Cookie Policy

Introduction

This Cookies Policy explains how Ridstar UK, and its associated companies (“Ridstar”, “we” or “us”) use cookies and similar technologies. Whenever you use Ridstar’s websites, apps, products, advertising services or other technologies (“Services”), or visit a website, app or service which uses our Services, information may be collected through the use of cookies and similar technologies. Ridstar is committed to protecting the personal information collected when you use our Services.

What are cookies and similar technologies?

A cookie is a small data file, often including a unique identifier, which is sent to your computer, mobile phone or tablet device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so the website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the website. The cookie will collect information relating to your use of our Services, information about your device, e.g. the device’s IP address and browser type, broad location and, if you arrived at our site via a link from a third party site, the URL of the linking page. If you have registered for any Services or you are a subscriber, it may also collect your name and email address, which may be transferred to data processors for registered user or subscriber verification purposes.

Similar technologies known as “local storage” may also be used in our Services as an alternative to cookies. This is technology which is similar to cookies and performs very similar functions, such as caching data to enable us to improve our Services, allowing you to register for our Services, tracking activity to enable us and our advertisers to advertise to you in accordance with this policy and counting the number of people who view adverts on our Services. Where we refer to “cookies” in this policy, we mean cookies or similar technologies.

Cookies record information about your online preferences and help us to tailor our Services to your interests. Information provided by cookies can help us to analyse your use of our Services and help us to provide you with a better user experience.

In addition to cookies, our Services may also use web beacons, clear GIFs, page tags and web bugs. These are all types of technology implemented by websites or third-party ad servers to allow them to analyse your website use and help improve your experience of the Services.

What are the different types of cookies?

• Session cookies are only stored for the duration of your visit to a website and are deleted from your device when you close your browser;
• Persistent cookies are saved on your device for a set period of time after the browser has closed and are used where we (or a third party) need to identify you for a later browsing session.
• First party cookies are set by the website you are visiting; and
• Third-party cookies are cookies used within our services which are set by other organisations. These include cookies from external analytics services which help us to understand the use of our sites, or by advertisers so that they can track the effectiveness of their advertisements. Third-party cookies can also be set by selected social media companies to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks, which may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit.

What are cookies used for?

• Essential or ‘Strictly Necessary’ Cookies

  These cookies are essential for the running of our Services. Without these cookies, parts of our websites would not function. These cookies do not track where you have been on the internet and do not remember preferences beyond your current visit and do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing purposes. These cookies are usually session cookies which will expire when you close your browsing session.

• Functional Cookies

  Functional cookies are essential to the running of our Services. They are used to remember your preferences on our websites and to provide enhanced, more personal features. The information collected by these cookies is usually anonymised, so we cannot identify you personally. Functional cookies do not track your internet usage or gather information which could be used for selling advertising, but they do help with serving advertising. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our page.

• Analytical Performance and Measurement Cookies

  Analytical performance cookies are used to monitor the performance of our Services, for example, to determine the number of page views and the number of unique users a website has. Web analytics services may be designed and operated by third parties. The information provided by these cookies allows us to analyse patterns of user behaviour and we use that information to enhance user experience or identify areas of the website which may require maintenance. The information is anonymous (i.e. it cannot be used to identify you and does not contain personal information such as your name and email address) and it is only used for statistical purposes.

• Targeting or ‘Behavioural Advertising’ Cookies

  These cookies, which may be placed on your device by us or our trusted third-party service providers, remember that you have visited a website and use that information to provide you with content or advertising which is tailored to your interests. This is often called online behavioural advertising (OBA) and is done by grouping together shared interests based upon web browsing history. Your web browsing history can be used to infer things about you (e.g. your age, gender etc.), and this information may also be used to make advertising on websites more relevant to you. Without these cookies, content and advertisements you encounter may be less relevant to you and your interests.

• Social Media Cookies

  These cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site when you share our content with your friends and networks or when you engage with our content on or through a social site such as Facebook or Twitter. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other sites you visit.

How does Ridstar use cookies?

Ridstar, together with our trusted partners, uses cookies in combination with other information we maintain for a number of purposes, including the following:

• Essential and Functional Cookies

  We use these cookies to enable certain online functionality including:

  • accessing your information so we can provide you with customised content and experiences, or remember the last page you visited on the Services;
  • identifying returning users, registrants and subscribers and allow them to be presented with a personalised version of the site;
  • eliminating the need for returning users to re-enter their login details;
  • commenting on our sites;
  • operating a shopping trolley on a variety of our Services
  • maintaining your settings and authenticating your identity while you are logged in to the Services;
  • to support security measures and to assist in identifying possible fraudulent or abusive activities.

  If you object to the use of essential and functional cookies please see How can users manage or opt-out of cookies?

• Analytical Performance and Measurement Cookies

  We use these cookies to measure users’ behaviour to better develop our Services. By using analytics services provided by third parties such as Google Analytics and ComScore, we can analyse and measure which pages are viewed and how long for and which links are followed, and we can use this information to provide more content which is of interest. The data collected will generally be aggregated to provide trends and usage patterns for business analysis, site/platform improvement and performance metrics and to inform our advertising and marketing strategies. Our cookies, or the resulting analysis, can also be shared with our business partners. We also receive similar information about visitors to the sites of our group companies and other partners.

  If you object to the use of analytical performance and measurement cookies please see How can users manage or opt out of cookies?>

• Targeting or ‘Behavioural Advertising’ Cookies

  We use these cookies to:

  • deliver content and marketing communications tailored to your interests based on information from your visit;
  • manage online advertising and revenue share arrangements.
  • manage eCommerce activities via affiliate links and associated revenue share arrangements;
  • measure general user behaviour across our sites and third party sites to build a profile based on users’ browsing patterns so that we and third parties can target advertising to users that will be more relevant to their interests. This means that if, for example, users visit a page with a review about a particular bike then the cookie will collect this information and we may target adverts for that bike to those users and, if users visit third party sites that are part of the same advertising network, those third parties may target adverts for that bike to those users;
  • to create profiles that trusted third parties can buy to allow them to better target their advertising with more relevant content;
  • display relevant advertising to you on other sites, based on your web search activity;
  • keep track of the number of users who saw a particular ad or visited a particular page of one of our websites, analyse the effectiveness of our ads, and provide auditing, research and reporting for advertisers.

  The trusted partners we work with in relation to targeting and behavioural advertising include third-party ad servers, ad agencies, technology vendors, providers of advertisement content, research firms and other companies that help us provide more effective advertising and offer you a more personalised experience. As your browser, app or device communicates with the third party’s servers, these companies can collect information, including your IP address, page header information, browser or device information, just as if you had requested their web page or used their apps directly.

  We cannot control nor do we have access to any cookies placed on your computer by third-party advertisers and sponsors.

  If you object to the use of targeting and behavioural advertising cookies please see How can users manage or opt-out of cookies?

• Social Media Cookies

  Cookies are also used when you share information using a social media sharing button on the sites. The social network will record that you have done this and may use this information about your visit to target advertising to you. We also market our own products and services on social media and use cookies to help with this. For example, we place a pixel on our sites that allows Facebook to place cookies on web browsers. When a visitor to our site who uses Facebook returns to Facebook, Facebook can identify them as part of a group of our site visitors and can serve them with marketing messages from us on our behalf.

  The types of cookies used by these third parties and how they use the information generated by them will be governed by those companies’ privacy policies. If you object to the use of social media cookies please see How can users manage or opt-out of cookies?

• Other Third Party Cookies

  You may notice on some pages of our websites that cookies have been set that are not related to Ridstar. When you visit a page with content embedded from a third-party service provider such as YouTube, for example, they may set their own cookies on your device. Ridstar does not control the use of these third-party cookies and cannot access them due to the way that cookies work, as cookies can only be accessed by the party who originally set them. Please check the third-party websites for more information about these cookies.

  Some of our websites use Adobe Flash Player to deliver video and game content to users. Adobe utilise their own cookies, which are not manageable through your browser settings but are used by the Flash Player for similar purposes, such as storing preferences or tracking users. Flash Cookies work in a different way to web browser cookies; rather than having individual cookies for particular jobs, a website is restricted to storing all data in one cookie. You can control how much data, if any, may be stored in that cookie but you cannot choose what type of information is allowed to be stored. You can manage which websites can store information in Flash cookies on your device via the website storage settings panel on the Adobe website.

  We also include web beacons in our emails to track the success of our marketing campaigns. This means that if you open an email from us we can see which of the pages of our websites you have visited. Our web beacons do not store additional information on your device but, by communicating with our cookies on your device, they can tell us whether our emails are opened and verify any clicks through to links or advertisements. They enable us to query whether users who do not open our emails wish to continue receiving them and to inform our advertisers in aggregate how many users have clicked on their advertisements within the email. We may also use this information for purposes including determining which of our emails are more interesting to users and for personalising email campaigns.

  If you object to the use of web beacons please see How can users manage or opt-out of cookies?

How can users manage or opt-out of cookies?

Some people find the idea of a website storing information on their device a little intrusive, in particular when the information is stored and used by a third party. For example, you may object to being served advertising which is targeted to your interests based on your browsing history. If you would prefer to opt out of cookies, it is possible to control cookies by following the steps below, however you should be aware that you might lose some features and functionality of the website if you do so.

Cookies, including those which have already been set, can be deleted from your hard drive. You can also change the preferences/settings in your web browser to control cookies. Some internet browsers have a ‘Do Not Track or ‘DNT’ setting, known as Global Privacy Control; this sends a signal to websites asking them not to track your browsing. You can enable Global Privacy Control (“GPC”) on your browser.

In some cases, you can choose to accept cookies from the primary site, but block them from third parties. In others, you can block cookies from specific advertisers, or clear out all cookies. Deleting or blocking cookies may reduce functionality of the site. To learn more about how to reject cookies, visit https://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.

Any questions?

We hope this Cookie Policy has been helpful in understanding what cookies are, how we use them and how you can manage them.

If you have any questions that haven’t been covered, please contact us.