No doubt you’re thoroughly fed up with reading everyone’s cookie policies but I’m providing this information to comply with recent legislation, and because I want to be honest and clear about your privacy when you’re using my website.
Your use of the Be a Shade Greener website without modifying your cookie settings means you consent to my use of cookies.
What are cookies?
A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer's hard drive. A cookie in no way gives me access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with me. The cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.
Cookies are part of the everyday fabric of the web and are used by online shops, banks, charities, governments, social media, etc. These small pieces of computer code make many important things possible. These are a few:
- Remembering that you’ve logged in to a website so you don’t have to sign-in every time you want to do something such as view your account
- Remembering your preferences on websites, such as information you’re interested in on news websites
- Allowing shopping carts to remember what products you have selected on more than one visit
- Measuring how well websites work. For instance, what pages are popular or not so that the publisher can keep content useful and interesting
- Keeping the web free! Publishers can be paid for advertising on their sites when links are clicked
The Online Performance Marketing Industry uses cookies to monitor sales so that advertisers know how much to pay publishers. (See Affiliate links and cookies below.)
You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.
How I use cookies
Be a Shade Greener uses cookies to give you the best experience online and to provide anonymised, aggregated site usage data. By browsing this website, you consent to the use of cookies.
Traffic log cookies are used to identify which pages are being used. This helps me analyse data about web page traffic and improve my website in order to tailor it to readers’ interests.
Affiliate links and cookies
Be a Shade Greener uses advertising and some links within the content may earn me a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Please be assured that my content is not influenced by the advertisers or affiliate relationships. This means I’m happy to mention anything which fits the ethos of this website and helps us be a shade greener whether they pay commission or not.
When you visit one of the online retailers from my website it may be through an affiliate link. When you or anyone else buy goods by clicking on a link on my website I may earn a small commission from selected brands I advertise. To do this a cookie is placed onto your computer when you visit a retailer from my website, if you then go on to buy something, the cookie identifies you as having come from my site and I earn my commission. This doesn’t affect the price you pay. Any profit goes towards the running of this website plus a percentage is donated to various wildlife and environment charities.
The Affiliate Marketing Council, part of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) a trade association for online and mobile advertising, has created a website dedicated to helping you understand how affiliate marketing works.
Want to become an affiliate marketer?
Take a look at these affiliate marketing programs:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a service that allows me to anonymously track the use of my website by those who visit it. These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site, which we use to help improve it. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. All the data is aggregated and anonymised meaning you cannot be identified personally.
Google Adsense
Googke Adsense is a very popular form of advertising and is used on lots of websites. Cookies help to make advertising more effective – and that is what keeps thousands of websites free of charge. Cookies are used for various reasons:
- To stop you seeing the same ad over and over again,
- To detect and stop click fraud
- To show ads that are likely to be more interesting to you (such as ads based on websites you have visited)
Links to other websites
My website contains links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.
How to delete and block my cookies
If you want to delete or block my cookies you can do so using your browser's settings. If you would like detailed instructions as to how to do this we recommend you take a look at the guides at AboutCookies.org
Further information about cookies
If you'd like to learn more about cookies in general and how to manage them, visit aboutcookies.org (opens in a new window).