Reach Group - Cookie Notice
1. Who we are and how to contact us
We are the Reach group, which is made up of Reach plc and its subsidiaries. Reach plc is the largest national and regional news publisher in the UK, with a portfolio in Ireland and the United States. We, via our various subsidiary companies and brands, publish via newspapers, magazines and digital platforms; national websites and regional websites (our ‘Sites’), and mobile applications (our ‘Apps’), enjoyed by millions every month. You can see the list of websites and brands here.
For any queries you have relating to this Notice, you can contact our Data Protection and Privacy Team via the forms provided within our Privacy Notice, or by writing to one of the addresses below.
If you are from the UK/EU:
By email: dataprotection@reachplc.com
By mail: Data Protection Enquiries, Reach Plc, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5AP
If you are from the US:
By email: privacyofficer@reachplc.com
By mail: Privacy Officer, Reach Plc, 19th Floor, 200 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10281
2. About this Cookie Notice
This notice explains how we use cookies and similar technologies (‘cookies’) on our Sites and Apps and how you can manage the behaviour of these cookies.
Whenever you use Reach’s websites, apps, products, advertising services or other technologies (“Services”) or visit a website, app or service which uses our Services, information may be collected through the use of cookies and similar technologies.
Reach is committed to protecting personal information collected when you use our Services and for you to feel in control of the information you generate; this Notice is organised based on what you might want to know about how we use cookies, including how you can manage the behaviour of these cookies.
Last update: 24 October 2024
3. What are cookies and similar technologies?
3.1 Descriptions
A cookie is a small data file, often including a unique identifier, sent from a website to your web browser. It is stored in your web browser’s cache and allows a website, or a third party, to recognise your browser or mobile device, and to obtain data about your browsing activity.
The cookie will collect information relating to your use of our Services, information about your device, e.g. the device’s IP address and browser type, broad location and, if you arrived at our site via a link from a third party site, the URL of the linking page. If you have registered for any Services or you are a subscriber, it may also collect your name and email address, which may be transferred to our data processors, for registered users or subscriber verification purposes.
Similar technologies known as “local storage” may also be used in our Services as an alternative to cookies. This performs very similar functions to cookies, such as allowing you to register for our Services, enabling us to improve our Services and tracking activity to enable us and our advertisers to advertise to you and understand how many people view the adverts on our Services. When we refer to “cookies” in this policy, we mean cookies or similar technologies.
In addition to cookies, our Services may also use web beacons, page tags, clear GIFs and web bugs. These are all types of technology implemented by websites or third-party ad servers to allow them to analyse your website use and help improve your experience of the Services.
3.2 Different types of cookies
Session cookies are only stored for the duration of your visit to a website and are deleted from your device when you close your browser;
Persistent cookies are saved on your device for a set period of time after the browser has closed and are used where we (or a third party) need to identify you for a later browsing session.
First party cookies are set by the website you are visiting; and
Third-party cookies are cookies used within our services which are set by other organisations. These include cookies from external analytics services which help us to understand the use of our sites, or by advertisers so that they can track the effectiveness of their advertisements. Third-party cookies can also be set by selected social media companies to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks, which may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit.
Mobile devices and browsers can be shared by a number of people, so cookies do not always relate to particular individuals. For a detailed description of how we use the personal data we collect, please see our Privacy Notice.
4. What are cookies used for?
We use five main types of cookies: essential, functional, analytic, personalisation, and advertising.
4.1 Essential cookies
These cookies are essential to provide you with the Services that you have requested from us; because of their essential nature, they cannot be switched off. These cookies are usually session cookies which will expire when you close your browsing session.
4.2 Functional cookies
These cookies enable us to remember some important information, such as your computer or mobile device when you visit a website, your registration and log in details, and your settings and preferences.
They are used by us to ensure that you don’t have to log in every single time you want to comment on our articles, and to ensure our interactive Services work effectively.
Functional cookies do not track your internet usage or gather information which could be used for selling advertising, but they do help with serving advertising. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our page.
4.3 Analytic, performance and measurement cookies
Analytic cookies retain information as you view different pages on our Sites, and they help us to paint a picture of how our readers use our Sites.
Additionally, these cookies help us to make the website work as efficiently as possible, and provide better content and services in the future.
We may also use analytics cookies to measure the effectiveness of advertising on the Sites and the Apps and elsewhere on the internet.
4.4 Personalisation cookies
These cookies enable us to recommend content we think you’ll be interested in, based on what you’ve looked at before. They may be placed on your device by us or our trusted third-party service providers.
4.5 Advertising cookies
These cookies are placed by us, and our advertising partners, to deliver more relevant advertising. They remember that you have visited a website and use that information to provide you with content or advertising which is tailored to your interests.
These cookies may gather information about your browsing activity on our sites and for third parties, across different Sites and across different visits. They allow us and advertisers to show more relevant ads, while also allowing advertisers to manage how many times a device sees an advert. This is often called Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) and is done by grouping together shared interests based upon web browsing history.
The trusted partners we work with in relation to targeting and behavioural advertising include third-party ad servers, ad agencies, technology vendors, providers of advertisement content, research firms and other companies that help us provide more effective advertising and offer you a more personalised experience. As your browser, app or device communicates with the third party’s servers, these companies can collect information, including your IP address, page header information, browser or device information, just as if you had requested their web page or used their apps directly.
Most of our third-party advertising partners operate within an industry framework and code of practice issued by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) called the “Transparency and Consent Framework”, which sets out the technical means for your choices to be passed through the ad networks. It also requires that members adhere to IAB policies and standards of behaviour.
A complete list of our advertising partners is provided within our Consent Management Platform (‘CMP’), which is displayed to all new Site and App visitors. Advertising partners who do not work within the IAB framework are listed separately in the platform which can be viewed in our CMP. In the Consent Management Platform popup go to the ‘Partners’ page and scroll down - IAB partners are listed first, then you'll see Non-IAB vendors and finally Google partners.
In the UK, EEA and other selected territories we undertake this activity on the basis of your consent, which we request on their behalf through the ‘cookie banner’ which appears when you first visit our Site. The ‘cookie banner’ message box will reappear from time to time in case you change your mind, or when something changes (typically every 30 days). Please see the ‘cog’ icon or link at the bottom of every webpage to manage your consents. When using our Apps, if you want to change the settings, go to the ‘My Account’ Link at the bottom of the screen which includes ‘My Privacy’ and takes you to the CMP.
When you have accepted the placement of advertising cookies via our CMP and, subsequent to this consent, provide us with your email address (when you create an account, sign up for a newsletter, enter a competition/survey etc.) we will share your email address in a hashed form to trusted 3rd parties. Such information will be used to enable targeted advertising, profiling, and interest-based content.
Please note that if you are residing in the US then advertising cookies will be placed unless you opt out by selecting the “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link at the footer of our sites.
For more information on how we use the personal data we collect, please see our Privacy Notice.
For more detailed information about the third parties who we work with please click here.
If you object to the use of targeting and behavioural advertising cookies please see 6.How can you manage your cookie preferences
4.6 Social media cookies
These cookies are set by a range of social media Services that we have added to the site when you share our content with your friends and networks or when you engage with our content on or through a social site such as Facebook or Twitter. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other sites you visit.
We also market our own products and Services on social media and use cookies to help with this. For example, we place a pixel on our sites that allows Facebook to place cookies on web browsers. When a visitor to our site who uses Facebook returns to Facebook, Facebook can identify them as part of a group of our site visitors and can serve them with marketing messages from us on our behalf.
4.7 Other third party cookies
When you visit a page with content embedded from a third-party service provider such as YouTube, for example, they may set their own cookies on your device. We do not control the use of these third-party cookies and cannot access them due to the way that cookies work, as cookies can only be accessed by the party who originally set them. Please check the third-party websites for more information about these cookies.
We also include web beacons in our emails to track the success of our marketing campaigns. This means that if you open an email from us we can see which of the pages of our websites you have visited. Our web beacons do not store additional information on your device but, by communicating with our cookies on your device, they can tell us whether our emails are opened and verify any clicks through to links or advertisements. They enable us to query whether users who do not open our emails wish to continue receiving them and to inform our advertisers in aggregate how many users have clicked on their advertisements within the email. We may also use this information for purposes including determining which of our emails are more interesting to users and for personalising email campaigns.
For more detailed information about the third-party cookies on our sites, please click here.
5. Why do we use cookies?
The information generated from your browsing helps us to understand how people use our websites, how we can improve them, and also to make sure that adverts are more relevant to you.
Examples of what we use cookies for include:
If we can see that more users from London prefer football content on a Friday evening than Sunday morning, then we can change when and how much content we produce for London football teams on a weekday as opposed to a weekend;
When we run a poll on a particularly contentious local issue, we can use cookies to prevent a device or browser voting hundreds of times to influence the poll results;
If a browser or device is recognised to enjoy lots of content about celebrities, we and/or our partners may show adverts that relate to relevant lifestyle, tech and consumer goods.
When we run an ad we can keep track of the number of users who visited the page and provide auditing, research and reporting to advertisers.
When a user browses on one of our ecommerce sites, it enables us to remember the items in their shopping basket, so they can continue where they left off.
For more information on how we use the personal data we collect, please see our Privacy Notice.
If you object to the use of targeting and behavioural advertising cookies please see How can you manage your cookie preferences
6. How can you manage your cookie preferences?
6.1 On Site
If you are in the UK/EEA (and selected other territories) we have put a Consent Management Platform (CMP) in place on our Sites. This platform helps you to manage what non-Essential cookies are placed on your device; you can decide whether to accept or reject a range of cookies with defined purposes. These preferences can be changed at any time by clicking on the Privacy cog icon or link at the bottom of each webpage.
Additionally, most web browsers will allow you to stop accepting cookies. This is normally controlled through the Settings or Help page of a browser; further information can be found using the below links:
Safari cookie settings - desktop and mobile devices
There is an AdChoice logo at the corner of every advertisement that carries behavioural targeting cookies; you can click on the link within this logo to control the settings that Google uses to display adverts (https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated).
For interest based advertising, you can also opt-out by visiting http://youronlinechoices.eu, http://www.aboutads.info and http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1#!/
United States
If you are a resident of California or any other state with applicable legislation, you may opt out of the “sale or sharing” of your personal information through the use of our website cookies by selecting the “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link located on the footer, header or a pop-up on each webpage.
For US residents with applicable state regulation, you can also control your opt out settings via https://globalprivacycontrol.org/
If you are based in the United States and would like to learn more or to opt out of interest-based advertising please visit NAI Consumer Opt-Out or AboutAds.info for laptops and NAI Mobile Choices or AppChoices for mobile devices.
Canada
The Digital Advertising Alliance Canada’s (DAAC) AdChoices initiative allows you to opt-out of the use of information for interest-based advertising. For more information on this program, see https://youradchoices.ca/
The DAAC has a tool that generates a list of third-party advertising companies participating in the DAAC’s Self-Regulatory Program for Online Interest-Based Advertising and who are currently collecting data from your browser for the purposes of targeted advertising. You can use the tool to opt-out of interest-based advertising. The DAAC tool to opt-out of interest-based advertising can be found here
Note that opting out through these channels does not mean you will no longer see ads. You will still receive other types of ads from these companies, and any type of ad from non-participating companies. The sites you visit may still collect your information for other purposes.
Please be aware that these are third party websites and Reach does not accept any liability for the instructions given on these sites.
Web Beacons
You can normally render web beacons and other tracking technologies ineffective by switching off cookies in your browser. There are also browser add-ons and extensions that specifically block web beacons. If you object to web beacons in emails, we recommend that you follow the instructions for deleting existing cookies and disabling future cookies above. We will still know how many of our emails are opened and we will automatically receive your IP address, a unique identifier of your device or other access device; but we will not identify you as an individual.
6.2 On App
We also have a CMP in place on our Apps, allowing you to control what cookies are placed on your mobile device. These preferences can be changed at any time, by navigating to the ‘My Account’ Link at the bottom of the screen which includes ‘My Privacy’ andenables you to ‘Manage’ your cookies.
Additionally, when using a mobile device, you can opt-out of receiving interest based advertising by selecting ‘Privacy’ and then ‘Advertising’ in the Settings of your Apple iPhone or iPad, or the “Opt out of Ads Personalisation” in the Google Settings on your Android device.
When managing Site and App cookies, it is important to be aware that switching off cookies may affect the way one of our Sites operates, and it may adversely affect the quality of your experience on a Site.
Finally, please be aware that if you opt out of Advertising cookies, you are not opting out of seeing advertising. You will still see adverts, they just may not be as relevant to you and your interests.
7. How long do cookies last?
Cookies are stored on your device until you delete them or until they expire, as a general rule we will not retain any data that has been captured through their use for any longer than necessary.
Detailed information regarding the duration of cookies set by our partners, can be found within the relevant section of our CMP. If you are a US resident, with applicable legislation, and wish to know more email privacyofficer@reachplc.com.
8. Are there any third parties involved?
When you provide us with permission, we will share data collected through the use of cookies and similar technologies on our Sites and Apps with selected third party partners.
We provide detailed information on the identity of partners, including the data that they collect and what they use it for, within the relevant sections of our CMP.
Please note that if you are a US resident we would not be sharing your data with third parties when you select the “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link at the footer of our sites.
For more detailed information about the third-party cookies on our sites, please click here
9. Ad blocker detection
We, or our advertisers, may use code on our Sites to detect if you are using an ad blocker. If we detect that you are using an ad blocker, we may display a warning message describing how this may affect your experience using the Sites and ask that you disable it.
10. Social media technologies
When you use social media platforms with the Sites and the Apps, each platform has its own technologies and policies to be aware of. For information on limiting the use of widgets and sharing functions with social networks, see the privacy setting links below: