Cookie policy (last updated 08/06/2012)

A cookie is a small piece of information sent by a web server to the web browser, which enables the web server to collect information from the browser. Cookies are an industry standard technology used on the vast majority of web sites often to remember site settings and analyse usage patterns.

TheWeatherOutlook (TWO) uses cookies to maximise your experience on the site, but NOT to identify individuals. If you restrict or block cookies on your browser, TWO site functionality will be reduced and the quality of your browsing experience lowered.

More detailed information is provided below, and please take time to read About TheWeatherOutlook and our Privacy Policy. We are continuing to review our cookie policy and technical approach, and are looking at additional changes.

Find out more about the use of cookies on http://www.cookiecentral.com.

If you do not accept the privacy and cookie policy, do not use this web site.

To help inform you we have added a cookie status section to the site bar. The site bar is switched on and off by clicking on the Settings and cookies link near the top of the page.

If you currently allow us to create cookies you should see a message like this:

If you currently do not allow us to create cookies you should see a message like this:


Important note
Browsers often allow more granular control over cookies, for example blocking some and allowing others. Our test only checks to see whether you allow us to create 1st party primary cookies on your browser. 

Most browsers allow you to turn off cookies. If you want to know how to do this please look at the “help” menu on your browser or check About Cookies. Switching off cookies will restrict your use of this and other websites, and affect the way in which the website operates. For example, it will not be possible to remember your mobile or desktop site settings, your Place or postcode, your weather forecast type selection or the units you want the forecast to display.

These are cookies are required to remember your site settings including:
1) weather forecast location or postcode,
2) weather forecast type
3) weather forecast units
4) desktop or mobile site
5) display weather forecast graph
5) to remember your discussion forum login, so that you don't need to enter your username and password every time you visit the discussion forum
6) Check whether you allow cookies

Updated 8th May 2012
To make things clearer for you we have redeveloped the site to reduce the number of primary cookies (exc the forum) it uses from 6 to 3 on the 8th May 2012.

Updated 17th May 2012
To make things clearer for you we have redeveloped the site to reduce the number of primary cookies on the 16th May 2012. Updated 25th May 2012
To check whether you have been shown the cookie policy acceptance notice an additional essential cookie, twoeuc has been added.

The only primary cookies now used are:

twotest - required to test whether your browser currently allows our site to create cookies it is necessary to try creating one. If this cookie is created successfully it is immediately deleted. 
twosettings - required to store your forecast location or postcode, forecast type, units, graph display. Automatically expires after 90 days.
twoeuc - required to check whether you have been shown the cookie policy acceptance

The following cookies were used before 17th May 2012, but have now been retired and are not used by the web site:
twomob

The following cookies were used before 8th May 2012, but have now been retired and are not used by the web site:
cbtab
ddl 
twograph 
twopostcode 
twounits

Updated 24th May 2012
The site has been changed so that the twosettings primary cookie is not created until you change a setting on TWO (e.g. enter a Place or postcode in the forecast picker)

TheWeatherOutlook forum currently issues the following cookies:
.YAFNET_Authentication
ASP.NET_SessionId
Beginning with panelstate_ (e.g. panelstate_ActiveDiscussions) to maintain discussion forum settings.

These cookies are required for the user to log in and remain logged into TheWeatherOutlook discussion forum. 

Google Analytics is the industry standard way of tracking visits to websites. As access to all of our site is completely free and does not require you to register (with the exception of limited parts of the discussion forum) it is essential for us to be able to see how you got to our website, and what you liked or what you found pointless. In other words we use this information to improve your experience of our website and to understand where to focus our limited development resources. You can find more information about how it uses cookies on the Google Analytics support pages. We cannot identify individuals through the Analytics data, it only provides us with information on trends and patterns of site use.

Google Analytics currently uses the following cookies:
__utma - automatically expires after 2 years
__utmb - automatically expires 30 minutes from set/update
__utmc -  Not set
__utmz - automatically expires 6 months from set/update

Advertising
Most of the advertisements you see on the website are generated by third parties. Some of these third parties generate their own cookies to track how many people have seen a particular advertisement (or use the services of third parties to do this), and to track how many people have seen it more than once. These cookies cannot be used to identify an individual; they can only be used for statistical purposes, for example, in providing you with advertisements that are more relevant to your interests. Some of the information gleaned from third party cookies will be aggregated with other anonymous information for statistical purposes. The third party companies that generate these cookies have their own, very strict, privacy policies but we don't have access to these cookies; other than allowing them to be served, we have no role to play in these cookies at all (although we may use statistical information arising from these third party cookies and provided to us by third parties, to improve the targeting of advertisements to users of the website). If you would like to disable "third party" cookies generated by advertisers or providers of targeted advertising services, you can turn them off by going to the third party's website and getting them to generate a one-time "no thanks" cookie that will stop any further cookies being written to your machine.

A lot of the ads on the site are served by Google, as a third-party vendor. Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users on this site based on their visit to this site and other sites on the Internet.
Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

The following link is one of the main third party advertising platforms we use, and has cookie opt out information:
Doubleclick

You can also visit the trade body representing these advertising companies for more information on how to opt out of these cookies: http://youronlinechoices.com/

Social networking
To make it easy for you to share information on the site with social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+, some of the pages on our site have industry standard plugins which use cookies so that you are able to post directly to your account. Currently specific plugins for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ are used.

Updated 24th May 2012
The generic plugin called AddThis which can create a number of cookies has been retired.  

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