Cookie policy
Last updated 9th September 2023
This Cookie Policy explains how The Sustainability Group (“Company”, “we”, “us”, and “our”) uses cookies and similar technologies to recognise you when you visit our websites at https://www.future-plus.co.uk (“Websites”). It explains what these technologies are and why we use them, as well as your rights to control the use of them.
In some cases, we may use cookies to collect personal information, or that becomes personal information if we combine it with other information.
What are cookies?
Cookies are small data files that are placed on your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. Cookies are widely used by website owners in order to make their websites work or to work more efficiently, as well as to provide reporting information.
Cookies set by the website owner (in this case, The Sustainability Group) are called “first party cookies”. Cookies set by parties other than the website owners are called “third party cookies”. Third-party cookies enable third party features or functionality to be provided on or through the website (e.g. like advertising, interactive content and analytics). The parties that set these third party cookies can recognise your computer both when it visits the website in question and also when it visits certain other websites.
Why do we use cookies?
We use first and third-party cookies for several reasons. Some cookies are required for technical reasons in order for our Website to operate, and we refer to these as “essential” or “strictly necessary” cookies. Other cookies also enable us to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our Online Properties. Third parties serve cookies throughout Websites for advertising, analytics and other purposes. This is described in more detail below.
The specific types of first and third-party cookies served through our Websites and the purposed they perform are described below (please note that the specific cookies may vary depending on the specific Online Properties you visit):
How can I control cookies?
You have the right to decide whether to accept or reject cookies. You can exercise your cookie rights by setting your preferences in the Cookie Consent Manager. The Cookie Consent Manager allows you to select which categories of cookies you accept or reject. Essential cookies cannot be rejected as they are strictly necessary to provide you with services.
The Cookie Consent Manager can be found in the notification banner and on our website. If you choose to reject cookies, you may still use our website though your access to some functionality and areas of our website may be restricted. You may also set or amend your web browser controls to accept or refuse cookies. As the means by which you can refuse cookies through your web browser controls vary from browser to browser, you should visit your browser’s help menu for more information.
In addition, most advertising networks offer you a way to opt-out of targeted advertising. If you would like to find out more information, please visit https://www.aboutads.info/choices/ or http://youronlinechoices.com.
The specific types of first and third-party cookies served through our Websites and the purposes they perform are described in the table below (please note that the specific cookies served may vary depending on the specific Online Properties you visit):
Essential website cookies:
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our Websites and to use some of its features, such as access to secure areas.
Name: cookie_control_enabled_cookies
Purpose: Used to record which cookies, if any, you have opted into.
Type: host_only
Expires: in 1 year
Name: cookie_control_consent
Purpose: Used to prevent the cookie policy pop-up showing on every visit.
Type: host_only
Expires: in 1 year
Name: _hsopt_out
Purpose: This cookie is used by the opt-in privacy policy to remember not to ask the visitor to accept cookies again. This cookie is set when you give visitors the choice to opt out of cookies. It contains the string “yes” or “no”.
Expires: 13 months.
Provider: Hubspot
Name: _hsdonottrack
Purpose: This cookie can be set to prevent the tracking code from sending any information to HubSpot. It contains the string “yes”.
Expires: 13 months.
Provider: Hubspot
Name:_hsinitialoptin
Purpose: This cookie is used to prevent the banner from always displaying when visitors are browsing in strict mode. It contains the string “yes” or “no”.
Expires: 7 days.
Provider: Hubspot
Name: _hscookiecatpref
Purpose: This cookie is used to record the categories a visitor consented to. It contains data on the consented categories.
Expires: 13 months
Provider: Hubspot
Name: hsabtest
Purpose: This cookie is used to consistently serve visitors the same version of an A/B test page they’ve seen before. It contains the id of the A/B test page and the id of the variation that was chosen for the visitor.
Expiry: End of the session
Provider: Hubspot
Name: _key
Purpose: When visiting a password-protected page, this cookie is set so future visits to the page from the same browser do not require login again. The cookie name is unique for each password-protected page. It contains an encrypted version of the password so future visits to the page will not require the password again.
Expiry: 14 days
Provider: Hubspot
Name: hs-messages-is-open
Purpose: This cookie is used to determine and save whether the chat widget is open for future visits. It is set in your visitor’s browser when they start a new chat, and resets to re-close the widget after 30 minutes of inactivity. If your visitor manually closes the chat widget, it will prevent the widget from re-opening on subsequent page loads in that browser session for 30 minutes. It contains a boolean value of True if present.
Expiry: 30 minutes
Provider: Hubspot
Name: hs-messages-hide-welcome-message
Purpose: This cookie is used to prevent the chat widget welcome message from appearing again for one day after it is dismissed. It contains a boolean value of True or False.
Expiry: 1 day
Provider: Hubspot
Name: __hsmem
Purpose: This cookie is set when visitors log in to a HubSpot-hosted site. It contains encrypted data that identifies the membership user when they are currently logged in.
Expiry: 1 year
Provider: Hubspot
Name: hs-membership-csrf
Purpose: This cookie is used to ensure that content membership logins cannot be forged. It contains a random string of letters and numbers used to verify that a membership login is authentic.
Expiry: End of the session
Provider: Hubspot
Name: hslangswitcherchoice
Purpose: This cookie is used to save the visitor’s selected language choice when viewing pages in multiple languages. It gets set when an end user selects a language from the language switcher and is used as a language preference to redirect them to sites in their chosen language in the future, if they are available. It contains a colon delimited string with the ISO639 language code choice on the left and the top level private domain it applies to on the right. An example will be “EN-US:hubspot.com”.
Expiry: 2 years
Provider: Hubspot
Name: __cfruid
Purpose: This cookie is set by HubSpot’s CDN provider because of their rate limiting policies.
Expiry: End of the session
Provider: Hubspot
Analytics cookies
These are non-essential cookies controlled by the cookie banner. If you’re a visitor to a site supported by HubSpot, you can opt out of these cookies by not giving consent.
Name: __hstc
Purpose: The main cookie for tracking visitors. It contains the domain, utk, initial timestamp (first visit), last timestamp (last visit), current timestamp (this visit), and session number (increments for each subsequent session).
Expiry: 13 Months
Provider: Hubspot
Name: hubspotutk
Purpose: This cookie keeps track of a visitor’s identity. It is passed to HubSpot on form submission and used when deduplicating contacts. It contains an opaque GUID to represent the current visitor.
Expiry: 13 Months
Provider: Hubspot
Name: __hssc
Purpose: This cookie keeps track of sessions. This is used to determine if HubSpot should increment the session number and timestamps in the __hstc cookie. It contains the domain, viewCount (increments each pageView in a session), and session start timestamp.
Expiry: 30 minutes
Provider: Hubspot
Name: __hssrc
Purpose: Whenever HubSpot changes the session cookie, this cookie is also set to determine if the visitor has restarted their browser. If this cookie does not exist when HubSpot manages cookies, it is considered a new session. It contains the value “1” when present.
Expiry: End of the session
Provider: Hubspot
Name: _ga
Purpose: Used to distinguish users.
Expiry: 2 years
Provider: Google Analytics
Name: _gid
Purpose: Used to distinguish users.
Expiry: 24 hours
Provider: Google Analytics
Name: ga
Purpose: Used to persist session state.
Expiry: 2 years
Provider: Google Analytics
Name: gacgb_
Purpose: Contains campaign related information. If you have linked your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts, Google Ads website conversion tags will read this cookie unless you opt-out.
Expiry: 90 Days
Provider: Google Analytics
What about other tracking technologies, like web beacons?
Cookies are not the only way to recognise or track visitors to a website. We may use other, similar technologies from time to time, like web beacons (sometimes called “tracking pixels” or “clear gifs”). These are tiny graphics files that contain a unique identifier that enable us to recognise when someone has visited our Websites or opened an email including them. This allows us, for example, to monitor the traffic patterns of users from one page within a website to another, to deliver or communicate with cookies, to understand whether you have come to the website from an online advertisement displayed on a third-party website, to improve site performance, and to measure the success of email marketing campaigns. In many instances, these technologies are reliant on cookies to function properly, and so declining cookies will impair their functioning.
Do you use Flash cookies or Local Shared Objects?
Websites may also use so-called “Flash Cookies” (also known as Local Shared Objects or “LSOs”) to, among other things, collect and store information about your use of our services, fraud prevention and for other site operations. This technology is no longer used and is not present on this website.
Do you serve targeted advertising?
Third parties may serve cookies on your computer or mobile device to serve advertising through our Websites. These companies may use information about your visitors in order to provide relevant advertisements about goods and services that you may be interested in. They may also employ technology that is used to measure the effectiveness of advertisements. This can be accomplished by them using cookies or web beacons to collect information about your visits to this and other sites in order to provide relevant advertisements about goods and services of potential interest to you. The information collected through this process does not enable us or them to identify your name, contact or other details that directly identify you unless you choose to provide these.
How often will you update this Cookie Policy?
We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to the cookies we use or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons. Please, therefore, re-visit this Cookie Policy regularly to stay informed about our use of cookies and related technologies.
The date at the top of this Cookie Policy indicated when it was last updated.
Where can I get further information?
If you have any questions about our use of cookies or other technologies, please email us at [email protected] or by post to:
FuturePlus is part of The Sustainability Group
The Sustainability Group
The Metal Box Factory
30 Great Guildford Street
London
SE1 0HS
United Kingdom
+44 (0) 207 117 2674