Cookie Policy

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer, smartphone or other device when you access the internet.

Why are cookies essential to Avendis’s websites?

This website, along with many others, uses cookies. Cookies let users navigate around sites and (where appropriate) let us tailor the content to fit the needs of our site’s visitors. Without cookies enabled we can’t guarantee that the website and your experience of it are as we intended it to be.

None of the cookies we use collect your personal information and they can’t be used to identify you.

Types of cookies

The length of time a cookie stays on your device depends on its type. We use two types of cookies on our websites.

Session cookies are temporary cookies which only exist during the time you use the website (or more strictly, until you close the browser after using the website). Session cookies help our websites remember what you chose on the previous page, avoiding the need to re-enter information.

Persistent cookies stay on your device after you’ve visited our website. For example, if you tick the ‘Remember my ID’ box when you log onto your online account a persistent cookie will be used so that the site remembers your choice the next time you use it. Persistent cookies help us identify you as a unique visitor but don’t contain information that could be used to identify you to another person.

At Avendis we use cookies in the following ways:

  • In our online application forms. Without cookies enabled you won’t be able to apply for our jobs
  • We also use web analytics services from other companies to track how visitors reach our site and the path they take through it. These companies use cookies to help us improve our service to you.

The analytics services we use are:

  • Google Analytics, which uses cookies to help us analyse how our visitors use the site. Find out more about how these cookies are used on the Google privacy site
  • Mouseflow, to analyse how our visitors use our sites. Mouseflow uses both session and persistent cookies.

You can find below more information about each individual cookie and how to recognize them:

Advertising and targeting cookies are used to deliver advertisements more relevant to you, but can also limit the number of times you see an advertisement, and be used to chart the effectiveness of an ad campaign by tracking users’ clicks. They can also provide security in transactions. They are usually placed by third-party advertising networks with a website operator’s permission, but can be placed by the operator themselves. They can remember that you have visited a website, and this information can be shared with other organisations, including other advertisers. They cannot determine who you are though, as the data collected is never linked to your profile.

The two main ways we use advertising and targeting cookies are set out below:

  • Interest-based advertising (or online behavioural advertising) is where cookies are placed on your device by our third party service providers which remember your web browsing activity and group together your interests in order to provide you with targeted advertisements which are more relevant to you when you visit independent.co.uk.  Your previous web browsing activity can also be used to infer things about you, such as your demographics (age, gender etc.). This information may also be used to make the advertising on independent.co.uk more relevant to you.
  • ‘Retargeting’ is a form of interest-based advertising that enables our advertising partners to show you advertisements selected based on your online browsing activity away from the Website.  This allows companies to advertise to people who previously visited their website. These cookies will usually be placed on your device by third-party advertising networks and we have listed the main third party networks we work with below.

Without these cookies, online advertisements you encounter will be less relevant to you and your interests. If you would like more information about interest-based advertising, including how to opt-out of these cookies, please visit www.youronlinechoices.com

How to control and delete cookies

If you want to restrict or block the cookies we set, you can do this through your browser settings. The ‘help’ function within your browser should tell you how.

Alternatively, you could visit www.aboutcookies.org, which contains comprehensive information on cookies on a wide variety of browsers. You’ll also find details on how to delete cookies from your computer. To learn about controlling cookies on the browser of your mobile device please refer to your handset manual.

Cookies in emails 

As well as the cookies we use on our websites, we use cookies and similar technologies in some emails. These help us to understand whether you’ve opened an email and how you’ve interacted with it. If you have enabled images, cookies may be set on your computer or device. Cookies will also be set if you click on any link within the email. The types of cookies we use are:

Web beacons: tiny, invisible images placed in emails to tell us whether you’ve opened them (and if so how often), how you interacted with them (for example the time you spent reading the email), which email software and web browser you used, which device you used and your IP address. We also use web beacons to help us display emails in the best format for your device.

Link tracking: our emails contain a number of hyperlinks, each of which has a unique tag. When you click on one of these links the mailing company logs the click so that we can understand who has clicked through from an email to our website. We use this information to tailor future messages to you.

Cookies: our process for delivering emails may cause cookies to be set when you download images or when you click on a link.

Making choices about cookies

If you don’t want to accept cookies from our emails, simply close the email before downloading any images or clicking on any links. You can also set your browser to restrict or reject cookies. These settings will apply to all cookies on websites and emails.

In some instances, depending on your email or browser settings, cookies in an email may be automatically accepted (for example, when you’ve added an email address to your address book or safe senders list). Please check your email browser or device instructions for more information on this.