We use cookies and similar tools across our websites to improve their performance and enhance your user experience. This policy explains how we do that.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files which a website may put on your computer or mobile 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 other 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 to remember your username and preferences, analyse how well our website is performing, or even allow us to recommend content that we believe will be most relevant to you.

Certain cookies contain personal information – for example, if you click on “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 including how users arrive at and use our websites, or a user’s general location which is identified via your IP address.

What sort of cookies does ABS use?

Generally, our cookies perform up to three different functions:

Essential Cookies

Some cookies are essential for the operation of our website. If a user opts to disable these cookies, the user will not be able to access all of the content that they have signed up to access.

Performance Cookies

We utilise other cookies to analyse how our visitors use our websites and to monitor website performance. This allows us to provide a high-quality experience by customising our offering and quickly identifying and fixing any issues that may arise. For example, we might use performance cookies to keep track of which pages are most popular, which method of linking between pages is most effective, and to determine why some pages are receiving error messages. We might also use these cookies to highlight blog posts or products that we think will be of interest to you based on your use of our website.

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 customisation preferences.

Like many companies, we use Google Analytics to help us monitor our 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.

Can a website user block cookies?

As we’ve explained above, cookies help you to get the most out of our websites. However, if you do wish to disable our cookies then please change your browser settings. Please remember that if you do choose to disable cookies, you may find that certain sections of our website do not work properly.