Cookie Policy

1. What Are Cookies

Cookies are small text files stored on your device when you visit a website. They help websites remember information about your visit - such as your login status or preferences - to make your next visit easier and more useful.

We also use similar technologies such as local storage and session storage, which function similarly to cookies. When we say “cookies” in this policy, we mean all such technologies.

2. Cookies We Use

On this website there is exactly one thing to ask you about, and until it is answered, nothing but the strictly necessary cookies is set. We would rather ask one clear question than show a panel of toggles.

• Strictly necessary. Sign-in and session management, security, and remembering your cookie answer - stored in a cookie called bh_consent, kept for six months so you are not asked again on every page. Without these the site cannot work, so they cannot be turned off.
• Advertising measurement - the one we ask about. We use Google Ads conversion tracking (gtag.js, conversion ID AW-17154777889) to tell whether one of our own ads brought you here. It is loaded only where you have allowed it, and until then it is not loaded at all - not on the home page, and not on this one.

Our website analytics sets no cookies, so we do not ask about it. It counts page views without writing anything to your device: a visitor is identified by a hash of the incoming request, the session is discarded after 24 hours, and nothing it produces can follow you to another website or be tied back to you. What we get is aggregate - which pages are read, where people arrive from - and nothing individual. The provider is named on the Sub-processors page. If you object to that processing you can still tell us, at privacy@bidhelm.com.

There is no “functional” category on this website. Interface preferences on the marketing site are held in browser storage rather than in cookies - see Section 3.

2.1 Inside the product

Once you are signed in to the dashboard at app.bidhelm.com, the position is different and worth stating plainly. There we use a product-analytics provider, and it does set first-party cookies tied to your account. It runs as part of operating the Service you are paying for, on the basis of our legitimate interest in running it - it is how a broken screen or an abandoned flow gets found. No advertising or cross-site tracking cookie of any kind is set inside the product. If you object to that processing, write to privacy@bidhelm.com.

2.2 On the landing pages we host for customers

If you have arrived on a page at bidhelm.com/<account>/lp/…, that is a campaign page built for one of our customers. Those pages carry no cookies and no tracking scripts at all - no analytics, no advertising tags, nothing written to your device. If the page has a form, the advertising click identifier that brought you there is passed along with what you submit, and the page tells you so before you send it.

3. Session Storage for UI State

We use browser session storage (cleared when you close your browser) for temporary UI state, including:

• Dismissal state for popups and banners - so we don't show you the same banner twice in a session
• Temporary form state

Session storage does not track you across sessions or websites and is not shared with any third party.

4. Third-Party Cookies

Some cookies are set by services we use rather than by us. Each has its own cookie and privacy policy.

• Google - conversion measurement for our own advertising, through gtag.js. This is an advertising network tag, and it is the only reason this site asks you anything. Set only where you have allowed it. It is named because it is Google's own tag on Google's own network; the rest below are described by role, so that replacing one does not mean rewriting a policy.
• Website analytics provider - sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device, which is why it needs no permission.
• Product analytics provider - inside the signed-in dashboard only, never on this website. First-party cookies tied to your account; see Section 2.1.
• Payment provider - fraud prevention and secure checkout, on the hosted checkout and billing pages only. Strictly necessary to take a payment.

Each of these is named, with its purpose and location, on the Sub-processors page - the one page that carries vendor names, and the one that changes when a vendor does.

We do not use Facebook Pixel, and we do not use Google Analytics. The only Google tag on this site is the Ads conversion tag described above, and no advertising tag of any kind loads before you have allowed it.

5. Managing Cookies, and Who Gets Asked

Where you are changes what happens, because the law does. We would rather say so than pretend one rule fits everywhere.

• In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, nothing non-essential runs until you say it may. You get the prompt on your first visit, and the advertising tag stays unloaded until you allow it. If we cannot tell where you are, you are treated as being here.
• Everywhere else, the advertising tag runs and you are given a way to turn it off rather than being asked first - which is what those laws require. No prompt appears, and Cookie preferences at the bottom of every page is the off switch.
• An answer you have given always wins, wherever you are. Decline once and the tag stays off; allow it and it stays on, until you change it.

Whichever applies to you:

• The prompt. Allow or decline. Both buttons are the same size, in the same place, styled the same way, and declining is one click. There is no close button, because closing something is not an answer.
• Changing your mind, at any time. Cookie preferences at the bottom of every page reopens it. Withdrawing is as easy as allowing was. A tag already loaded on the page in front of you stops at your next navigation, and the cookies it set are removable in your browser.
• Your browser. Every major browser can block or delete cookies for a site. Blocking the strictly necessary ones will stop you being able to sign in.

For visitors in the EEA and the UK: consent is obtained before any non-essential cookie is set, as the ePrivacy Directive and the GDPR require, and consent is not a condition of using this site.

6. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Cookie Policy to reflect changes in the technology we use or in the law. Updates are published here with a new version number and date. If the categories themselves change, your stored choice no longer answers the question being asked, so you will be asked again rather than having an old answer carried over.

Cookie questions: privacy@bidhelm.com