Cookie Policy
What are cookies?
In line with widespread industry practice, Oyster collects anonymous information about your browsing patterns through a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer when you visit our website. This anonymous information includes your IP address, operating system and browser type. This information helps us to:
- estimate our audience size and usage pattern
- collect statistical data about the way people browse our website so that we can analyse its effectiveness
- store information about your preferences, so that we can customise our site according to your individual interests
- speed up your searches
- recognise you when you return to our site.
Cookies are also used to facilitate additional advertising via the Google Adwords service, which places adverts for Oyster on third party websites (including Google) to people who have previously visited our site. Any data collected for Google Adwords will be used in accordance with Oyster’s privacy policy and Google’s own privacy policy.
Which cookies does Oyster use?
The table below describes the cookies currently issued by Oyster:
| Cookie | Type | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | _cfduid | Third party | Used to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis |
| Olark | _OK | Third party | Olark is a platform used to provide live chat on our website which allows visitors to ask a quick question whilst browsing. The Olark cookies collect information on how this feature is used in an anonymous form, and no personally identifiable information is logged or stored. |
| _OKBK | |||
| _OKLV | |||
| Hblid | |||
| Olfsk | |||
| wcsid | |||
| AddThis | uid | Third party | These allow you to share/like/tweet etc any of our website pages using your preferred social networks and websites. If you are logged into any of these sites, the ‘addthis’ cookies keep you logged in, and help you share the content. |
| uit | |||
| ssh | |||
| ssc | |||
| sshs | |||
| _atuvc | |||
| Google analytics | __utma | Third party | Google Analytics cookies are set by the tracking code ga.js and are used to provide us with data to analyse the effectiveness of our site. We use Google Analytics to analyse what our visitors like and what they don’t like. We then use this to manage our ongoing content strategy. |
| __utmb | |||
| __utmc | |||
| __utmt | |||
| __utmz | |||
| __unam | |||
| Oyster Worldwide | viewed_cookie_policy | First party | Used to check that the user has clicked on the privacy pop-up |
| staticxx | Third party | Cross Domain Messaging script that allows Facebook to display Share buttons as they are called from a remote server. | |
Can I refuse cookies?
You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the relevant setting on your browser. You can find out how to do this by searching the advice pages online for your particular browser (usually accessed via their ‘help’ section). However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our site.
