A cookie is a simple text file which stores small pieces of information. When you visit a website, its server saves the cookie onto your computer or other device. Only that website’s server will be able to read or retrieve the contents of that cookie. When you return to the site, the site can access its previously placed cookie to uniquely identify your browser. 

Cookies do many different jobs like ensuring the security of our websites, storing your preferences, helping you navigate effectively, and improving your overall experience of a website. Cookies make the interaction between you and the website quicker and easier. For example, a cookie might store information so you don't have to keep entering it.

We use cookies for different purposes. Some cookies are needed to make our website work and to keep it secure. These can’t be turned off and are called ‘strictly necessary cookies’ or ‘essential cookies’. Other cookies such as ‘Experience and insight cookies’ and ‘Marketing cookies’ are considered ‘non-essential’. As such, these cookies will be turned off unless you choose to accept them. More detail on these cookies are set out below:

Essential cookies: These cookies are needed for you to be able to use our websites securely. These are automatically set when you open our website and cannot be turned off.

Experience and Insight cookies: These cookies remember your settings on our websites to make your experience better. They also help us understand how people use our websites so we can make improvements. These cookies are automatically set to off when you open our site but you can choose to turn these on [or off again] at any time by clicking on the cookie policy link at the bottom of our website pages and navigating your way to the ’Manage cookies’ preference section.

Marketing cookies: These cookies help us decide which products, service and offers might be of interest to you. These cookies are set to off when you open our site and you can choose to turn these on or off at any time, but disabling them won’t stop you seeing adverts, it just means they may be less relevant to your needs.

You can find a full list of the cookies used on our websites below.

We use both first and third party cookies.

First party cookies – these are set by abrdn and the data collected isn’t shared with anyone. These cookies are used to remember information about how you use the website(s).

Third party cookies – these are placed on your device by a Third Party’s website other than the one you’re on. For example, if you use a social media “share” button on a website, the social network (like Facebook) will put a cookie on your device so they know what you’ve browsed / liked while visiting that website. If you want to control how such Third Parties can use your data then you need to set your privacy choices on their site. We work with the following Third Parties in relation to cookies:

• Qumu –provides the video player we use to show video content on our websites. The Qumu cookies we will use are needed to make the video player work. However, they also allow us to track video views on our websites so are categorised as Experience & Insight. You can read Qumu's privacy policy for more information on how they handle and use the personal information collected via these cookies.
• Google – We will use Google cookies for advertising purposes so that we can make our adverts more relevant to you and also so we can understand if our marketing is effective. The Google product suite also allows us to use data to optimise the website experience for users. Google's third party cookies are classed as Marketing cookies. Find out more about how Google handles and uses personal information collected via these cookies here
• Facebook – We will use Facebook cookies to help target messages that might be relevant to you. These are classed as Marketing cookies. You can read Facebook’s privacy policy for more information on how they handle and process personal information.
• Twitter - We will use Twitter cookies to enable you to tweet links to share our web content if you want to. These cookies are classed as Experience & Insight. Find out more about how Twitter uses cookies here
• LinkedIn – We will use LinkedIn cookies to help target messages that might be relevant to you on LinkedIn. These are classed as Marketing cookies. Find out more about data collected by LinkedIn here
• Contentsquare – Contentsquare is a web analytics service. We will use these cookies to understand how users interact with our websites. These cookies give Contentsquare information which aggregates usage and frequency data to help us improve user experience. The IP address collected through ContentSquare will not be associated with any other data held by Contentsquare. No other personal information, which allows the user to be identified, will be collected when visiting this website. For information on how Contentsquare handles personal data, please read their privacy policy here
• Full Story – We will use FullStory to help us better understand your experience by securely storing anonymised recordings of your actions within our website. These cookies are classed as Experience & Insight. Find out more about the data collected by Fullstory here.
• Eloqua - Eloqua cookies track a user’s journey through the site in response to an email from us. The cookies are used for optimising our marketing communications by email to allow us to send further messages which are relevant, personalise content and improve your experience with us. Find out more about the data collected by Eloqua and how this used here
• Oracle Infinity - Infinity IQ customer data platform. This cookie tells us how individuals are interacting with our website so we can improve its performance. These cookies give Infinity information used to compile reports about website activity. More info here
• Oracle BlueKai/ATS - This cookie tells us how non-identified users are interacting with our website and paid media and is used for re-targeting via our digital marketing channels. See the Oracle Advertising privacy Policy
  
  Cookies in emails
  
  In addition to the cookies we use on this website, we also use cookies and similar technologies in some emails. These are first party cookies that help us to understand whether you have opened the email and how you have interacted with it. If you have enabled images, cookies may also be set if you click on any link within the email.

You can find a full list of the cookies on our websites below.

This depends on whether they are Session cookies or Persistent cookies.

Session cookies help with security, and also remember what you’ve done on previous web pages so you don’t have to re-enter information. These will be deleted once you close your browser after visiting a website.

Persistent cookies there are used for lots of different things – one example will be to remember your cookie preferences between visits, so you don’t need to keep telling us which cookies to use. These will stay on your device once you close your browser after visiting a website. We’ll ask you to to confirm your cookie preferences every three months, but you can update your choices at any time through this cookie policy.

Unless you have turned on Marketing and / or Experience & Insight cookies, these will be turned off when you first visit our websites. These will remain disabled until you turn them on.

If you have agreed to our using Marketing and / or Experience & Insight cookies, but wish to subsequently turn either or both off, you can do this via the ‘Manage cookies’ section.

When you turn these off and after you refresh or move away from the page, we will disable these cookies and stop using them.

Turning off these cookies here will not delete any that have been downloaded in the past. However you can normally do this by changing settings in your browser. Any changes you make in your browser settings will affect all websites you visit. For, example if you’ve set preferences on a website - such as your location for local news or weather forecasts - it will no longer remember these if you disable cookies.