Cookie policy

A cookie is a small file a site asks your browser to keep and hand back on the next visit. Used well, it remembers that you are signed in. Used the way most of the web uses it, it is how a page you read on Monday becomes an advertisement you see on Thursday.

The law in most places treats anything stored on your device the same way, whatever it is called. Local storage, session storage and similar techniques all count, so this page covers those too.

One thing loads before anything else can, and only with your permission: Google Tag Manager, container ID GTM-5WMW34BQ. Everything described below runs inside it, which is why refusing at the banner stops all of it at once.

It is loaded from Google's servers, and it can set cookies belonging to Google. That is why it sits behind the banner. If you refuse, or close the banner without answering, the container is never requested, no connection to Google is made and your IP address is not sent to them. This is stricter than the usual arrangement, where the container loads for everybody and the tags inside it are held back.

What runs inside it depends entirely on which categories you allowed:

• +Allow analytics and two things load. Google Analytics counts page views and shows us how people arrive. Microsoft Clarity records a silent playback of the visit, and what you type into the enquiry form is hidden from that recording.
• +Allow marketing and four things load: the Meta pixel, Google Ads conversion tracking, Microsoft Advertising and the LinkedIn Insight Tag. Each exists for one purpose, which is to tell us whether an advertisement produced an enquiry.
• +Allow neither and none of it is fetched. The container itself is never requested, no connection to Google is made, and your IP address is not sent to anybody.

Beyond that, recognizegroup.com still runs none of the following:

• +Embedded players, maps, chat widgets or social buttons, each of which sets cookies from somebody else's domain.
• +A third-party consent platform, which would set cookies of its own in order to remember your answer.
• +Any tracking at all before you have answered the banner.

Some of this is not a cookie and belongs on this page anyway. If you allow marketing and then send us the contact form, a scrambled version of your email and phone goes to Meta from our server, and to Google and Microsoft from your browser. LinkedIn is told that an enquiry happened and nothing whatever about who made it. None of it happens if you refuse.

The two sent from your browser need your details to reach the thank-you page, so they are held in your browser's session storage for the seconds between sending the form and that page loading, and deleted the moment they are handed over. They are never put into a web address. If you refuse marketing they are never written down at all.

The consent banner is ours, it runs on this site, and it sends nothing anywhere.

Two categories, both switched off until you turn them on. Your choice is stored and applied to anything added later as well as to what is running now.

• +Strictly necessary. Whatever the site needs to work and to remember your answer to this question. It cannot be switched off, and there is no version of a website where it can be.
• +Analytics. Which pages get read, how people arrive and where they give up. This includes Microsoft Clarity, which records a playback of your visit: where you moved, what you clicked, how far you scrolled. What you type into the form is hidden from that recording. We use all of it to decide what to write next and where the site is losing people. Nothing in it identifies you to us by name. This is in use.
• +Marketing. Measuring whether an advertisement produced an enquiry. Four companies are involved: Meta, Google, Microsoft and LinkedIn. If you allow this and then send us the contact form, a scrambled version of your email and phone is passed to Meta by our server, and to Google and Microsoft by your browser, so each can match it to an advertisement you saw. LinkedIn is told that an enquiry happened and nothing about who made it. This is in use. What is sent, and how it is scrambled, is set out in the privacy policy.

Nothing is pre-ticked. Refusing is one button, in the same place and at the same size as accepting. Ignoring the banner grants nothing, and you are not locked out of anything for saying no.

One thing worth being straight about. Allowing analytics loads Microsoft Clarity, and Clarity sets several Microsoft cookies that Microsoft also uses on its advertising side. We do not use them for advertising and have no way to. If that distinction matters to you, refusing analytics is the way to avoid them, and the site works exactly the same either way.

One thing regardless of what you choose. Everything else appears only if you allowed the category it belongs to, and is listed here with how long it lasts.

• +rec-consent. Your answer to the banner, kept in this browser's local storage. It holds the version of this notice you answered, the date and time, and whether you allowed each category. It never leaves your browser, we cannot read it, we have no copy of it, and there is no identifier in it. This one is set whatever you choose, because a refusal has to be remembered too.
• +_ga and _ga_ followed by a property code. Set by Google Analytics once you allow analytics. The first holds a randomly generated number used to tell one browser from another; the second keeps the state of your visit so a session is not counted twice. Both last around thirteen months.
• +_clck, _clsk and CLID. Set by Microsoft Clarity once you allow analytics, to tie the pages of one visit into a single playback. _clck and CLID last a year, _clsk a day.
• +MUID, MR, SRM_B, SM and ANONCHK. Also set when Clarity loads, by Microsoft rather than by us, on Microsoft's own domains. MUID is Microsoft's identifier for a browser and is shared across Microsoft services, including their advertising. It lasts about thirteen months; the others from a day to a week. We do not read any of them and cannot.
• +_fbp. Set by the Meta pixel once you allow marketing, to recognise this browser if you later see one of our advertisements. It lasts ninety days.
• +fr. Set by Meta on facebook.com when the pixel loads, for their own advertising measurement. It lasts ninety days and we cannot read it.
• +_gcl_au. Set by Google once you allow marketing, so an enquiry can be attributed to the advertisement that produced it. It lasts ninety days.
• +IDE. Set by Google on doubleclick.net when the advertising tags load, for their own measurement across sites. It lasts about thirteen months and we cannot read it.
• +_uetsid and _uetvid. Set by Microsoft Advertising once you allow marketing, for the same purpose as the Google pair above. _uetsid lasts a day, _uetvid about thirteen months.
• +bcookie, bscookie, lidc, li_sugr, UserMatchHistory, AnalyticsSyncHistory and __cf_bm. Set by LinkedIn on linkedin.com once you allow marketing, to recognise this browser if you later see one of our advertisements there. bcookie and bscookie last a year, li_sugr ninety days, the two History cookies thirty days, lidc a day, __cf_bm half an hour. They are LinkedIn's own and we cannot read any of them.

Refuse a category and none of its entries above is created, because the code that would set them is never fetched. Clearing your browsing data removes all of them, and the banner will ask again.

A few things sit outside cookies, in this browser's own storage. Google and Microsoft each keep a copy of the identifiers above there as well, for the same period and the same purpose, and Clarity records when you last arrived from another site. This site keeps two entries of its own for the length of a single visit: where you came from, so an enquiry can say which page brought you, and one reference number for an enquiry you have just sent, so it is not counted twice. All of it goes when you clear your browsing data.

If your browser or an extension sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as a refusal of everything optional, record it that way, and do not show you the banner. That signal is legally binding as an opt-out in California and in several other states. We honour it wherever you are, because it is an answer you have already given.

You can still switch something on in the preferences panel if you want to, and that choice overrides the signal for this site alone.

Withdrawing has to be as easy as giving, which is the requirement rather than a courtesy. Open the cookie preferences from here, or use the cookie preferences link at the bottom of any page on this site.

You do not have to take our word for it. In Chrome or Edge, open DevTools, go to Application, then Cookies, and select recognizegroup.com. In Safari, Develop, then Show Web Inspector, then Storage. In Firefox, Storage, then Cookies. Refuse the banner, or ignore it, and the cookie list stays empty. Accept, and the two Google cookies named above appear and nothing else does.

Your browser also caches the fonts, images and code this site is made of, so a second page loads faster than the first. That is a cache, and it holds our files rather than a record of you. Our host keeps server access logs, which is a different thing again and is covered in the privacy policy.

This page was rewritten on the day Google Tag Manager went in, and named it, which is what the previous version of this page said we would do. The same applies to whatever comes next: we rewrite this first and name what we added and why. Anything optional stays behind the answer you gave, and if the categories above ever change meaning, the banner asks again instead of treating an old answer as covering a new purpose.

Questions go to marketing@recognizegroup.com.