The NCGS website uses cookies – small text files that are placed on your machine to help us provide you with a better experience when you use our website. In general, cookies are used to retain user preferences, store information for things like shopping carts, and to recognize you when you return to our website. Our website is built on a WordPress platform. WordPress uses cookies to verify who you are. There are cookies for logged in users and for commenters.
Security –
NCGS uses a secure connection for traffic passing between the website and your computer. All communications between your browser and our website are encrypted.
Advertising –
We do not use tracking cookies for advertising or targeted marketing, however anonymized tracking data may be used by third parties, such as Google Analytics, to measure how users interact with our website content. For example, which pages are visited most often or the source of the visit, such as an email link or a Google search.
Email –
Our emailer service, MailChimp, will automatically place single pixel gifs, also known as web beacons, in every email sent. This is a type of “cookie”, which enables analytics on things like how many emails were opened or when certain links were clicked. From MailChimp: “These technologies record each subscribers email address, IP address, date, and time associated with each open and click for a campaign. We use this data to create reports for our users [in this case, NCGS] about how an email campaign performed and what actions subscribers took. MailChimp participates in and has certified its compliance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and the Swiss-U.S Privacy Shield Framework.”
Other third parties –
The only other place you may encounter cookies is through use of social media buttons found throughout our site, such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. When you use one of these buttons, you then begin to interact with those third-party sites. These links to social media platforms are provided through AddThis, which has its own “Opt Out” feature that will allow you to specifically block any collection of data for the purposes of targeted advertising. See: http://www.addthis.com/privacy/opt-out
How to disable cookies –
As a rule, cookies will make your browsing experience better. Some parts of our website may not function without the use of cookies. However, you may choose to disable cookies on this site and on others by changing your browser settings.
We suggest consulting the Help section of your browser or taking a look at the About Cookies website which offers guidance for all modern browsers.