Cookie Policy
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers downloaded on to your computer when you access certain websites. Like virtual door keys, cookies unlock a computer’s memory and allow a website to recognise users when they return to a site by opening doors to different content or services. Like a key, a cookie itself does not contain information, but when it is read by a browser it can help a website improve the service delivered.
Cookie files are automatically lodged into the cookie file – the memory of your browser – and each one typically contains:
- The name of the server the cookie was sent from
- The lifetime of the cookie
- A value – usually a randomly generated unique number
The website server which sent the cookie uses this number to recognise you when you return to a site or browse from page to page. Only the server that sent a cookie can read, and therefore use, that cookie.
We use cookies to help you navigate our website efficiently and to perform certain functions, including website traffic analysis. Cookies may also recognise you on your next login and offer you content tailored to your preferences and interests.
Some cookies can collect personal information, including information you disclose like your username, or where cookies track you to deliver more relevant advertising content.
Who is likely to place cookies on your device, and for what purpose?
FLEURtacious by Lynda Marie may place cookies on your device for various purposes: to help you to navigate the Site more easily, to administer and provide the Site to you and to deliver better and more personalised content on the Site.
The cookies we place enable us for instance:
– to adapt the display format of our content and our Site to your device,
– to recognise your device, so that you do not have to re-enter the same information each time you access the Site
Third parties: service providers, partners, advertisers, advertising sales houses
Third parties are likely to place cookies on your device.
We do not control the placing and use of cookies by third party companies and we are not responsible for third parties’ use of cookies. These companies have their own privacy policies and data collection practices. Please refer to each company’s privacy policy to better understand the controls available to you.
The purpose of the third party cookies of which we are aware is to provide audience-measurement and social-sharing functions and to customise content or advertising.
Measurement: audience, traffic, technique
Audience-measurement cookies are used by third parties for us to obtain information about your browsing patterns, so as to (among other things):
- understand how you arrive at a website, and reconstruct your path;
- count the number of visitors to our Site, with a view, in particular, to improving the content we offer;
- compile traffic and/or conversion statistics;
- follow up on invoicing by our partners (advertisers and search engine marketing and affiliate marketing firms) on the Site; and
- access your user account.
These tools use technologies for tracking website users and associating a ‘referrer’ or campaign with a unique identifier.
Social media share buttons
We may offer you the possibility to share our content with other people or render public your viewing or appreciation of such content by clicking on social media sharing buttons such as Recommend (Facebook, Google+), Tweet (Twitter) or Send by email.
Even if you do not use social media share buttons when visiting the Site, the social networks that provided the buttons can identify you through them. Indeed, the mere fact that your account with a social network is activated on your device (open session) when you browse the Site, can allow that network to monitor your navigation of the Site.
Advertising spaces
Cookies are likely to be placed on your device through advertising spaces on the Site.
These cookies may be set at the level of the advertising content displayed in our advertising spaces either by the advertisers themselves, or by their ad serving providers (third party ad servers) such as communications consultancies, audience measuring firms and targeted advertising providers: the cookies are associated with the advertising content.
The main purposes for which advertisers and third party ad servers use cookies are:
- to count the number of displays of advertising content in our advertising spaces, identify the advertisements displayed and calculate the amounts payable to the various advertising stakeholders (communications agency, advertising sales house, publishing medium, etc.);
- to compile statistics;
- to collect navigation data on devices browsing the Site and, for instance, limit the number of times an advertisement is displayed and/or enable advertisements to appear in a precise order;
- to recognise your device if and when you subsequently browse any third party website or service on which these advertisers third party ad servers also issue cookies and, if applicable, adapt these third party websites and services, or the advertisements they show, to any navigation data from your device that may be known to them; and
- to determine whether a particular advertising campaign has produced the desired results by keeping track of how many people clicked on the advertising content or visited the advertiser’s website after seeing the advertisement on the Site.
- Cookies may also be placed in our advertising spaces by the company in charge of managing our advertising spaces: the advertising sales house. These cookies enable the advertising sales house:
- to do the counting necessary to calculate the amounts to be paid to the various advertising stakeholders and to compile statistics;
- to customise the advertising spaces managed by it to your display preferences on your device;
- to customise the advertising content displayed on your device through our advertising spaces to your browsing patterns and geographic location;
- to customise the advertising content displayed on your device through our advertising spaces to your browsing patterns on third party websites.
How long do cookies last?
Our website uses several types of cookies including:
- Session cookies: Session cookies are created temporarily in your browser’s subfolder while you are visiting a website and are automatically deleted when you leave the website.
- Persistent cookies: In contrast to session cookies, persistent cookies are re-activated when you return to the same website, and remain in your browser’s subfolder until they expire (usually after 12 months).
- Secure cookies: Secure cookies are a type of cookie which is transmitted over encrypted HTTP connection. When setting the cookie, the Secure attribute instructs the browser that the cookie should only be returned to the application over encrypted connections.
- Third party cookies: A third party cookie is one that is placed on your hard drive by a website from a domain other than the one you are visiting (e.g. when the website features content, such as ads, from a third party domain). Third party cookies are set so that a site can remember something about you at a later time. These cookies are set by third parties and we do not control how they are set.
- SameSite cookies: SameSite cookies allow servers to assert that a cookie ought not to be sent along with cross-site requests, which provides some protection against cross-site request forgery attacks. SameSite cookies may not be supported by all browsers.
You can control how cookies are set on your device by adjusting your browser settings (see below).
