Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them see our Cookie policy.

We use cookies across this website for internal purposes to help us to provide you with a better user experience. We actually set no first-party cookies, however we do employ services supplied by third parties that set their own cookies. These are non-intrusive and support functionality on the site. Most of these are temporary ‘session’ cookies.

More information about the nature and use of cookies can be found at the website www.allaboutcookies.org which includes instructions on removing and disabling cookies on your computer.

 

Cookies in use on the SFI website

Google Analytics: One session cookie, up to three persistent cookies.

SFI employs the Google Analytics service to understand how our visitors use the website so that we can improve how we present our content to you. SFI doesn’t set Google Analytics cookies, these come directly from Google. Although SFI doesn’t implement ‘persistent’ cookies, Google employs these to provide data relating to website usage over multiple sessions. You can opt out of Google Analytics without affecting other functionality using a Google-supplied tool found here.

Information about our use of cookies

What is a Cookie?

A Cookie is a small text file, usually consisting of letters and numbers, placed on your computer, tablet, phone, or similar device, when you use that device to visit a website. A Cookie is acknowledged by your web browser and acts to identify your device.

Cookies are widely used by website owners to make their websites work, or to work more efficiently, as well as to collect and send information about your visit to their website, for example, the number of visits, average time spent, pages viewed, navigation history through the website and other statistics.

Our website uses Cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.

How Do We Use Cookies?

SFI uses Cookies and various similar technologies, which may include pixel tags, web tokens, beacons, clear GIFs, and JavaScript, to help improve your experience and the performance and efficiency of our website. We will refer to Cookies and similar technologies as “Cookies” for the purpose of this notice.

Cookies may be used to allow us and third parties to know when you visit our website, and to understand how you interact with e-mails, advertisements, or other content.

Cookies, aggregate and other information (such as your operating system, browser version, and the URL you came from) that does not identify individual users, may be obtained and used to enhance your experience and understand traffic patterns. This technology counts who clicked on links or graphics included in e-mail newsletters received from SFI. It is also used as a tool to compile aggregated statistics about how SFI websites are used, to perform analytics and help us to optimize our websites.

What Cookies Do We Use?

We use the following Cookies:

  • Strictly necessary Cookies. These are Cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, Cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website.
  • Analytical/performance Cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
  • Functionality Cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website.
  • Targeting Cookies. These Cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

Please note that third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use Cookies, over which we have no control. These Cookies are likely to be analytical/performance Cookies or targeting Cookies

You can block Cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some Cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all Cookies (including essential Cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

How Long do Cookies Stay on My Device?

Some Cookies, called “session Cookies,” operate from the time you visit our website to the end of that particular browsing session. These Cookies expire and are automatically deleted when you close your Internet browser.

Other Cookies, called “persistent Cookies,” will stay on your device between browsing sessions, they do not automatically expire when you close your browser. The length of time a persistent Cookie stays on your device varies from Cookie to Cookie. We and others use persistent Cookies for a variety of purposes, such as to store your preferences so that they are available for the next visit, and to keep a more accurate account of how often you visit our websites, how often you return, how your use of the websites may vary over time etc.