Cookie Policy
Cookies, web beacons and similar technology
What are they?
A cookie is a small piece of information which is sent to the hard drive of your device by a web server so that some information about your browsing activity can be collected. Other technology can also be used to collect that information without sending information to the hard drive of your device. In this policy we use the term ‘cookie’ to mean any technology that is collecting information from your device. The cookie will collect information relating to your use of our apps and websites, information about your device such as the device ID, IP address and browser type, demographic data and, if you arrived at one of our apps via a link from a site other than the relevant App Store (including, but not limited to the iTunes App Store, Blackberry App World, Amazon Appstore, Nook Books, Google Play and/or the Windows App Store), the URL of the linking page. The information will be collected both when you are connected to the internet and when you are not. If you have purchased one of our apps and have elected to share information with us as part of that process, it may also collect your name and email address, which may be transferred to data processors for verification purposes or a third party ad server to measure your activity, such as interaction with an advert or purchase of a product.
A web beacon is a line of code which is used by a website or less frequently a third party ad server to measure a user’s activity, such as interaction with an advert or purchase of a product. A web beacon is often invisible because it is only 1 x 1 pixel in size with no colour. A web beacon can also be known as a web bug, 1 by 1 GIF, invisible GIF and tracker GIF.
How does Affinity Living use them?
We, together with our trusted partners, use cookies for the following purposes:
(i) to measure users behaviour to better develop our apps. By using analytics services provided by Google Analytics, Flurry and Comscore we can analyse which pages are viewed and how long for and which links are followed, so that we can provide more content which is of interest. We also use this analysis to report on our performance and we may use it to sell advertising. If you purchase any of our apps, we’ll also monitor which apps you’ve accessed;
(ii) to manage online advertising and revenue share arrangements. Our approved, advertising partners, primarily Doubleclick, Audience Science and AdMeld, use cookies together with web beacons to provide advertising to you and to enable us to manage our relationship with those advertisers by, for example, tracking how many unique users have seen a particular advertisement or followed a link in an advertisement;
We also include web beacons (also known as clear GIFs or web bugs) in our emails to track the success of our marketing campaigns. Our web beacons do not store additional information on your computer but, by communicating with our cookies on your computer, they can tell us when you have opened our email.
The information generated by the cookie about your use of our apps (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored on servers owned or maintained by or on behalf of our service providers in the United States and/or United Kingdom. They may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on their behalf. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by those service providers in the manner and for the purposes set out above.
How do you control how cookies/web beacons are used?
Cookies can be deleted from your hard drive or from the settings menu on your device. To learn more about how to reject cookies, visit www.allaboutcookies.org or go to the help menu within your internet browser. If you experience any problems having deleted cookies, you should contact the supplier of your web browser.
If you would like to disable “third party” cookies generated by advertisers or providers of targeted advertising services, you can turn them off by going to the third party’s website and getting them to generate a one-time “no thanks” cookie that will stop any further cookies being written to your machine. Here are links to the main third party advertising platforms we use, each of which have instructions on how to do this:
http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html
http://www.audiencescience.com/consumers
You can find out how to decline other online behavioural advertising by visiting:
http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp
If you object to web beacons in emails, we recommend that you follow the instructions for deleting existing cookies and disabling Affinity Living cookies above. We will still know how many of our emails are opened and we will automatically receive your IP address, a unique identifier of your computer or other access device; but we will not identify you as an individual.
How to find out more information:
For more information about cookies please visit www.allaboutcookies.org and for more information about behavioural advertising in particular please visit www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/