Last Updated: March 2019
As described in our Privacy Policy, part of our processing of your personal data (as defined therein) involves us collecting certain data which we have called “technical data” for ease of reference and convenience. One way in which we collect this data is using cookies, and we do it for the key purpose of giving you a better browsing experience, developing our website and making it more attractive and useful to our clients and customers, and generally improving our overall service and expanding our international reach.
For general web-browsing of this website, your personal data is not revealed to us, although certain statistical information is available to us via our internet service provider as well as through the use of special tracking technologies. Such information tells us about the pages you are clicking on or the hardware you are using, but not your name, age, address or anything we can use to identify you personally. Provided you cannot be identified, it will not be personal data.
This Cookie Policy sets out some further detail on how and why we use these technologies on our website.
When using the term “Blacktower Group”, we mean the group of companies forming part of the corporate structure of which the data controller (identified in our Privacy Policy) forms a part. This Cookie Policy is issued on behalf of Blacktower Group so when we mention ”Blacktower Group”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this Cookie Policy, we are referring to the relevant company in the Blacktower Group responsible for processing your data. We will let you know which entity will be the controller or processor for your data when you purchase a product or service with us.
By using our website, you consent to storage and access to cookies and other technologies on your device, in accordance with this Cookie Policy.
What are cookies?
Cookies are a feature of web browser software that allows web servers to recognize the computer or device used to access a website. A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. It enables the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as login, language, font size and other display preferences) over a period of time, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you come back to the site or browse from one page to another.
What are the different types of cookies?
A cookie can be classified by its lifespan and the domain to which it belongs.
By lifespan, a cookie is either a:
- session cookie which is erased when the user closes the browser; or
- persistent cookie which is saved to the hard drive and remains on the user’s computer/device for a pre-defined period of time.
As for the domain to which it belongs, cookies are either:
- first-party cookies which are set by the web server of the visited page and share the same domain (i.e. set by us); or
- third-party cookies stored by a different domain to the visited page’s domain.
What cookies do we use and why?
We list all the cookies we use on this website in the below. They include cookies set by Blacktower Group via our web developers (first-party cookies), and those set by others (third-party cookies). We use session and persistent cookies on our website.
Cookies are also sometimes classified by reference to their purpose. We use the following cookies for the following purposes:
- Strictly necessary cookies: These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that allow us to comply with legal obligations.
- Analytical/performance cookies: They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it, as well as dates and times they visit, or how long they visit. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
- Functionality cookies: These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, and remember your preferences for example, your choice of language or region. Other cookies may be used when you submit data to us through a form such as those found on contact pages, and may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.
- Targeting cookies: These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed, as well as time spent on our website, and the websites visited just before and just after our website. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.
In general, we use cookies and other technologies (such as web server logs) on our website to enhance your experience and to collect information about how our website is used. This information is put together (‘aggregated’) and provides general and not individually specific information. None of this information is therefore associated with you as an individual and the cookie-related information is not used to identify you personally. It is therefore anonymised and ‘de-identified’. The pattern data is fully under our control and these cookies are not used for any purpose other than those described here.
We will retain and evaluate information on your recent visits to our website and how you move around different sections of our website for analytics purposes to understand how people use our website so that we can make it more intuitive. The information also helps us to understand which parts of this website are most popular and generally to assess user behaviour and characteristics to measure interest in and use of the various areas of our website. This then allows us to improve our website and the way we market our business.
This information may also be used to help us to improve, administer and diagnose problems with our server and website. The information also helps us monitor traffic on our website so that we can manage our website’s capacity and efficiency.
Other Technologies
We may allow others to provide analytics services and serve advertisements on our behalf. In addition to the uses of cookies described above, these entities may use other methods, such as the technologies described below, to collect information about your use of our website and other websites and online services.
Pixels tags. Pixel tags (which are also called clear GIFs, web beacons, or pixels), are small pieces of code that can be embedded on websites and emails. Pixels tags may be used to learn how you interact with our website pages and emails, and this information helps us and our partners provide you with a more tailored experience.
Device Identifiers. A device identifier is a unique label can be used to identify a mobile device. Device identifiers may be used to track, analyse and improve the performance of the website and ads delivered.
What data are collected by cookies and other technologies on our website?
This information may include:
- the IP and logical address of the server you are using (but the last digits are anonymised so we cannot identify you).
- the top level domain name from which you access the internet (for example .ie, .com, etc)
- the type of browser you are using,
- the date and time you access our website
- the internet address linking to our website.
This website also uses cookies to:
- remember you and your actions while navigating between pages;
- remember if you have agreed (or not) to our use of cookies on our website;
- ensure the security of the website;
- monitor and improve the performance of servers hosting the site;
- distinguish users and sessions;
- Improving the speed of the site when you access content repeatedly;
- determine new sessions and visits;
- show the traffic source or campaign that explains how you may have reached our website; and
- allow us to store any customisation preferences where our website allows this
We may also use other services, such as Google Analytics (described below) or other third-party cookies, to assist with analysing performance on our website. As part of providing these services, these service providers may use cookies and the technologies described below to collect and store information about your device, such as time of visit, pages visited, time spent on each page of our website, links clicked and conversion information, IP address, browser, mobile network information, and type of operating system used.
Third party advertisers: We may work with advertisers, and advertising service providers to serve ads that may be relevant to you based on your inferred interests, location or other information collected about you, which may use a cookie or the technologies described below, placed by us or the third party (although we would not share any other information that identifies you with an advertiser) on our website, or on a third party website or online service. The placing of these technologies on your device may enable you to be identified across multiple websites and online services.
We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on this site that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work the following social media sites including; Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In, will set cookies through our site which may be used to enhance your profile on their site or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies
Google Analytics Cookies
This website uses a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”).
We use Google Analytics to track your preferences and also to identify popular sections of our website. Use of Google Analytics in this way, enables us to adapt the content of our website more specifically to your needs and thereby improve what we can offer to you.
Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of our website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.
In particular Google Analytics tells us
- your IP address (last 3 digits are masked);
- the number of pages visited;
- the time and duration of the visit;
- your location;
- the website you came from (if any);
- the type of hardware you use (i.e. whether you are browsing from a desktop or a mobile device);
- the software used (type of browser);
- your general interaction with our website; and
- your search history (if you decide to use the search bar at the top of our page).
As stated above, cookie-related information is not used to identify you personally, and what is compiled is only aggregate data that tells us, for example, what countries we are most popular in, but not that you live in a particular country or your precise location when you visited our website (this is because we have only half the information – we know the country the person is browsing from, but not the name of person who is browsing). In such an example Google will analyse the number of users for us, but the relevant cookies do not reveal their identities.
By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above. Google Analytics, its purpose and function is further explained on the Google Analytics website.
For more information about Google Analytics cookies, please see Google’s help pages and privacy policy: Google’s Privacy Policy and Google Analytics Help pages. For further information about the use of these cookies by Google click here.
Other Google Services
We also make use of other technologies offered by Google, such as advertising services. In doing so, we allow Google to place cookies on our website for this purpose. Google uses a variety of domains to set cookies used in their advertising products and it may not be immediately apparent these domains are associated with Google (e.g. such as “gstatic.com” or “doubleclick.net”). For more information about the types of cookies used by Google click here.
What if you don’t agree to us monitoring your use of our website (even if we don’t collect your personal data)?
Enabling these cookies is not strictly necessary for our website to work but it will provide you with a better browsing experience. You can delete or block the cookies we set, but if you do that, some features of this website may not work as intended.
Most browsers are initially set to accept cookies. If you prefer, you can set your browser to refuse cookies and control and/or delete cookies as you wish – for details, see aboutcookies.org. You can delete all cookies that are already on your device and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed. You should be aware that if you do this, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit an Internet site and some services and functionalities may not work if you do not accept the cookies they send.
Advertisers and business partners that you access on or through our website may also send you cookies. We do not control any cookies outside of our website.
If you have any further questions regarding disabling cookies you should consult with your preferred browser’s provider or manufacturer.
In order to implement your objection it may be necessary to install an opt-out cookie on your browser. This cookie will only indicate that you have opted out. It is important to note, that for technical reasons, the opt-out cookie will only affect the browser from which you actively object from. If you delete the cookies in your browser or use a different end device or browser, you will need to opt out again.
To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, Google have developed the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. If you would like to opt out of Google Analytics, you have the option of downloading and installing this browser add-on which can be found under the link: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Review of this Privacy Policy
We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. Where we do so, we will notify those who have a business relationship with us or who are subscribed to our emailing lists directly of the changes, and change the ‘Last updated’ date above. We encourage you to review our Privacy Policy and our Cookie Policy whenever you access or use our website to stay informed about our information practices and the choices available to you.
If you do not accept changes which are made to this Cookie Policy, or take any measures described above to opt-out by removing or rejecting cookies, you may continue to use this website but accept that it may not display and/or function as intended by us. Any social media channels connected to Blacktower Group and third party applications will be subject to the privacy and cookie policies and practices of the relevant platform providers which, unless otherwise indicated, are not affiliated or associated with Blacktower Group. Your exercise of any rights to opt-out may also impact how our information and content is displayed and/or accessible to you on this website and on other websites.