Cookies

Like many websites, the Historic Scotland Shop website use small files called cookies to help provide the best possible online experience for you.

This page will tell you what cookies are and what they do, how we use them and how you can control your cookie preferences.

What are cookies?

Cookies are little strings of computer code that websites place on your computer.

Some cookies are deleted after the browser is closed (session cookies). Others delete after a certain period of time has passed or the cookie cache has been manually cleared from your browser (persistent cookies). Depending on the persistent cookie, they may last from one day to two years. We use both session and persistent cookies.

Cookies that are set by us on the Historic Scotland Shop website are first party cookies. They help the website to function and provide us with anonymised data about how our website is being used.

Third party cookies are set on our website by one of our partners and service providers for advertising purposes and online security. These cookies help us to learn more about you so we know you are a trusted visitor of the website and not a bot and so we can personalise our marketing offer to you.

Essential cookies (also known as Strictly necessary cookies)

These cookies are used to load parts of the website you otherwise couldn’t, load content quickly, make sure your visit to the website is secure and remember things like your cookie preferences. These cookies are automatically selected in the cookie preferences.

The only essential cookie provided by a third party service on the Historic Scotland Shop website is ARRAffinity from Azure. This cookie is set by websites run on the Windows Azure cloud platform. It’s makes sure your page requests are sent to the same server while you browse. For more detail, read their Privacy Notice.

Performance cookies

We use performance cookies to help us better our website and your experience. They:

tell us if you’ve been on our website before
help us understand if there are problems on the website or if you can’t find what you’re looking for
track your behaviour so we can find out what content you’re most interested in

Any performance cookies we use collect anonymised data to protect your identity. We don’t collect any data on age, gender, sex, political or religious beliefs, nationality or postcodes through cookies.

The performance cookies on the Historic Scotland Shop website are set by us. Google Analytics is an example of a first party cookie which we use for performance.

Apps we use from third parties may be able to access your data. You can see a list of these apps in our Privacy Notice. We do not sell your data to any third parties.

Marketing cookies

We use advertising cookies from third parties to understand your interests and show relevant adverts based on your browsing habits. If you click on a specific advertisement, these cookies track your interaction and may show you similar offers.

If you accept marketing cookies, we may advertise to you with an aim of generating income for the ongoing management and protection of Scotland’s heritage. Many of our visitors fund us by visiting historic places we care for, or by becoming Historic Scotland Members. To encourage more visitors and new members, we are reliant on marketing.

There are times when we want to reach visitors who use social media to promote relevant offers, events, and promotions. We use third party cookies to help with this.

For example, we might place a tiny image called a pixel on our web pages that allows Facebook to place a cookie on your web browser. If you use Facebook and have accepted Marketing Cookies on our website, Facebook will recognise you as an Historic Scotland Shop website visitor and show you marketing messages on our behalf. If you receive marketing from us on social media platforms you are able to withdraw your consent by adjusting your privacy settings on the social media platform itself.

We may also use online remarketing through cookies. This system allows us or our advertising partners to show you adverts based on your browsing patterns and interactions with the Historic Scotland Shop website. This means that when you are on another website, you may be shown products or offers related to your browsing history on the Historic Scotland Shop website.

The marketing and remarketing cookie services we use are managed by third parties. The privacy policies for the third party cookie providers we work with on the Historic Environment Scotland website are:

Google Adwords allows conversion tracking, optimisation and remarketing.
Google DoubleClick allows conversion tracking and optimisation.
Facebook pixel allows conservation tracking, optimisation and remarketing.
Media iQ pixel allows the display of adverts which are relevant to you and your interests.
Opinion Stage allows engagement with interactive Quizzes
Embedded Youtube videos set cookies which track views of Youtube videos and your behaviour interacting with them, recognise you as a Google user if you are signed into an account, and records your IP address.

Manage your cookie settings

On the Historic Environment Scotland website, we only use performance and marketing cookies after you have given your consent. If you don’t give your permission, we will only use basic, essential cookies.

You can also control your cookies in your web browser settings. Find out more about cookies, including how to manage and delete them, please use the following links:

To quickly manage third party cookies generated by advertisers, visit Your Online Choices.

We aren’t responsible for the information or the setting of cookies on these external websites.

Functionality preferences: These cookies allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your username, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. For instance, a website may be able to provide you with local weather reports or traffic news by storing in a cookie the region in which you are currently located. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of web pages that you can customise. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect may be anonymised and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.

Performance preferences: Performance cookies are used to measure the performance of our website and make improvements. Your personal data is not identified.

Set your personalised ads preferences: We work with advertising partners to show you ads for our products and services across the web. You can choose whether we collect and share that data with our partners.

Unclassified cookies

Unclassified cookies are cookies that we are in the process of classifying, together with the providers of individual cookies.