Our use of cookies and similar technologies

1. What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files placed on your computer, phone or other device by websites you visit.

They do not store or collect information about you such as your name but will instead collect information related to, for example, the devices you use to access the internet, your browser and your browsing history. Cookies are widely used to make websites work more efficiently for visitors, and to provide information to the owners of the site.

2. What are tags?

We use tags to transfer data collected from visitors to our websites to external sources like Facebook. We use them to track:

• your interactions with our websites and digital adverts (for example, when you’ve downloaded content, clicked on an advert or viewed a video)
• what pages you visit on our sites, how long you spent on those pages, how you got there and when you left them. This information can also be used to monitor digital advertising performance.

If you haven’t given permission for us to set cookies through the cookies banner that would have popped up when you first visited this site, your visit (and how you got here) won’t be tracked by us. However, if you visit this site using a different device and/browser in the future, you will need to provide us with your cookie preferences again.

3. How do we use cookies on our websites?

We use cookies on the websites to:

• facilitate users' ability to navigate through the website.
• ascertain whether the website is operating effectively.
• compile statistics on how our website is being used, which can help us to improve our website and online services.
• personalise and improve the service we offer you by understanding your preferences and establishing which areas of the website are most relevant to you.

We also use cookies to make sure we keep your information confidential and secure as you move through secure or password protected areas of our websites.

Some of the cookies that we use are “Session Cookies” which are deleted when you close your browser. Others remain on your browser or device until they expire or you delete them from your browser history – these are known as “Persistent Cookies”.

All cookies have an “owner” which can be identified by looking at the domain (ie. the company or website name in the cookie). Cookies can either be first-party (i.e. they’re owned by the website who set them) or third-party (i.e. they’re not owned by the website who set them). We use both first-party and third-party cookies on our websites.

4. Categories of cookies set by Macmillan

Below is a list of the main cookies we use on this website. The categories we have used are based on the International Chamber of Commerce’s Guide for Cookie categorisation. If you would like more information, you can contact our web team at [email protected].

5. Third-party cookies

So that we can make improvements to our websites, take steps to ensure that our online advertising is cost effective and provide you with content and ads that we think you’ll find interesting, our sites place cookies which are owned by third-party suppliers.

Further details about the main suppliers that we use and links to their privacy information is provided below:

Google

We use Google’s Marketing Platform cookies so that we can measure the impact of our digital advertising campaigns. This helps us to ensure that the money we spend on digital advertising is cost-effective. They also help us to serve adverts to people who have visited our websites and control the number of times that a website visitor sees an advert.

We use Google Analytics 360 (GA360) cookies to help us measure how visitors use our websites. This helps us to improve peoples’ experience of using our sites and measure the effectiveness of our digital advertising campaigns.

https://policies.google.com/privacy

Facebook

We use Facebook cookies so that we can deliver adverts to website visitors who have a Facebook account as well as find Facebook customers with similar interests to the people who visit our website. We also use Facebook cookies to measure the effectiveness of our Facebook ad campaigns which, in turn, helps ensure that we’re using our resources effectively. For more information about how we use Facebook’s advertising services, please visit our Privacy Policy.

https://en-gb.facebook.com/policy.php

Hotjar

Like GA360, Hotjar is an analytics tool which helps us to monitor how visitors are using our website which helps us to improve user experience and take steps to ensure that can easily find what they are looking for.

https://www.hotjar.com/privacy

You can find further information about the additional third-party cookies that we use by clicking on the links that are listed under “Categories of cookies set by Macmillan”.

Finally, some of our pages also contain embedded content such as You Tube videos, Twitter feeds and the Twitter Follow Button, the Facebook Like Button or Google+ Share button. If you click on this content, you will receive cookies delivered from these websites.

6. Managing cookies

You can control which cookies are set by clicking on “Cookie Settings” on our cookies banner. You can amend your settings or withdraw your consent for cookies at any time by revisiting this policy and clicking on the “Cookie Settings” button below.

7. Changes to this policy and further information

We may update our use of cookies (as well as this policy) from time to time so please check regularly to keep up to date. You can also find out more about cookies at https://cookiepedia.co.uk/ and at http://www.aboutcookies.org.uk.