We and service providers or partners engage to provide content, advertising, functionality and other services or that measure and analyze ad performance on the Services, may use cookies, web beacons and other similar technologies to understand usage of the Services and improve our content and offerings and to deliver advertisements in which you might be interested. These technologies collect statistical and other information about you and your use of the Services. Some of the tracking technologies we and our service providers or partners may use include:
Cookies. Cookies are small text files that may be stored in the memory of a user’s computer, mobile, e-reader, tablet or other device used when you visit our websites or applications. A cookie assigns a unique numerical identifier to your web browser or device, and may enable us or third parties to recognize you as the same user who has used the Services, and relate your use of the Services to other information about you, such as your usage information and personal information. The Growth Lab™ employs cookies to recognize you and your access privileges for certain locations on the Devices as well as to track site usage. Subscribers who do not accept cookies from the Devices cannot access many areas of the Devices.
We may use cookies in a variety of ways. For example, we may use cookies to:
- Provide us with information about which portions of our websites and applications are the most popular by enabling us to see what web pages a user visits and how much time a user spends on each page.
- Personalize your experience on our Services (e.g., to recognize you by name when you return to our site, to save your password in password-protected areas, to enable shopping carts, or to tailor content, or product and service offerings).
- Help us understand which ads you have seen so that you don’t receive the same ad each time you access the Services.
We use both “session ID cookies” and “persistent cookies.” Session ID cookies are used to store information while a user is logged into the Devices and expire when the user closes his/her browser. Persistent cookies are used to make tasks like logging into the Devices easier for returning users by remembering a user’s login information. Persistent cookies stay on a user’s hard drive from one session to the next.
Cache Cookies. Cache cookies, such as eTags, may be used to identify your computer or device as the same computer or device that visited a Service or Services in the past. Like most standard website servers, we log IP addresses (a unique number assigned to every computer on the Internet) and Device identification in order to improve security, analyze trends and administer the Devices. We may track your movement within the Devices, the pages from which you were referred, access times and browser types. This information may include the browser you are using, the Internet address from which you linked to our Devices, the operating system of your computer, the unique IP address of the computer or Device identification from the Device that you used to access our Devices and usage and browsing habits. We use this information in the aggregate to gauge the effectiveness, usage, and popularity of our Devices, track information for statistical purposes, help diagnose and troubleshoot server malfunctions, analyze trends, track user movement in the aggregate, and gather information. We may also use individual information we collect through web logs to send you targeted offers and other communications.
Local Shared Objects. Local shared objects, such as “Flash cookies” also may be stored on your computer or device via the Adobe Flash plug-in that may be built-in to or downloaded by you to your Device to personalize your visit. Local shared objects operate a lot like cookies because they are stored on your device and can be used to store certain information about your activities and preferences; however, they cannot be managed in the same way as cookies. Depending on how local shared objects are enabled on your computer or device, you may be able to manage them using software settings. For information on managing Flash cookies, for example, see http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/disable-local-shared-objects-flash.html.
Our third-party service providers also may use Flash cookies to collect and store information. Flash cookies are different from standard browser cookies because of the amount of data, type of data, and how data is stored.
HTML 5. HTML5, the language some websites are coded in, may be used to store information on your computer or device about how you use the Services. This information may be retrieved by us to help us manage the Services, and may give us information about how the Services are being used by our visitors, how they can be improved, and how we can customize the Services for users.
Web Beacons. Small graphic images or other web programming code called web beacons may be included in our web pages and messages. A web beacon is an electronic image called a single-pixel or “clear gif” that is a small piece of code that is used to collect anonymous and aggregate advertising metrics, such as the counting of page views, promotion views, or advertising responses. Web beacons can recognize certain types of information, such as a user’s cookie number, time and date of a page view, and description of the page where the web beacon is placed. These web beacons may be used to deliver cookies that conform to our cookie policy above.
Embedded Scripts: An embedded script is programming code that is designed to collect information about your interactions with the Devices, such as the links you click on. The code is temporarily downloaded onto your Device from our web server or a third party service provider, is active only while you are connected to the Devices, and is deactivated or deleted thereafter.
Mobile Device IDs and Location-Based Information. Certain mobile devices, including smart phones and tablet devices, contain unique device IDs that can be used to identify their physical location. Some mobile device IDs are permanent, while others may be changed by accessing the device’s privacy settings. Mobile devices also typically transmit caller ID data (which may include a phone number) when used to transmit a telephone call or text message. When you use mobile devices to access our Services, we may collect and transmit unique device IDs and collect caller ID data, as well as other information about your device, including without limitation, your wireless carrier, the make, model, operating system, capacity and settings of your device, the names, package IDs and versions of other software you have downloaded to your device and information about how you interact with and navigate within our Service.
These tracking technologies may be deployed by us and/or our by our service providers, partners on our behalf. These technologies enable us to assign a unique number to you, and may allow us to relate your use of the relevant Services to other information about you, including your usage information and personal information. We may match information collected from you through different means or at different times and combine such information with information obtained from other sources (including third parties), such as demographic information and updated contact information (where that information has been lawfully disclosed to us), for the purposes of learning more about you so we can provide you with relevant content.
Turning Off Tracking Technologies: You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a persistent or session cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off such cookies through your browser settings. Each browser is a different, so look at your browser’s Help menu to learn the correct way to modify your cookies. However, cookie management tools provided by your browser will not remove Flash cookies and may not disable HTML5 storage.
Google Opt-Outs: Google is one of the companies that we use to serve advertising and perform analytics on some of the Services. To learn about Google Analytics’ currently available opt-outs for the Web, click here. To learn more about how Google uses cookies in advertising, you can visit the Google Advertising Privacy & Terms policy located here. You can opt out of receiving interest-based Google ads, or customize the ads Google shows you, by clicking here. The Growth Lab™ also uses third party services for remarketing products and services, such as Google’s Customer Match via the Google platform, whereby we will deliver targeted ads to you based on your prior usage on the Services. If you want to opt-out of remarketing, please email us at legal@theglab.org