable laws.

We need to drop a cookie to record your consent. This is strictly necessary and is only used to record your preferences.

Change Your Settings

Browser/Email Provider Controls: You can choose how your device handles cookies via your browser or email settings.

The most popular browsers allow users to (a) accept all cookies, (b) notify you when a cookie is issued, or (c) not receive cookies at any time. Each browser is different, so check your browser’s “Help” menu to learn how to change your cookie preferences.

Mobile Controls: Most mobile devices provide advertising identifiers. You can control how these identifiers are used in your mobile device’s settings.

If you choose not to accept cookies, our websites may not function properly, and certain services will not be provided to you, which may spoil your experience. Without cookies, you will still see content and advertising; it just won’t be personalized to your interests and preferences.

Contacting Us

Please email contact@astrophotographyexpert.com if you would like more information on the cookies that we use and their purposes.

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