Cookie privacy
Information about cookies
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to here as a “device”) browser from a website’s server and is stored on your device’s hard drive. Each website or third party service provider used by the website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser’s preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a website or third party service provider to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites or other third party service providers. A cookie will contain some anonymous information such as a unique identifier and the site name and some digits and numbers. It allows a website to remember things like your preferences or what’s in your shopping basket.
What is a browser?
A browser is an application that allows you to surf the internet. The most common browsers are Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Most browsers are secure and offer quick and easy ways to delete information like cookies. Please see the section below Change your Browser Settings
What do cookies do?
Cookies record information about your online preferences and allow us to tailor the websites to your interests. Information supplied by cookies can help us to analyse your use of our sites and help us to provide you with a better user experience. For example, you may choose to personalise the content of a website in order to see the latest news and weather for your region. In order to do this, a cookie is placed on your device to remember where you live so that we deliver the information that has been requested by you. This is a prime example of how cookies are used to improve your experience of a website.
Change your Browser Settings
You can choose how cookies are handled by your device via your browser settings. The most popular browsers allow users to a) accept all cookies, b) to notify you when a cookie is issued, or c) to not receive cookies at any time. If you choose not to receive cookies at any time, the website may not function properly and certain services will not be provided, spoiling your experience of the website. Each browser is different, so check the “Help” menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences.
Types of Cookie
First Party Cookies
First party cookies are set by the website you are visiting and they can only be read by that site.
Third Party Cookies
Third party cookies are set by other organisations that we use for different services. For example, italysbestrome uses external analytics services and these suppliers may set cookies on italysbestrome’s behalf in order to report what’s popular and what’s not. The website you are visiting may also contain content embedded from, for example, YouTube or Flickr and these sites may set their own cookies.
Session Cookies
Session Cookies are stored only for the duration of your visit to a website and these are deleted from your device when your browsing session ends.
Persistent Cookies
This type of cookie is saved on your device for a fixed period. Persistent cookies are used where we need to know who you are for more than one usage session. For example, if you have asked us to remember preferences like your location or your username.
Flash cookies
Many websites use Adobe Flash Player to deliver video and game content to their users. Adobe utilise their own cookies, which are not manageable through your browser settings but are used by the Flash Player for similar purposes, such as storing preferences or tracking users.
Flash Cookies work in a different way to web browser cookies; rather than having individual cookies for particular jobs, a website is restricted to storing all data in one cookie. You can control how much data, if any, may be stored in that cookie but you cannot choose what type of information is allowed to be stored. You can manage which websites can store information in Flash cookies on your device via the website storage settings panel on the Adobe website.
Web beacons, clear GIFs, page tags and web bugs
These are all terms used to describe a particular form of technology implemented by many websites in order to help them to analyse how their site is being used and, in turn, to improve your experience of their site. They may also be used to target any advertising being served on the web page you are viewing.
A web beacon (or similar) usually takes the form of a small, transparent image, which is embedded in a web page or an email. They are used in conjunction with cookies and send information such as your IP address, when you viewed the page or email, from what device and your (broad) location.
How do we use cookies?
Cookies enable us to identify your device, or you when you have logged in. We use cookies that are strictly necessary to enable you to move around the site or to provide certain basic features. We use cookies to enhance the functionality of the website by storing your preferences, for example. We also use cookies to help us to improve the performance of our website to provide you with a better user experience.
Typically, we use cookies to deliver the following services throughout the pages of our websites:
- To enable us to recognise your device so you don’t have to give the same information repeatedly;
- To recognise that you may have requested that we remember your username and password so you don’t need to enter your details each time you visit the site;
- To ensure that if you are purchasing a product or service via our websites, your experience is smooth and secure;
- To record what people like and don’t like on the website and the popularity of various elements of the website so that we can ensure that it works properly at points of high usage. Italy’s best Rome also uses a number of independent measurement, advertising and research companies. They gather information regarding the visitors to Italy’s best Rome on our behalf using cookies, log file data and code which is embedded on our website. Italy’s best Rome uses this type of information to help improve the services it provides to its users.
- Please see the section below called: What is Behavioural Marketing?
What is Behavioural Marketing?
Behavioural Marketing technology gives users and advertisers a more valuable and unique experience by delivering advertising and content that is more relevant to the user. The system we are using is a type of “onsite behavioural marketing” which uses cookies to discover general information about which pages on our sites you visit. It also looks at IP addresses to add general information about the country, city or region in which you are located, along with your domain name (e.g. what internet service provider you use). This information enables you to be grouped with other people of similar interests and places you in a “market segment”.
We may then display advertisements on the site which we believe people in your market segment will find relevant. We consider that this makes the advertising more interesting and useful to you, and also helps us increase the value we get out of the site and from our advertisers, and therefore ultimately gives us a greater ability to invest in great content for the benefit of all our users.
It is important to note that at no time will we or our service providers attempt to identify you individually, and at no time do we know who you are or what pages you individually have been looking at – we simply aggregate the relevant information to create the market segments of groups of people. We will at all times seek to comply with the regulatory framework applicable to onsite behavioural targeting technology in our implementation of it. We do not use or share data with websites that are not owned.
Cookies set on our site by our commercial service providers
We use a range of third party services on our site – from statistics packages to advertising, video delivery, content delivery and even low level techie functions like load balancing our servers so that they are always available when you want to use them. Some of these services require the use of cookies to work properly. These services include:
Italy’s best Rome uses cookies to discover general information about the behaviour of users who visit https://www.italysbestrome.com/. It also processes IP addresses to collect other general information in order to place you in a “market segment”. This includes data about the country, city or region where you are located and your domain name (e.g. what ISP you use).
It is important to note that at no time will we or our service providers attempt to identify you individually, and at no time do we know who you are or what pages you individually have been looking at – we simply aggregate the relevant information to create the market segments of groups of people. Also, this “onsite behavioural targeting” functionality is different from other forms of behavioural targeting in that we will only look at your journey across the italysbestrome website, we do not use or share data with or from any other sites.
Statistics
Italy’s Best Rome advertises https://www.italysbestrome.com/ using Google Adwords. A Google cookie is used to enable us to monitor the effectiveness of this advertising by seeing the amount of traffic and conversions (e.g. shop purchases) this advertising generates. These cookies expire after 30 days.
Server Functions
Because of the scale and size of our website, we have to use more than one computer to serve pages to all our users. Otherwise everyone would have to get a coffee between page loads… We use various pieces of equipment and services for this.
Other
Via Facebook Connect you can sign-in to Italy’s best Rome using your Facebook log-in. A Facebook cookie (fbsetting_(ID) is used to remember your Facebook log-in so you do not need to enter these details each time you log-in.