Cookie Policy

INTRODUCTION

This cookie policy explains how Auth Consulting Limited T/A Shinka (“Shinka”) uses cookies and similar technologies. Whenever you use Shinka 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. Shinka is committed to protecting the personal information collected when you use our Services.  

This Cookie Policy provides the following information for users:

• What are cookies and similar technologies?
• What are the different types of cookies?
• What are cookies used for?
• How does Shinka use cookies?
• How can users manage or opt out of cookies?
• Contact details and where to find further information

WHAT ARE COOKIES?

A cookie is a small data file, often including a unique identifier, which is sent to your computer, mobile phone or tablet device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so the website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the website.  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, it may also collect your name and email address, which may be transferred to data processors for registered user or subscriber verification purposes.

Similar technologies known as “local storage” may also be used in our Services as an alternative to cookies. This is technology which is similar to cookies and performs very similar functions, such as caching data to enable us to improve our Services, allowing you to register for our Services, tracking activity to enable us and our advertisers to advertise to you in accordance with this policy and counting the number of people who view adverts on our Services. When we refer to “cookies” in this policy, we mean cookies or similar technologies.

Cookies record information about your online preferences and help us to tailor our Services to your interests. Information provided by cookies can help us to analyse your use of our Services and help us to provide you with a better user experience.

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WHAT ARE THE 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.

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WHAT ARE COOKIES USED FOR?

Shinka, together with our trusted partners, uses cookies in combination with other information we maintain for a number of purposes, including the following:

1. Essential or ‘Strictly Necessary’ Cookies

• These cookies are essential for the running of our Services. Without these cookies, parts of our websites would not function.  These cookies do not track where you have been on the internet and do not remember preferences beyond your current visit and do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing purposes. These cookies are usually session cookies which will expire when you close your browsing session.

2. Functional Cookies

• Functional cookies are essential to the running of our Services. They are used to remember your preferences on our websites and to provide enhanced, more personal features. The information collected by these cookies is usually anonymised, so we cannot identify you 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. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our page.

3. Analytical Performance and Measurement Cookies

• Analytical performance cookies are used to monitor the performance of our Services, for example, to determine the number of page views and the number of unique users a website has.  Web analytics services may be designed and operated by third parties.  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.

4. Targeting or ‘Behavioural Advertising’ Cookies

• 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.  

5. 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 Meta or LinkedIn. 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.

HOW DOES SHINKA USE COOKIES?

Shinka, together with our trusted partners, uses cookies in combination with other information we maintain for a number of purposes, including the following:

1. Essential and Functional Cookies

We use these cookies to enable certain online functionality including:

• accessing your information so we can provide you with customised content and experiences, or remember the last page you visited on the Platform;
• identifying returning users and allow them to be presented with a personalised version of the site;
• eliminating the need for returning users to re-enter their login details;
• commenting on our sites;
• maintaining your settings and authenticating your identity while you are logged in to the Platform;
• to support security measures and to assist in identifying possible fraudulent or abusive activities.

2. Analytical Performance and Measurement Cookies

We use these cookies to measure users’ behaviour to better develop our Services.  By using analytics services provided by third parties such as Google Analytics, we can analyse and measure which pages are viewed and how long for and which links are followed, and we can use this information to provide more content which is of interest.  The data collected will generally be aggregated to provide trends and usage patterns for business analysis, site/platform improvement and performance metrics and to inform our advertising and marketing strategies. Our cookies, or the resulting analysis, can also be shared with our business partners.  

3. Targeting or ‘Behavioural Advertising’ Cookies

We use these cookies to:

• deliver content and marketing communications tailored to your interests based on information from your visit;
• manage online advertising and revenue share arrangements.  Our approved advertising partners, primarily Google (Ad Manager), Magnite, Amazon, Index Exchange, OpenX, Pubmatic use cookies together with web beacons to provide advertising to you and to enable us to manage our relationship with those advertisers by, for example, tracking how many unique users have seen a particular advertisement or followed a link in an advertisement;
• measure general user behaviour across our sites and third party sites to build a profile based on users’ browsing patterns so that we and third parties can target advertising to users that will be more relevant to their interests.  This means that if, for example, users visit a page with a review about a particular camera then the cookie will collect this information and we may target adverts for that camera to those users and, if users visit third party sites that are part of the same advertising network, those third parties may target adverts for that camera to those users;
• to create profiles that trusted third parties can buy to allow them to better target their advertising with more relevant content;
• display relevant advertising to you on other sites, based on your web search activity;
• keep track of the number of users who saw a particular ad or visited a particular page of one of our websites, analyse the effectiveness of our ads, and provide auditing, research and reporting for advertisers.

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 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.

We cannot control nor do we have access to any cookies placed on your computer by third-party advertisers and sponsors.

For more detailed information about the third parties who we work with on targeting and behavioural advertising, please click here (link to Third Party Cookie website link)

4. Social Media Cookies

We market our own product and services on social media and use cookies to help with this. For example, we place a pixel on our sites that allows Meta to place cookies on web browsers. When a visitor to our site who uses Meta returns to Meta, Meta can identify them as part of a group of our site visitors and can serve them with marketing messages from us on our behalf.

The types of cookies used by these third parties and how they use the information generated by them will be governed by those companies’ privacy policies.  

5. Other Third Party Cookies

You may notice on some pages of our websites that cookies have been set that are not related to Shinka. 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. Shinka does 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 parties who we work with on targeting and behavioural advertising, please click here (link to Third Party Cookie website link)

HOW CAN USERS MANAGE OR OPT-OUT OF COOKIES?

Some people find the idea of a website storing information on their device a little intrusive, in particular when the information is stored and used by a third party. For example, you may object to being served advertising which is targeted to your interests based on your browsing history. If you would prefer to opt out of cookies, it is possible to control cookies by following the steps below, however you should be aware that you might lose some features and functionality of the website if you do so.

Cookies, including those which have already been set, can be deleted from your device. You can also change the preferences/settings in your web browser to control cookies. Some internet browsers have a ‘Do Not Track or ‘DNT’ setting, known as Global Privacy Control; this sends a signal to websites asking them not to track your browsing. You can enable Global Privacy Control (“GPC”) on your browser. To learn more about GPC, please visit here.