Cookie Policy

What is a Cookie?

A Cookie is a small text file, usually consisting of letters and numbers, placed on your computer, tablet, phone, or similar device, when you use that device to visit a website. A Cookie is acknowledged by your web browser and acts to identify your device.

Cookies are widely used by website owners to make their websites work, or to work more efficiently, as well as to collect and send information about your visit to their website, for example, number of visits, average time spent, pages viewed, navigation history through the website and other statistics. 

How Does Swrve Use Cookies?

Swrve uses cookies and various similar technologies, which may include pixel tags, web tokens, beacons, clear GIFs, and JavaScript, to help improve your experience, and the performance and efficiency of our website, as well as for targeting or advertising purposes. We will refer to cookies and similar technologies as “Cookies” for the purpose of this notice.

Cookies may be used to allow us and third parties to know when you visit our website, and to understand how you interact with emails, advertisements, or other content.  

Through Cookies, aggregate and other information (such as your operating system, browser version, and the URL you came from, including from emails and advertisements) that does not identify individual users, may be obtained and used to enhance your experience and understand traffic patterns. This technology counts the number of users who visit a particular service from specific banner advertisements outside Swrve websites or who clicked on links or graphics included in email newsletters received from Swrve. It is also used as a tool to compile aggregated statistics about how Swrve websites are used, to perform analytics and help us to optimize our websites, and to help serve you advertising based on your interests, as described in further detail below.

The Cookies we use cannot be used to access any other data on your computer and cannot be used by us to personally identify you.

What are Cookies used for?

Different types of Cookies are used to do different things. We may use the following types of Cookies:

Strictly necessary cookies: These are Cookies that are required for the operation of our website and to diagnose problems with our server. For example to enable you to log into secure areas of our websites.

Cookies to improve the user experience: These are Cookies that improve your experience on our website and remember you when you return to our websites.  For example by remembering your language preference or user name.

Cookies to provide analytics data: These Cookies track user traffic and other activities on our website, but will not collect any data that identifies you personally such as your user name, email address, or billing information. These Cookies enable us to improve and optimize the way our websites work. Analytics Cookies also help us to improve and measure the performance of our advertising campaigns and to optimize our websites for those who engage with our advertising.  

Among other tools, we use Google Analytics to analyse the use of our website and services. Google Analytics generates statistical and other information about website and product use by means of Cookies, which are stored on users’ computers.  The information generated relating to our websites is used to create reports about the use of our websites and services.  Google will store this information. Google’s privacy policy is available at www.google.com/privacypolicy.html.

Swrve also uses Advertising Cookies from various tools. These Cookies record your online activities, including your visits to our websites, the pages you have visited, and the links and advertisements you have clicked. One purpose of this is to allow us and our service providers to deliver advertisements or other communications to you that are designed to be more relevant to your apparent interests. When we and our service providers do so, this also involves partners such as publishers, data management platforms, and demand side platforms that help to manage the data. For example, if you look at one page on one of our websites, that may cause an advertisement to be delivered to you, on our websites or on other websites, for products referenced on that page or for similar products and services.

How Long do Cookies Stay on My Device?

Some Cookies, called “session Cookies,” operate from the time you visit our website to the end of that particular browsing session. These Cookies expire and are automatically deleted when you close your Internet browser.  

Other Cookies, called “persistent Cookies,” will stay on your device between browsing sessions, they do not automatically expire when you close your browser. The length of time a persistent Cookie stays on your device varies from Cookie to Cookie. We and others use persistent Cookies for a variety of purposes, such as to store your preferences so that they are available for the next visit, and to keep a more accurate account of how often you visit our websites, how often you return, how your use of the websites may vary over time, and the effectiveness of advertising efforts.

Who Puts the Cookies on My Device?

Cookies may be placed on your device by Swrve as the Site operator. Other Cookies may be placed on your device by a party other than Swrve. Our Website uses both Cookies set by us and Cookies provided by third parties such as Google Analytics and Twitter. These third parties may obtain information about you when accessing parts of our Website. We include a detailed description of each cookie below.

How Do I Manage Cookies?

Most browsers are initially set up to accept Cookies. If you prefer you can reset your browser either to notify you when you’ve received a Cookie or to refuse to accept Cookies or install browser add-ons such as the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser (available from Google at http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout). You should understand that areas of certain websites will not function properly if you set your browser not to accept cookies. You can visit the third party website www.aboutcookies.org for further information on how to manage Cookies on many different web browsers. You may also find information on how to disable Cookies in your web browser in your browser’s help settings.

To find out more about interest-based advertising and your choices, visit these third party websites: Digital Advertising Alliance, the Network Advertising Initiative, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Europe. 

You can also opt out of the use of Cookies to tailor content or advertising to you by visiting the following links. Note that if you choose to opt out, you won’t necessarily see fewer ads. However, the ads you see may be less relevant to your interests.

http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp

http://www.aboutads.info/choices

What Cookies Does Swrve Use?

Some of the cookies we commonly use on our website are listed in the following chart. This list is not necessarily exhaustive, but it is intended to illustrate the main reasons we typically set cookies.

Third Party Cookies

x-mapping-jdinjeol (Functionality)

The X-Mapping cookie is associated with the Stingray Traffic Manager platform from Riverbed, which is a load balancing application for high traffic web services and sites. Used to route data and page requests to the correct server where a site is hosted on multiple servers. It has a common root of X-Mapping- followed by an eight-letter code.

_ar_v4 (Targeting/ Advertising)

This cookie is associated with the DoubleClick advertising service from Google. Helps with tracking conversion rates for ads.

_utma (Performance)

This is one of the four main cookies set by the Google Analytics service which enables website owners to track visitor behavior and measure site performance. This cookie lasts for 2 years and distinguishes between users and sessions. It is used to calculate new and returning visitor statistics. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics.

_utmb (Performance)

This is one of the four main cookies set by the Google Analytics service which enables website owners to track visitor behavior and measure site performance. This cookie determines new sessions and visits and expires after 30 minutes. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. Any activity by a user within the 30-minute life span will count as a single visit, even if the user leaves and then returns to the site. A return after 30 minutes will count as a new visit, but a returning visitor.

_utmc (Performance)

This is one of the four main cookies set by the Google Analytics service which enables website owners to track visitor behavior and measure site performance. It is not used in most sites but is set to enable interoperability with the older version of Google Analytics code known as Urchin. In this older version this was used in combination with the __utmb cookie to identify new sessions/visits for returning visitors. When used by Google Analytics this is always a Session cookie, which is destroyed when the user closes their browser.

_utmt_UA-18605207-2 (Performance)

This is a pattern type cookie set by Google that is used to limit the amount of data recorded by Google on high traffic volume websites.

_utmv (Performance)

This is an optional additional cookie set by the Google Analytics service which enables website owners to track visitor behavior and measure site performance. This cookie is used when site owners create custom visitor-level variables for customizing what can be measured. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. 

_utmz (Performance)

This is one of the four main cookies set by the Google Analytics service which enables website owners to track visitor behaviour measure of site performance. This cookie identifies the source of traffic to the site – so Google Analytics can tell site owners where visitors came from when arriving on the site. The cookie has a lifespan of 6 months and is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics.

>_ga (Performance)

This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics – which is a significant update to Google’s more commonly used analytics service. The new service reduces the reliance on cookies in general, and only sets this and one other - _gat, although Google also says data can be collected without setting any cookies. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. 

_gat (Performance)

This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics used to throttle the request rate – limiting the collection of data on high traffic sites. It expires after 10 minutes.

Lang (Functionality)

Used to store language preferences, potentially to serve up content in the stored language. 

Uuid2 (Functionality)

This cookie contains a unique randomly generated value that enables the platform to distinguish browsers and devices. It is matched against information – such as advertising interest segments and histories of ads shown in the browser or device – provided by clients or other third parties and stored on the Platform. 

Sess (Functionality)

The sess cookie contains a single non- unique value: “1”. It is used by the Platform to test whether a browser is configured to accept cookies. AnjAdvertisingThe anj cookie contains data denoting whether a cookie ID is synced with the partners ID.

auth_tokenFunctionality 

These cookies are used to enable interaction with the twitter account.

guest_idFunctionality

This cookie is used to identify you to Twitter, if you do not have a twitter account or never accessed the twitter.com website directly then twitter will assign you a unique code to track your visit to the Twitter feed.

_dc_gtm_UA-18605207-10

Strictly Necessary It is used to add the tracking code Google Analytics from Google Tag Manager. 

Cookies set by Swrve:PurposeDescription

exp_last_activity (Performance)

Every time the state is updated (the page reloaded) the last activity is set to the current date/time. Used to determine expiry. This is essential for logged in users, but not for guests—it is set for both.

exp_last_visit (Performance)

Sets the date/time that the user last visited the site, and is set for both guests and logged in users. If not set, is automatically set to 10 years ago. Affects guests and logged in users.

exp_tracker (Performance)

Tracks the last 5 pages viewed by the user, and is used primarily for redirection after logging in etc. Affects guests and logged in users.

exp_csrf_token (Functionality)

Creates a hash and stores locally, ensures forms are being submitted securely.

Last updated: December 10th, 2020