[Please see also the ‘Terms of Use’ and ‘Privacy Policy’]

Definition of Terms:

When you view a web page, your computer (referred to as the “client” or “web browser”) receives the page from a “web server” or “server”. The “browser” is software on your computer that allows you to view a web page. A “cookie” is a small file specific to the site you are viewing stored by your browser on your computer. “The Willis Tree website” refers to this website, the URL of which is www.thewillistree.info.

About cookies:

Cookies are an integral part of the web. They allow our server to recognize or “remember” who you are when you visit our site again so we can tailor what we have to your preferences. They do not extract private or personal information from your computer. They can not perform any tasks or execute any programs or otherwise compromise or harm your computer. A cookie is simply a small file with information about your visit to our site, e.g. the time you visited, your log-in status, the language you used, the theme, colours and font sizes you selected, bookmarks you set, search terms you used, the user name you used, etc. The cookie is stored on your computer and no one but you and this site can access it and you can delete it at any time.

To better understand a cookie, imagine that you visited someone’s home in a car and that, while you were at that home, the owner wrote some information on a slip of paper, put it into a combination safe and placed it into that car. This is similar to a cookie. You can see that (a) the home owner could not see the information on the paper until you visited them again, (b) no one else could see it because it is in a locked safe and (c) there would be no reason for the owner to put anything on the paper that wasn’t related to your visit as you might never visit them again. Were you to visit the same home owner in a different vehicle, neither the safe nor the paper would be present, so they could not see the notes on the paper. This is similar to your using a different browser to visit a web site. Only the web site that set the cookie can see it and only the browser that stored it can retrieve it. (In this example, the car represents your web browser, the home represents a web site, the locked safe represents your browser’s secure storage of cookies on your hard drive, and the note represents the cookie.)

To learn more about cookies, visit AboutCookies.org or the Wikipedia article HTTP cookie.

If you are not using your own computer or are on a public computer, you might consider disabling cookies (see “How to Disable Cookies” below). (You don’t want to leave a cookie containing your user name for a site you logged into on someone else’s computer, for example.)

How We Use Cookies:

The Willis Tree website stores no personally identifying information in its cookies. They are primarily used to enhance your experience when you visit our site. The Willis Tree website uses the following cookies on its website for the following purposes:

Session Cookies

We use session cookies to enhance your use of the site, e.g. to save your language choice, search terms and your log-in status so you won’t have to log in to every page you visit. These cookies are necessary to the working of the website and, if disabled, various functionality on the site will be broken, including the ability to remain logged in and to see pages available only to logged in users.

Permanent Cookies

We use permanent cookies to remember the language and character set you use to display the site, any bookmarks you have set, the number of generations to display in reports, and search terms you used.

Third Party Cookies

These are cookies set on your machine by external websites whose services are used on this site. Examples of cookies of this type are any advertising sites and the sharing buttons across the site which allow visitors to share content onto social networks. In order to implement these buttons, and connect them to the relevant advertisers and social networks and external sites, scripts from domains outside of our website are used. You should be aware that these sites may be collecting information about what you are doing all around the internet, including on this website Some third party cookies which may be used by this site are from services like Amazon.com, ClustrMaps.com, FaceBook, Google, Twitter and others.

You should check the respective policies of each of these sites to see how they use your information and to find out how to opt out, or delete, such information.

Most browsers allow you to disable third party cookies. See “How to Control, Disable and Delete Cookies” below.

Google cookies

We use Google Analytics to analyse the effectiveness of our website and the pages on it. Some of the statistical information provided by Google Analytics is generated by means of cookies, which are stored on your computer. They use this information to create reports for us about the effectiveness of the website so we can provide a better experience for you, the visitor. Google’s privacy policy is available at: www.google.com/privacypolicy.html or www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html

The Willis Tree website may publish Google Adsense interest-based advertisements on this website. These are tailored by Google to reflect your interests. To determine your interests, Google will record your behavior across the web using cookies. You can view, delete or add interest categories associated with your browser using Google’s Ads Preference Manager, available at: www.google.com/ads/preferences/. You can opt-out of the Adsense partner network cookie at: www.google.com/privacy_ads.html. However, this opt-out mechanism uses a cookie, and if you clear the cookies from your browser your opt-out will not be maintained. To ensure that an opt-out is maintained in respect of a particular browser, you should use the Google browser plug-in available at: www.google.com/ads/preferences/plugin.

Implied Consent:

Since we cannot know your preferences in advance, this site uses an “implied consent” policy which means that we assume you agree with this usage. You have three options if you do not wish our server to store cookies on your computer: (1) turn off cookies in your browser (see below); (2) delete the cookies when you’ve finished visiting our site or (3) do not use this site.

How to Control, Disable and Delete Cookies

All modern browsers allow you to change your cookie settings. These settings will typically be found in the “Options” or “Preferences” menu of your browser. Some browsers allow anonymous browsing or the blocking of cookies on a site-by-site basis.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to our site.

In order to understand these settings, the following links may be helpful, and you can also use the “Help” option in your browser.

Adverse Results of Blocking Cookies:

Blocking or deleting cookies may negatively impact your usability of this website.

Changes to Our Cookie Policy:

Any changes we may make to our Cookie Policy in the future will be posted on this page. We advise that you check this page regularly to keep up to date with any necessary changes.

References: