www.johnvarthur.com (the website) use cookies and similar tools to improve their performance and enhance your user experience. This policy explains how we do that.

What are cookies?

Cookies are text files which a website may put on your computer or other device when you first visit a site or page. The cookie will help the website, or another website, to recognise your device the next time you visit. Web beacons or similar files can also do the same thing. We use the term "cookies" in this policy to refer to all files that collect information in this way.

Cookies serve many functions. For example, they can help us analyse how well the website is performing, to remember your username and preferences, or even allow us to recommend content we believe will be most relevant to you.

Personal information can contain certain personal information - for example, if you click to "remember me" when logging in, a cookie will store your username. Most cookies won't collect information that identifies you, and will instead collect more general information such as how users arrive at and use the website, or a user's general location.

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What sort of cookies does the website use?

Generally, our cookies perform up to four different functions:

1. Essential cookies

Some cookies are essential for the operation of the website. For example, some cookies allow us to identify registered users and ensure they can access their registered users only pages. If a registered user opts to disable these cookies, the user will not be able to access all of the content that a registration entitles them to.

2. Functionality Cookies

We use functionality cookies to allow us to remember your preferences. For example, cookies save you the trouble of typing in your username every time you access the site, and recall your saved searches and properties you have added to your shortlist.

3. Performance Cookies

We utilise other cookies to analyse how our visitors use the websites and to monitor website performance. We can therefore try to provide a high quality experience by customising our offering and quickly identifying and fixing any issues that arise. For example, we might use performance cookies to keep track of which pages are very popular, which method of linking between pages is best, and to determine why some pages are receiving error messages. We might also use these cookies to highlight articles or site services that we think will be of interest to you based on your usage of the website.

4. Behaviourally Targeted Advertising Cookies

The website and our advertisers use cookies to serve you with advertisements that we believe are relevant to you and your interests. For example, if you read a number of articles on mortgages on the website or on other sites, a bank might infer you are interested in this topic and serve you with its mortgage advertisements. You might see these advertisements on the website and on other sites that you visit. However, we do not tell our advertisers who you are.

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Does anyone else use cookies on the website?

Advertisers sometimes use their own cookies to provide you with targeted advertising. For example, advertisers may use a profile they have built on sites that you have previously visited to present you with more relevant advertisements during your visit to the website. We believe that it is useful to our users to see advertisements that are more relevant to their interests.

We also use or allow third parties to serve cookies that fall into the four categories above. For example, like many companies, we use Google Analytics to help us monitor the website traffic. We may also use third party cookies to help us with market research, revenue tracking, improving site functionality and monitoring compliance with our terms and conditions and copyright policy.

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Can a website user block cookies?

As we've explained above, cookies help you to get the most out of the website.

The first time you accessed the website after 26 May 2012, you should have seen an overlay which explained that by continuing to access our site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.

However, if you do wish to disable our cookies then please follow the instructions on "How to Manage Cookies" page.

Please remember that if you do choose to disable cookies, you may find that certain sections of the website do not work properly.

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Do we track whether users open our emails?

Our emails may contain a single, campaign-unique "web beacon pixel" to tell us whether our emails are viewed and verify any clicks through to links or advertisements within the email. We may use this information for purposes including determining which of our emails are more interesting to users, to query whether users who do not view our emails wish to continue receiving them and to inform our advertisers in aggregate how many users have clicked on their advertisements. The pixel will be deleted when you delete the email. If you do not wish the pixel to be downloaded to your device, you should select to receive emails from us in plain text rather than HTML.

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