Cookies Policy
Effective Date: March 08, 2019
This Cookies Policy sets out the basis on which we, Canadian Consortium for The Investigation of Cannabinoids, use cookies and similar technologies on or in relation to our website, www.ccic.net (our website).
‘Essential’ cookies are automatically placed on your computer or device when you access our website or take certain actions on our website. ‘Non-essential’ cookies and other technologies are only placed on your computer or device if you have consented to us doing so. For information on the difference between essential and non-essential cookies, see the section below entitled About cookies.
For information on how you consent and how you can withdraw your consent to us placing non-essential cookies and other technologies on your computer or device, see the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies.
About cookies
What are cookies?
Cookies are small data files sent by a website’s server to a web browser, processor memory or hard drive and stored there. They can be used for a range of different purposes, such as customising a website for a particular user, helping a user navigate a website, improving that user’s website experience, and storing that user’s preferences and login information.
Essential and non-essential cookies
Cookies can be classified as either ‘essential’ or ‘non-essential’.
Essential cookies: these are cookies that are either:
- used solely to carry out or facilitate the transmission of communications over a network; or
- strictly necessary to provide an online service (e.g. our website or a service on our website) which you have requested.
Non-essential cookies: these are any cookies that do not fall within the definition of essential cookies, such as cookies used to provide additional functionality on our website (‘functional’ cookies), analyse your behaviour on a website (‘analytical’ cookies) or to display advertisements to you (‘advertising’ cookies).
Session and persistent cookies
Cookies can be classified as either ‘session’ or ‘persistent’, depending on how long they last after they are placed on your browser.
Session cookies: session cookies last for as long as you keep your browser open. They expire when you close your browser.
Persistent cookies: persistent cookies expire at a fixed point in time or if you manually delete them from your browser, whichever occurs first.
First and third party cookies
Cookies can be classified as ‘first party’ or ‘third party’.
First party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by our website domain.
Third party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by third party website domains.
If you require further information about cookies in general, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org
Legal bases for processing
For essential cookies, our legal basis for processing is our legitimate interests in ensuring our site functions properly and providing you with the online services you have requested.
For non-essential cookies and other technologies, our legal basis for processing is your consent which you give by accepting the use of non-essential cookies using our cookie control tool which is displayed in a banner at the bottom of our website.
List of cookies used
We use the following cookies on or in relation to our website:
| Name of Cookie | Essential or Non-essential? | Type of cookie | First or Third party? | Session or Persistent? | Expiry Time | Purpose |
| _ga | Non-essential | HTTP | First party | Persistent | 2 years | Registers a unique ID that is used to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the website. |
| _gat | Non-essential | HTTP | First party | Persistent | 1 day | Used by Google Analytics to throttle request rate. |
| _gid | Non-essential | HTTP | First party | Persistent | 1 day | Registers a unique ID that is used to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the website. |
| collect | Non-essential | Pixel | Third party | Session | Session | Used to send data to Google Analytics about the visitor's device and behaviour. Tracks the visitor across devices and marketing channels. |
| CookiePreferences-ccic.net | Non-essential | HTTP | First party | Persistent | 1 year | Used for tracking visitor cookie preferences. |
| swpm_session | Non-essential | Pixel | First party | Session | Session | Used by Simple Membership plugin to facilitate membership registration. |
Web beacons
We and any marketing companies we use also embed web beacons in our marketing emails and on our website. Web beacons are small GIF image files which enable us to track your receipt of our marketing emails, how often you view our adverts or website pages, your location, IP address and browser information. Web beacons are activated whenever you open a marketing email or access a page on our website which contains a web beacon. Web beacons transmit data when you view them but are not capable of accessing any other information on your computer. Web beacons are not stored on your hard drive unless you download a GIF image containing them.
Some (but not all) browsers enable you to restrict the use of web beacons by either preventing them from sending information back to their source (for example, when you choose browser settings that block cookies and trackers), or by not accessing the images containing them (for example, if you select a ‘do not display images (in emails)’ setting in your email server).
How to accept or reject cookies
There are a number of different ways in which you can accept or reject some or all cookies and similar technologies. Some of the main methods of doing so are described below.
You are welcome to block the use of some or all of the cookies we use on our website. However, please be aware that doing so may impair our website and its functionality or may even render some or all of it unusable.
You should also be aware that clearing all cookies from your browser will also delete any cookies that are storing your preferences, for example, whether you have accepted cookies on a website or any cookies that are blocking other cookies.
You can find more detailed information about cookies and adjusting your browser settings by visiting www.allaboutcookies.org
Accepting or rejecting cookies
Cookie control tool
You can accept or reject non-essential cookies by using our cookie management tool. Our cookie management tool, Smart Cookie Kit, blocks cookies until the visitor accepts them, and once accepted it unlocks them asynchronously (without refreshing the current page). You can select to accept or decline the placement of non-essential cookies using the banner located at the bottom of our website.
Browser settings
You can accept or reject some or all cookies (for example, blocking all third party cookies) by adjusting your browser settings. If you do not know how to do this, the links below set out information about how to change your browser settings for some of the most commonly used web browsers:
- Google Chrome: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647?hl=en-GB
- Mozilla Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/delete-browsing-search-download-history-firefox?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Clear+Recent+History
- Microsoft Internet Explorer: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/278835/how-to-delete-cookie-files-in-internet-explorer
- Apple Safari: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH5042?locale=en_US
Some browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox, allow you to change your settings to browse in ‘incognito’ mode, limiting the amount of data placed on your machine and automatically deleting any persistent cookies placed on your device when you finish your browsing session. There are also many third party applications which you can add to your browser to block or manage cookies.
Existing cookies
To clear cookies that have previously been placed on your browser, you should select the option to clear your browsing history and ensure that the option to delete or clear cookies is included when you do so.
Google Adsettings
You can manage and opt out of personalisation of advertisements by Google by visiting Google’s ad settings page here https://adssettings.google.com/ and by:
- unticking the button entitled ‘Also use Google Account activity and information to personalize ads on these websites and apps and store that data in your Google Account’; and
- switching the ‘Ads Personalisation’ setting off (i.e. by ensuring the switch at the top of the page is set to the left/grey and not the right/blue).
Alternatively, you can install a free browser plugin here: https://support.google.com/ads/answer/7395996
Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on
You can opt out of Google Analytics tracking by installing the browser add-on which is available here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
Web beacons
You can opt in to us using web beacons in our marketing emails by answering a question on our membership registration form that explicitly asks if you agree to be added to our email mailing list.
You can opt out of our use of web beacons in our marketing emails by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any marketing email we send you, which will automatically stop you from receiving marketing emails from us and stop the use of email marketing web beacons or you can email info@ccic.net and ask to have yourself removed from our email marketing list.
Copyright, credit and logo
This Cookies Policy is based on a template provided by GDPR Privacy Policy. For further information, please visit https://gdprprivacypolicy.org
The copyright in this Cookies Policy is either owned by, or licensed to, us and is protected by copyright laws around the world and copyright protection software. All intellectual property rights in this document are reserved. Where we display the GDPR Privacy Policy logo on our website, this is used to indicate that we have adopted a privacy policy template provided by GDPR Privacy Policy as the basis for this Privacy Policy.