Cookies Policy

This Cookies Policy sets out the basis on which we, Merchant City Music, use cookies and similar technologies on or in relation to our website, https://www.guitar.co.uk (our website). This Cookies Policy is effective from 01/05/2018.

‘Essential’ cookies are automatically placed on your computer or device when you access our website or take certain actions on our website. Non-essentail cookies and other technologies are only placed on your computer or device if you have consented to us doing so. For information on the difference between essential and non essential cookies, see the section below entitled About cookies.

For information on how you consent and how you can withdraw your consent to us placing non-essential cookies and other technologies on your computer or device, see the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies.

Contents

• About cookies

• List of cookies used

• Essential cookies

• Non-essential cookies

• Web Beacons

• Facebook Pixels

• How to accept or reject cookies

• Copyright, credit and logo

About cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small data files sent by a website’s server to a web browser, processor memory or hard drive and stored there. They can be used for a range of different purposes, such as customising a website for a particular user, helping a user navigate a website, improving that user’s website experience, and storing that user’s preferences and login information.

Essential and non-essential cookies

Cookies can be classified as either ‘essential’ or ‘non-essential’.

Essential cookies: these are cookies that are either:

• used solely to carry out or facilitate the transmission of communications over a network; or

• strictly necessary to provide an online service (e.g. our website or a service on our website) which you have requested.

Non-essential cookies: these are any cookies that do not fall within the definition of essential cookies, such as cookies used to analyse your behaviour on a website (‘analytical’ cookies) or cookies used to display advertisements to you (‘advertising’ cookies).

Session and persistent cookies

Cookies can be classified as either ‘session’ or ‘persistent’, depending on how long they last after they are placed on your browser.

Session cookies: session cookies last for as long as you keep your browser open. They expire when you close your browser.

Persistent cookies: persistent cookies expire at a fixed point in time or if you manually delete them from your browser, whichever occurs first.

First and third party cookies

Cookies can be classified as ‘first party’ or ‘third party’.

First party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by our website domain.

Third party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by third party website domains.

If you require further information about cookies in general, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org

List of cookies used

[We use the following cookies on or in relation to our website:]

Essential cookies

These are cookies which are strictly necessary for our website to be able to operate or to provide you with a service on our website which you have requested. We use the following essential cookies on our website:

First party session cookies for remembering the items you have placed in your shopping basket. These cookies are: Frontend, Frontend_cid

First party session cookies to indentify and authenticate you when you login into our website so you do not need to repeatedly enter your login information. These cookies are: Frontend, Frontend_cid

First party persistent cookies cookies to recognise whether you have accepted the use of cookies on our website. These cookies are: acceptedCookies, analyticsCookies, socialCookies and will expire after 365 days.

First party persistent cookies to remember the language in which to display our website to you. These cookies are: Frontend, Frontend_cid and will expire after 1 day.

Legal basis for processing: we process information about you contained in or obtained from essential cookies in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation).

Legitimate interests: ensuring our site functions properly and providing you with online service you have requested.

How to opt out of essential cookies

Most browsers allow you to block all cookies, including essential cookies. Please note, however, that if you block all cookies, parts of our website and its functionality may not work or display properly.

You can delete existing cookies from your browser by clearing your browsing data and ensuring that the option to delete cookies is selected.

For more detailed information on how to accept and reject cookies, including guidance for specific browsers, please see the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Non-essential cookies

We use the following types of non-essential cookies on our website:

• Functional cookies

• Analytical (or performance) cookies

• Targeting (or advertising) cookies

Functional cookies

These are cookies that are designed for purposes such as enhancing a website’s functionality. These are either not strictly essential for the website or functionality which you have requested to work, or are cookies which serve non-essential purposes in addition to their essential purpose. We use the following functional cookies on our website:

How to opt in or out from functional cookies

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Processing information about you contained in or obtained from functional cookies

Legal basis for processing: we process information about you contained in or obtained from functional cookies in our legitimate interests (Article 6 (1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation. We will only process such personal information if you have consented to us placing cookies on your computer or device.

Legitimate interests: improving your website experience and providing or enhancing the website functionality you have requested. We use this information for analysing information and for website live chat functionality.

For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of functional cookies, please see the section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here https://www.guitar.co.uk/privacy

Analytical (or performance) cookies

Analytical (or performance) cookies track and gather data about what a user does on a website. These cookies are not essential for our website or its functionality to work. We use the following analytical cookies on our website:

We use Google Analytics cookies on our website. Google Analytics cookies help us understand how you engage and interact with our website, including how you came to our website, which pages you visited, for how long and what you clicked on, your location (based on your IP address) and any other information you obtain about and individual from Google Analytics.

The Google Analytics cookies used on our website are: _ga, _gat. These cookies are persistent cookies. These cookies expire after 730 days.

The information we collect using analytical cookies is collected on an anonymised basis.

More information

Google Analytics cookies are classified as first party cookies as they are set by our website domain, although Google collects and processes information from our use of Google Analytics. To find out more about how Google handles information collected from Google Analytics, see Google Analytics’ privacy policy, which is available here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245

For information on how Google uses data from cookies it uses, please visit www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/

How to opt in or out from analytical cookies

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

To opt out of Google Analytics tracking across all websites in general, you can do so here: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoutout

Processing information about you contained in or obtained from analytical cookies

Legal basis for processing: we process information about you contained in or obtained from functional cookies in our legitimate interests (Article 6 (1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation.

Legitimate interests: analysing how individuals use our website to help us improve our website and business. For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of analytical cookies, including profiling, please see the section entitled Our use of automated decision making profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: https://www.guitar.co.uk/privacy

Targeting (or advertising) cookies

Targeting (or advertising) cookies record information about your visit to and use of our website, for advertising purposes. We use the targeting cookies for the following purposes on our website

First party persistent cookies to display advertisements to you based on your interests and to measure their effectiveness. These cookies are: _ga, _gat. These cookies expire after 730 days.

First party persistent cookies to remarket advertisements to you based on your interests and to measure their effectiveness. These cookies are: _ga, _gat These cookies expire after 730 days.

How to opt in or out from advertising cookies

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Processing information about you contained in or obtained from advertising cookies

Legal basis for processing: we process information about you contained in or obtained from advertising cookies in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation).
Legitimate interests: displaying advertisements to you about our products and services. For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of advertising cookies, including automated decision making and profiling. Please see the section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: https://www.guitar.co.uk/privacy .

Third party cookies

Third parties use cookies to analyse your use of our website and/or to display advertisements (including third party advertisements) to you including Google Adwords.

Third party cookies used in relation to our website include:

Third party Google Adwords cookies. To track whether you come to us via an advertisement we have placed on a search engine results page and/or elsewhere across the internet, such as another website.

Third party Google Remarketing cookies.

To display advertisements to you about our goods and services across the internet, including on other websites you visit. Google uses cookies to display advertisements to you about our products and services on other websites and other locations across the internet based on the fact you have visited our website. Google may also display other advertisements across the internet to you about thrid party services using the Google Adsense network, although this is beyond our control. For more information about Google Remarketing, click here: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2453998?hl=en

Third party Google cookies. To display advertisements on our website. We use Google Adsense on our website. Google uses cookies to display advertisements to you on our website about third party goods and services based on the websites you have visited.

More information

For information about the cookies Google uses in relation to the above, see the ‘Advertising’ section on the Types of cookies used by Google page in Google’s cookies policy, which is available here: https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/types/

For information about how Google uses data from cookies for its own purposes, please visit the following link www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/

How to opt in or out from third party cookies

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Processing information about you contained in or obtained from third party cookies

Legal basis for processing: we process information about you contained in or obtained from essential cookies in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation).

Legitimate interests: the purposes for which we use the third party cookies as described above. For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of third party cookies, including automated decision making and profiling, please see section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: https://www.guitar.co.uk/privacy

Other technologies

Web beacons

We and any marketing companies we use, also embed web beacons in our marketing emails and on our website, Web beacons are small GIF image files which enable us to track your receipt of our marketing emails, how often you view our adverts or website pages, your location, IP address and browser infformation. Web beacons are activated whenever you open a marketing email or access a page on our website which contains a web beacon. Web beacons transmit data when you view them but are not capable of accessing any other information on your computer. Web beacons are not stored on your hard drive unless you download a GIF image containing them.

Some but not all browsers enable you to restrict the use of web beacons by either preventing them from sending information back to their source (for example, when you choose settings that block cookies and trackers), or by not accessing the images containing them.

How to opt in or out

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Legal basis for processing: we process the information we gather from the use of web beacons in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation).

Legitimate interest: analysing the effectiveness of our email marketing campaigns and/or insert purpose of use of web beacons if you use them on your website in addition to email marketing. For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of web beacons, including automated decision making and profiling please see the section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: https://www.guitar.co.uk/privacy

Legitimate interest: analysing the effectiveness of our email marketing campaigns and/or insert use of web beacons if you use them on your website in addition to email marketing. For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of web beacons, including automated decision making and profiling please see the section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: https://www.guitar.co.uk/privacy

How to opt in or out

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Legal basis for processing: we process information about you contained in or obtained from web beacons in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation).

Legitimate interests: analysing the effectiveness of our advertisements on Facebook. For further information on how we use the information gathered from our Facebook Pixel. including automated decision making and profiling, please see section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: https://www.guitar.co.uk/privacy

How to accept or reject cookies

There are a number of different ways in which you can accept or reject some or all cookies and similar technologies. Some of the main methods of doing so are described below:

You are welcome to block the use of some or all of the cookies we use on our website. However, please be aware that doing so may impair our website and its functionality or may even render some or all of it unusable.

You should also be aware that clearing all cookies from your browser will also delete any cookies that are storing your preferences, for example, whether you have accepted cookies on a website or any cookies that are blocking other cookies.

You can find more detailed information about cookies and adjusting your browser settings by visiting www.allaboutcookies.org

Accepting or rejecting cookies

Cookie control tool

You can accept or reject non essential cookies by using our cookie management tool. You can turn off non essential cookies simply by opening the cookie toolbar and clicking the non essential option.

Browser settings

You can accept or reject some or all cookies (for example, blocking all third party cookies) by adjusting your browser settings. If you do not know how to do this, the links below set out information about how to change your browser settings for some of the most commonly used web browsers:

• Google Chrome: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647?hl=en-GB

• Mozilla Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/delete-browsing-search-download-history-firefox?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Clear+Recent+History

• Microsoft Internet Explorer: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/278835/how-to-delete-cookie-files-in-internet-explorer

• Apple Safari: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH5042?locale=en_US

Some browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox, allow you to change your settings to browse in ‘incognito’ mode, limiting the amount of data placed on your machine and automatically deleting any persistent cookies placed on your device when you finish your browsing session. There are also many third party applications which you can add to your browser to block or manage cookies.

Existing cookies

To clear cookies that have previously been placed on your browser, you should select the option to clear your browsing history and ensure that the option to delete or clear cookies is included when you do so.

Google Adsettings

You can manage and opt out of personalisation of advertisements by Google by visiting Google’s ad settings page here https://adssettings.google.com/ and by:

• unticking the button entitled ‘Also use Google Account activity and information to personalize ads on these websites and apps and store that data in your Google Account’; and

• switching the ‘Ads Personalisation’ setting off (i.e. by ensuring the switch at the top of the page is set to the left/grey and not the right/blue).

Alternatively, you can install a free browser plugin here: https://support.google.com/ads/answer/7395996

Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on

You can opt out of Google Analytics tracking by installing the browser add-on which is available here: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Web beacons

You can opt in to us using web beacons in our marketing emails by: leaving your cookies set to default

You can opt out of our use of web beacons in our marketing emails by: disabling non essential cookies simply by opening the cookie toolbar and clicking the non essential option.

European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance Tool

You can opt out of Facebook and other companies that participate in the Digital Advertising Alliance in Europe from showing you interest based ads by visiting http://www.youronlinechoices.com, selecting your country, clicking ‘Your Ad Choices’, then locating Facebook (and any other companies you want to block) and selecting the ‘Off’ option.