Cookie Policy

What is a Cookie?

Cookies are tiny files that contains some information that are downloaded to your computer to track particular aspects of your activity online. Cookies are stored on your hard drive by your browser. Cookies record how you move around a website, so that when you visit our site again, we can present tailored options based on the information stored from your last visit.

For example, if you were interested in a particular area of our website last time you visited, we’re more likely to show similar content on your next visit. Cookies basically help us learn certain things about how visitors use our website. In this way we can present tailored information for you on your visits. Cookies can also be used to analyse traffic, and can be used for advertising and marketing purposes.

The cookie will collect information relating to your use of our website and services, and 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 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 data processors for registered user or subscriber verification purposes.

You should assume that whenever you use our website, apps, products, advertising services or other technologies, or visit a website, app or service which uses our services or that we link you to, please assume and expect that information may be collected through the use of cookies and similar technologies.

In addition to cookies, our website or the website we link you to, may also use web beacons, clear GIFs, page tags 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.

Cookies are harmless

Cookies are used by nearly all websites on the web, and in no way harm your computer. They are simply text-based files, generally of a very small size, stored in one of the directories controlled by your browser. Each browser uses its own cookies, so if you visit us with Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox, they will each store their own cookies about your visit.

What Types of Cookies are There?

Cookies can be categorized as follows:

Authentication/Session cookies

Stored on your hard disk during a web session and are deleted when you close your browser. They are used to store an anonymous session ID that permits you to browse many pages without having to login to each one. These cookies don’t collect any personal data.

Persistent cookies

These are stored as hexadecimal strings in a small text file on your hard disk by your browser. They remain when you close the browser, and when you restart your computer. This cookie is accessed by the website when you visit it the next time. Persistent cookies remain on your hard drive for a fixed amount of time. The fixed period of time is typically 30-90 days for targeting or behavioural advertising cookies and may be up to 26 months for analytical performance and measurement cookies. An example of a Persistent cookie is the one used by Google Analytics to get insights on website traffic data.

First party cookies

These are set by the website you are visiting, such as ours.

Third party cookies

These 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.

What are cookies used for?

Cookies can be categorized by the functions they perform:

Analytical performance

These permit us to monitor and understand how our website is being used, so that we can optimize it to improve performance and present a better visitor experience. These types of cookies allow us to count visits to the site, identify where visitors are coming from, and identify the popular parts of the site.

Web analytics services are designed and operated by third parties, such as Google Analytics. The information provided by these cookies allows us to analyse patterns of user behaviour and we use that information to enhance user experience or identify areas of the website which may require maintenance. The information is anonymous (i.e. it cannot be used to identify you and does not contain personal information such as your name and email address) and it is only used for statistical purposes

Website functionality

These cookies are instrumental in remembering your choices during a visit and providing an enhanced experience. As an example, we may provide you with updates relevant to the services you use. They can also be used to provide services you requested such as commenting on a post or viewing a video. The information collected by these cookies is usually anonymized, so you are not identified personally.

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. These cookies are usually session cookies which will expire when you close your browsing session.

Essential service functionality

These are essential cookies required to use our website effectively. For example, these cookies are required when buying a product or service. They cannot be turned off. Without these cookies, the services available on the website cannot be provided.

These cookies are used to carry out transactions only, and do not gather information that is used for marketing. These cookies do not track where you have been on the internet. These cookies are usually session cookies which will expire when you close your browsing session.

Targeting of behavioural advertising

These cookies, which may be placed on your device by us or our trusted third-party service providers, remember that you have visited a website and use that information to provide you with content or advertising which is tailored to your interests. This is often called online behavioural advertising (OBA) and is done by grouping together shared interests based upon web browsing history.

Your web browsing history can be used to infer things about you (e.g. your age, gender etc.), and this information may also be used to make advertising on websites more relevant to you. Without these cookies, content and advertisements you encounter may be less relevant to you and your interests.

If you would like more information about OBA, including how to opt-out of these cookies, please visit: http://www.youronlinechoices.com/ or scroll down to Blocking Cookies.

Viewing cookies

If you want to see the cookies currently on your system, and you are using the Google Chrome browser, click this link.

This will open up the “See all cookies and site data” tab in Chrome.

These settings are located in chrome under “Settings” -> “Advanced” -> “Privacy and Security” -> “Content Settings” -> “Cookies” -> “See all cookies and site data”.

Other browsers will have similar settings you can access.

Blocking cookies

You can block your browser from accepting cookies. You can block all cookies, or certain types of cookies. However, if you block cookies, you may lose access to all or some parts of a website. The website can also lose the ability to present you with personalized data that may be of greater interest to you.

As for viewing cookies, each browser would have particular settings you would need to access. Remember that blocking cookies on one browser blocks them only on that browser. If you visit a site from another browser, that site can still send you cookies. If you want to completely prevent a website from sending you any cookies, you would have to block cookies from that website in Chrome, IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and any other browser you may be using.

You can opt-out of tracking for many cookies at once by visiting the following link: Network Advertising Initiative Consumer Opt-Out.

Managing cookies in specific browsers

We have compiled the following lists of available browsers and their information on managing cookies. You can use the options in your browser if you don’t want to receive cookies or setup your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie. You can also delete and/or manage any cookies that have been installed in the cookie folder of your browser following the instructions from the browser manufacturer:

Cookies we use

We use the following types of cookies:

Google Analytics cookies

Google Analytics is a simple, easy-to-use tool that helps us, as website owners, measure how visitors interact with website content. Google Analytics is one of the most well-known and trusted analytics solutions available on the web. it helps us understand how our visitors use our site and the ways we can improve your experience on our site.

As a visitor navigates between web pages, Google Analytics provides us with JavaScript tags (libraries) to record information about the page a visitor has seen, for example the URL of the page. The Google Analytics JavaScript libraries use cookies to “remember” what a visitor has done on previous pages and their interactions with our website. These cookies may also track how long you spend on the various posts and pages, that helps us produce engaging interesting content.

Please read the Google Analytics privacy document for more details about the data collected by Google Analytics.

Forms and Comments cookies

When you enter information into a form on our website, such as the contact pages or comment fields, cookies may be set to remember your details for future reference. We use wpDiscuz as the comments system on this website. You can learn more about how wpDiscuz supports your privacy here: https://wpdiscuz.com/gdpr/.

Email related cookies

Our website offers an email newsletter and education subscription service. Cookies may be used by our email software to remember if you are a new or already registered user, and tailor notifications depending on whether you have just subscribed. Without these cookies, we would not be able to tailor the correct newsletters to you.

Order processing cookies

If you purchase a course, service or a product from us, we use third-party platforms for the order processing and payment. These companies will often use cookies to perform the sale and track it afterwards. As we sell products and services, it’s important for us to understand how many visitors to our website make a purchase. This is the sort of data these cookies will track. This is important to you, as it enables us to monitor our advertising and marketing costs, make business decisions, and price our products as competitively as possible.

Examples or order processing would include Paypal and Stripe for payments.

Account and Login cookies

We may provide you with an account and login details for particular services we offer, such an exclusive members area. If so, the third-party platform we use will often use cookies to make login easy, and remember your login details, so that we may identify you as a paying user.

Cookies for Social Media Buttons and Plugins

Our website also uses social media plugins and buttons to enable you to easily connect with our content and share it in a number of ways. We use various social media sites such as Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and Twitter, and may use other ones in the future. Each of these sites will set their own cookies throughout our site which they use for authentication, customizations and sharing purposes. The use of these cookies would be outlined in the respective Cookie policies and Privacy policies of the social sites.

Pinterest would use cookies on websites that partner with them and use the Pinterest Save button, Pinterest widgets, and ad tools such as conversion tracking. We encourage you to learn more about the Pinterest cookie policy.

Facebook use cookies for a variety of reasons, such as tracking sharing and Like button usage, as outlined in the Facebook cookie policy. We encourage you to review the Facebook cookie policy.

Advertising, marketing and remarketing cookies

We use cookies from third-party partners such as Google, Facebook and other advertising networks for marketing and remarketing purposes. These cookies allow us to display promotional materials to you on other sites you visit across the internet. We may also share information about your behavior on our site with third parties (including operators of third-party websites and/or social networking sites) in order to show you targeted advertisements and other content that has been customized for you.

maxim-ross.com uses the AdWords and Remarketing Lists features of Google Analytics for Display Advertisers. maxim-ross.com and Google use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) and third-party cookies (such as the Google advertising cookie) together to inform, optimize, and serve ads based on your past visits to us This means that vendors including Google will display our promotional material on other sites you visit across the Internet.

Here’s a checklist of what this means for you:

We use remarketing and this will show our ads across other websites that you may visit
Google and other third-party vendors will show our ads on websites you visit after visiting us
Our ads will be shown to you because you visited our website in the past
You can opt-out of this remarketing campaign through the Google Ad Settings and Ad Personalization page

Questions

I want to ensure you have a pleasant experience on my website. If you have questions about any affiliations, compensation, or advertisements on this website, you can contact me at maxim@maxim-ross.com or on my Contact Me page. This Affiliate Disclosure is subject to revision at any time and without prior notice given.

Last modified 16 April 2023.