You may not have given any thought to how websites use data to improve their services, measure how popular the site is, or make sure that you receive content or digital adverts of interest to you.
These processes require information to be collected and processed. This commonly includes information about the devices you use (such as laptops and mobile phones), your location and information obtained from your browsing activities. This information is collected using cookies (small files of data sent by a website) and other similar technologies such as tag, pixels and device identifiers which are deployed on or collected from your device when you land on a website or access content through a mobile app.
For the purposes of this cookie policy, we use the term “cookie” to cover our use of all types of similar technology used to monitor online activity, including cookies, tags, pixels and beacons. We hope that this policy helps you understand and feel more confident about our use of cookies.
This Policy
This is the cookie policy for the Hallmarq website (this/our “Site”) and we hope that it helps you to understand our use of cookies. You can read more about our use of personal data in our privacy policy, here.
Our Site uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our Site. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our Site and also allows us to improve our Site and our services since we can learn about what interests our website visitors and – just as importantly – what doesn’t.
This policy also covers the cookies that we place in our marketing emails. This helps us to understand which emails are opened, which are ignored, and which types of content prompts people to click through to our Site.
The types of cookies that we use
- Strictly necessary cookies: these are cookies that are required for the operation of our Site. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our Site.
- Analytical and performance cookies: these allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our Site when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our Site works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and anonymous (i.e. we could not identify you as an individual using the data).
- Functionality cookies: these are used to recognise you when you return to our Site. This enables us to personalise our content for you and remember your preferences. For example, if we know that you are interested in our Q-Care programme, we would present this prominently on the Site for you.
- Targeting cookies: These cookies record your visit to our Site, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our Site and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties (such as our third-party advertising partners) for this purpose.
Some of the cookies that we use are deleted when you close your browser. These cookies are known as ‘session cookies‘.
Some other cookies have a longer lifetime (which varies cookie by cookie) and will be stored on your device until their expiration date. These are known as ‘persistent cookies‘.
We have included a table at the end of this policy showing all of the cookies that we use on the Site if you would like more detail.
Third-Party Cookies
Third parties may also place cookies on our Site.
For example, we use Google Analytics to learn how visitors are using our Site and how we could improve it. You can find out more about Google Analytics by clicking here.
Managing Cookies
When you access our Site for the first time you will see our cookie consent mechanism which describes the types of cookies we use and what information they might collect. We will not place (and we won’t permit third parties to place) cookies other than “strictly necessary” cookies on your device or browser when using our Site unless you have told us that you are happy for us to do so using our cookie consent mechanism. You can update your preferences at any time by navigating to the ‘Cookie Settings’ button, bottom right corner of our website.
You can also block cookies by using your browser settings. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including strictly necessary cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our Site.
More Information
If you would like further information about our use of cookies and similar technologies, you can contact us at info@hallmarq.net. You can also find more information about our use of personal data by reading our privacy policy which is available here.
Detailed Information on Cookies
- hallmarq-cookie (placed by Hallmarq). Marks the cookie message as read. Duration: 6 months.
- hallmarq_language (placed by Hallmarq). Sets the language of the Site. Duration: 12 months.
- _hssc (placed by Hubspot). This cookie keeps track of sessions and is used to determine if HubSpot should increment the session number and timestamps in the __hstc cookie. It contains the domain, viewCount (increments each pageView in a session), and session start timestamp.
- _hssrc (placed by Hubspot). Whenever HubSpot changes the session cookie, this cookie is also set to determine if the visitor has restarted their browser. It is considered a new session if this cookie does not exist when HubSpot manages cookies. Duration: until the end of the session.
- _hstc (placed by Hubspot). This is the main cookie for tracking visitors. It contains the domain, utk, initial timestamp (first visit), last timestamp (last visit), current timestamp (this visit), and session number (increments for each subsequent session). Duration: 13 months
- hubspotutk (placed by Hubspot). This cookie keeps track of a visitor’s identity. It is passed to HubSpot on form submission and used when deduplicating contacts. It contains an opaque GUID to represent the current visitor. Duration: 6 months.
- fpb (placed by Facebook). The functionality is to store and track visits across websites. The purpose is Marketing/Tracking. Duration: 3 months.
Last updated: July 2022
