Click here for instructions on how to change your cookie setting in Internet Explorer.
Our Site does use
Cookies so they must be enabled on your machine if you want to shop or use any of the registered user features of the site. (if you're just browsing then it doesn't matter)
However, we NEVER write anything to your hard disk, we only use memory based
cookies to help with navigation and to store information during eCommerce
transactions. Once you leave the site, these pieces of information evaporate.
What are they?
Without some way of knowing who has put what into a shopping basket for example, the system could not give you a sensible basket view. Indeed, this may be one of the
first indications you get which tells you cookies are not enabled on your
machine.
Cookies can take various forms. Most often, they are a small text file which
gets stored on your computer by a website and are used to store things like your
preferences for that site - You may be able to select a colour scheme or what
shows on menus and the like.
However, there is another type of Cookie - called Temporary or Session Cookies which don't get stored on your computer at all they simply exist in memory during the time you are on the site and then disappear when you leave.
It is this latter type which is used by our site and we only use them for
keeping track of shopping transactions etc. We do give our registered users
the ability to use other services like 'Wish Lists' etc but all information
for these is stored in our databases not your machine.
Here's briefly how a shopping transaction fits together so you can get
a little insight into how we use cookies - You'll see none of it is scary or
'Big Brother is watching':
When you open your browser and connect to a website, a random number is allocated to you (this is just a number, it doesn't hold any personal details you could be Joe Bloggs or the Prime Minister
- the site has know way of knowing. This always happens whether you have
cookies enabled or not.
Now, when an item is added to the shopping basket (which is just an entry in a
database) the system adds your allocated number to it so it knows which virtual user
the item belongs to.
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There could be hundreds or even thousands of items stored in these 'virtual' baskets
at any one time (if there are a lot of people shopping), so your Number is
used to recover that information when you want to view your basket.
When you click a 'View Basket' link, the system has a quick look to see what number you've been allocated and then asks the database to send back all items it is holding against that number - It's that data that is used to display your shopping basket and it's no more sinister than that.
It's exactly the same when you move on to the checkout - Information is
retrieved in the same way. It only gets tied to you as a real person when you
enter your personal details, during which time we move up a gear in
security and everything gets encrypted to keep it very private - but that's
another story.
If you are a registered user, the system holds the number you were originally given and uses that as an identifier you whenever you log in.
This means that as a registered users, if you add items to your basket and logout, the next time you log in (because you are using the same identity) your items will still be there. Well, actually they are cleared out automatically after about 24 hours
because we assume you don't want them after that.
In summary then, as an
anonymous user, we cannot find out anything about you or your machine by using
Cookies and what's more, as soon as you leave our site, our cookies cease to exist.
If you are using a recent version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, you can enable just the session cookies and still keep all others blocked
(the ones that get stored on your disk).
We should say though that there is a lot of hype surrounding cookies and even those which are stored on your disk by some sites are just simple text files and can't physically harm your system.
Even when used as a marketing tool, they are no more threatening (probably a lot less so) than the information collected while you shop in a typical supermarket.
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