How the Michael Hoppen Gallery uses cookies

What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files which are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website or application. Your web browser (such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome) then sends these cookies back to the website or application on each subsequent visit so that they can recognise you and remember things like personalised details or user preferences.

You can think of cookies as providing a "memory" for the website, enabling it to recognise a user and respond appropriately. Some cookies also provide meaningful reports about a website's visitors.  Cookies are used by almost all websites, for a variety of purposes: analysis of visitor behaviour (known as 'analytics'), for personalising pages and remembering visitor preferences and for managing shopping carts in online stores. 

They are referred to as session or persistent cookies, depending on how long they are used:

• Session cookies only last for your online session and disappear from your computer or device when you close your browser.
• Persistent cookies stay on your computer or device after the browser has been closed and last for the period of time specified in the cookie. These persistent cookies are activated each time you visit the site where the cookie was generated.

How does www.michaelhoppengallery.com use cookies?
If you have to log in to the website (such as the Press section) it requires cookies in order for it to remember who you are. 

Other parts of the website which don't require you to log in only use Google Analytics cookies. These cookies do not identify people or personal information, but instead just record web traffic, allowing us to see which areas of the site are most popular and to tailor our content accordingly.

Can cookies threaten my privacy?
Cookies are stored on the computer's hard drive but cannot access the hard drive in any way - so a cookie can't read other information saved on the hard drive, or get a user's e-mail address, files etc. They only contain and transfer to the server as much information as the users themselves have disclosed to a certain website.

A server cannot set a cookie for a domain that it is not a member of.  In spite of this, users quite often find in their computer files cookies from websites that they have never visited. These cookies are usually set by companies that sell internet advertising on behalf of other web sites. Therefore it may be possible that users' information is passed to third party websites without the users' knowledge or consent, such as information on surfing habits. The Michael Hoppen Gallery does not use this type of cookie.

How do I turn cookies off?
All modern browsers allow you to change your cookie settings – these will usually be found in the ‘options’ or ‘preferences’ menu of your browser.   Please click on the following links for further information:

Cookie settings in Internet Explorer
Cookie settings in Firefox
Cookie settings in Chrome