Cookie notice | GFI

Cookie notice

Last Updated: December 1, 2020

The Good Food Institute, Inc. (“GFI”, “”we”, “us”) uses cookies and other technologies to ensure that everyone who uses our websites has the best possible experience.

This notice provides you with information about how and when we use cookies on our websites or web applications. Cookies, and any similar technologies change over time, so please refer to this notice at regular intervals to ensure you remain aware of how we use them. 

What is a Cookie?

A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognizes that cookie, to develop a record of the user’s online activity. First party cookies are cookies set by the website you’re visiting. Only that website can read them. In addition, a website might potentially use external services, which also set their own cookies, known as third-party cookies. 

A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

Cookies help us enhance your experience when using the website and make the content more relevant to you. They also help us understand how people use our site, so that we can better serve our site visitors.

We use session cookies that last until you close your browser and persistent cookies that last until you or your browser delete them.

For more information see: http://www.allaboutcookies.org

What Other Tracking Technologies Do We Use? 

Pixels and other trackers 

Tracking pixels, also known as web beacons, and other tags are embedded in our websites to help us better manage content on our site by informing us what content is effective. Tags are small snippets of code embedded into a website. Tracking pixels are a type of tag and are extremely small, transparent images with a unique identifier to track the online movements of Web users. They work with cookies and capture data like your IP address, when you viewed the page or email, what device you were using and where you were. If a user of a social network such as Facebook is logged into their account when they visit a site with a Facebook pixel, Facebook can connect their browsing behaviour on that site to personal data it collects on that user. We can then use this information on an aggregated basis to place ads on Facebook based on users’ interests. 

Tracking pixels and other tags are also used to monitor the effectiveness of our email communications, including email tracking, which records your email address, IP address, date and time associated with if/ or when an email update from us is opened and/or how many links are clicked within the message.  When the email containing the image is opened and the tracking pixel is loaded, the image sends a message to the server. If you wish to turn off this tracking, you can do so by turning off the images in the email itself. 

Social buttons and third-party plugins

Tools known as plug-ins store and access cookies on the user’s device to allow, for example, social networking sites to identify their members when they interact with the website or share its content. If a website visitor is logged in into their social media account, a plugin receives their user id, the website they are visiting, the date and time, and other browser details. If the visitor is logged out, no username information is recorded. Once the cookies associated with these plug-ins are ‘dropped’ on the computer or device when a user visits a website, they can track users and also non-users of these social networking sites across their online browsing habits allowing Facebook or other social sites to target their advertisements. Such plug-ins are typically recognisable as ‘like’ buttons, follow buttons, or other social media sharing tools visible as a branded icon on the web page –the Facebook ‘like’ button probably being the most recognizable of these.

While you may not have the ability to specifically reject or disable these tracking technologies directly, in many instances, these technologies are reliant on cookies to function properly; accordingly, in those instances, declining cookies will impair the functionality of these technologies.

How Do We Use Cookies and Other Technologies?

We use three types of cookies:

Essential cookies. These cookies are required to enable you to move around our website and use its features. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing purposes and do not track where you have been on the internet. This category of cookies cannot be disabled. 

Performance or analytics cookies. These cookies measure how often you visit our sites and how you use them. We use this information to get a better sense of how our users engage with us and to improve our sites so that users have a better experience. We collect anonymised information for our internal research purposes only.

We use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc., to help us see how our website is used. In doing so information about your use of our website, including your IP address, may be transmitted to Google and stored on servers in the United States. The data collected by Google Analytics is used to analyse how frequently the same people revisit our website, how the website is found (from advertising or referring websites), and which pages are most frequently viewed. This information is combined with data from thousands of other users to create an overall picture of website use, and is never identified. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.

Name	Sources	Data stored	Purpose	Expiry	Out-put	Privacy Policy
_ga _gat _gid collect	gfi.org ted.com	A random unique number or string of letters to identify your browser, the times and dates that you interacted with the site and the referring pages that led you to the site	Collect aggregate information about how visitors use our website and improve your website experience	2 years 1 day 24 hours pixel	Opt out of Google Analytics	Google’s privacy policy
UID UIDR	Scorecard Research	A unique user ID, timestamp, pages visited, the title of the webpage, and IP address. Non-aggregated data is kept for 90 days	Collect usage information, including timestamp for visits, most recently loaded pages and IP address.	720 days	Scorecard Research Opt-out	Scorecard Research privacy policy
logelevel muxData	embed.ted.com	Data on visitor interaction with video content, user position	Make video content more relevant, remember where to start the video if the user is interrupted	Persistent 20 years	None identified	Ted privacy policy

Marketing. These cookies and other technologies are used to collect information about your browsing habits on this website, including the content you have viewed, the links you have followed and information about your browser, device and your IP address.  The collected information is used to evaluate the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns, to make our advertising more relevant, and to limit the number of ads that are served to you. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less personalised advertising. 

Facebook Pixel, a technology that places a pixel on our webpages, allows us to see how our audiences interact with our website and improve our marketing campaigns. When our visitor who uses Facebook returns to Facebook, Facebook can identify them as a visitor to a GFI website. The data obtained by the Facebook Pixel is limited to the URL of the pages that have been visited and, in some cases, the status of any unfinished or completed commercial transactions undertaken with us, together with the limited information a browser might pass on, such as its IP address. The information collected is used to create target groups to help Facebook deliver advertising on our behalf to users who have previously visited our website when they are on Facebook or a digital platform powered by Facebook Advertising, and to track advertising success. You can modify your Facebook Ad settings to restrict these advertisements. Navigate to Settings/Adverts in your Facebook account to adjust your preferences. Learn more about the different types of Facebook cookies here: https://www.facebook.com/policies/cookies

The LinkedIn Insight Tag collects information about your engagement with our website, including the URL,  IP address,  browser characteristics, timestamp and device identifiers, used to determine which devices LinkedIn members use and to serve them ads across devices.  LinkedIn provides us with reports about our website audience engagement on an aggregate and anonymous basis to assess the performance and effectiveness of our ad campaigns and optimize our campaigns and ad performance to allow us to improve our marketing campaigns. To learn more about the Linkedin Insight Tag, please refer to https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/65521

LinkedIn members can control the use of their personal data for advertising purposes through their account settings and guest users may opt out here.

Name	Sources	Data stored	Purpose	Expiry	Opt-out Options
_fbp tr fr dpr sb wd datr	gfi.org facebook.com	browser details, window dimensions, user browsing behavior	Used by Facebook to deliver relevant advertising products, support social sharing and integration of facebook services	3 months pixel 3 months session 2 years session 2 years	Facebook  Opt-out
ads/ga_audiences 1P_Jar DV NID	google.com google.com google.com google.com	Data about how visitors use our site in anonymous form, including the number of visitors, where they come from, and what pages they visit	Used to reengage visitors that are likely to become customers based on their site behavior and improve our site	pixel 1 month 1 day 6 months	Google Opt-out
test_cookie pagead/1p-user-list/# IDE	doubleclick.net doubleclick.net doubleclick.net	Check if the browser supports cookies; no personally identifiable information is collected	Used to target advertising based on user’s behavior, and avoid showing	1 day session	DoubleClick Opt out
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE YSC yt-remote-cast-installed GPS yt-remote-connected-devices yt-remote-fast-check-period yt-remote-session-app yt-remote-session-name	youtube.com youtube.com youtube.com youtube.com youtube.com youtube.com youtube.com	registers a unique ID and a record of video player preferences and a record of videos played	estimate user’s bandwidth, store user’s video player preferences for embedded Youtube videos	179 days session session 1 day persistent persistent persistent persistent	Youtube  Opt-Out
google_experiment_mod#	embed.ted.com	data measuring ad effectiveness	determine which advertisements perform best	persistent	Google AdSense Opt-out
pardot visitor_<id>-hash visitor-<id> pi-opt-in<id> lpv<id>	pardot.com go.gfi.org, pi.pardot.com go.gfi.org, pi.pardot.com	unique visitor ID, no personally identifying information is stored but browsing behavior may be linked to the visitor’s record in Pardot if they are an active subscriber	track visitor and prospect activities and to remember their cookie preferences	session 1 year 1 year 1 year 1 hour	Opt-out using the consent banner when you first visit our website

Third Party Websites’ Cookies.

When using our website, you may encounter embedded content, such as Youtube videos, or you may be redirected to another website for activities such as surveys, to make a payment, or for job applications. These websites and embedded content may use their own cookies. We do not have control over the placement of cookies by other websites.

Your Options

There are a few ways you can choose how cookies are used on our website:

1. Consent Banner. When you first visit our website, you will encounter a consent banner that asks you to accept or reject certain cookies. Essential cookies cannot be disabled, nor can the tool be used to block cookies on third party websites linked from our website. To change your preferences at any time, click manage consent.

2. Online Tools. There are also online tools that allow you to choose how cookies are used throughout the web based on the device and browser you are using, such as:

• Digital Advertising Alliance’s Browser Check;
• European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance’s Your Online Choices, and
• Network Advertising Alliance Opt Out

3. Device Settings. Most browsers will allow you to: (i) change your browser settings to notify you when you receive a cookie, which lets you choose whether or not to accept it; (ii) disable existing cookies; or (iii) set your browser to automatically reject cookies. These options vary from browser to browser, so check your browser settings for more info:

• Adobe Flash
• Android Browser
• Google Chrome
• Internet Explorer
• Mozilla Firefox
• Safari (Desktop)
• Safari (Mobile)

Please note that disabling a cookie or category of cookies does not delete previously stored cookies from your browser. 

Some browsers have a privacy setting called “Do Not Track,” but there is no standard for how online service should respond to these signals. While we do our best to honor your privacy preferences, we do not currently respond to Do Not Track signals from your browser. More information about Do Not Track is available at www.allaboutdnt.org.

Your mobile device also has settings that allow you to control whether ad partners can use information about your use of mobile applications to show ads to you.  On iOS devices, this setting is called “Limit Ad Tracking” and on Android devices, this setting is called “Opt out of Ads Personalization.”

Cookies that Have Been Set in the Past

If you have disabled or deleted one or more cookies, we may still use the information collected prior to the preference change, but we will stop using the disabled cookie to collect any further information. Once you opt out from our marketing cookies, a new cookie is automatically placed to prevent any further tracking.