Cookie Policy
Effective date: November 1st, 2023
The use of cookies on My Home Abroad
A cookie is a small piece of text used to remember something about your device.
You can choose whether to opt-in or out for non-essential cookies by updating your cookie preferences.
Without cookies, every time you visit My Home Abroad, we can't remember who you are and we can’t do a lot of things that you'd expect us to do. We can’t let you log in, because we forget who you are. We can’t let you save a property or a search, because we forget what you’re looking for.
So, we just use cookies to remember who you are and what you do on our website.
We do host some other cookies, from services like Google, Facebook and Twitter and these cookies help us to analyse how you found us and how you use My Home Abroad. These cookies are often shared by those services, mostly so that ads on one website know what you liked on another.
If you're concerned about cookies you could turn them off completely, but like many websites, My Home Abroad simply won’t work well or at all. A better option for you would be to turn off 3rd party cookies, which will stop most websites from sharing information about you.
Here's an excellent guide to disabling all or some cookies.
Cookies we use and why we use them
We use cookies to personalise content, ads and to analyse our traffic. We may also share information about your use of our site with our advertising and analytics partners, such as Google, who may combine it with other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services - see details on how Google uses information from My Home Abroad.
First party cookies
These are our own cookies that are required for the operation of My Home Abroad. Without them we can’t operate properly, for example, a cookie that enables you to log in or to remember your searches.
We will also create a session cookie, which is essential for your use of some of the interactive elements of My Home Abroad, such as contact forms. The cookie contains a session ID which is a mechanism for distinguishing your visit to My Home Abroad from any other visitors that may be using the website at the same time.
Third party cookies
My Home Abroad may include functionality provided by third parties. A common example is an embedded YouTube video.
Third party cookies on My Home Abroad are not essential to operation of the website. You can decide to opt-in or out of these cookies by updating your cookie preferences.
Visitor Statistics Cookies
We use cookies to compile visitor statistics such as how many people have visited My Home Abroad, what type of device they are using (e.g. Mac or Windows which helps to identify when our site isn't working as it should), how long they spend on the site, what page they look at etc. This helps us to continuously improve My Home Abroad. These "analytics" programs also tell us, on an anonymous basis, how people reached My Home Abroad (e.g. from a search engine) and whether they have been here before, helping us to put more money into developing our services for you.
Site Improvement Cookies
We regularly test new designs or site features on My Home Abroad. We do this by showing slightly different versions of our website to different people and anonymously monitoring how visitors respond to these different versions. Ultimately this helps us to offer you a better website.
Advertising Cookies
Cookies are widely used in online advertising. Neither us, advertisers, or our advertising partners can gain personally identifiable information from these cookies. We only work with advertising partners who work to accepted privacy standards, such as Google.
You can learn more about online advertising at www.youronlinechoices.com, where you can opt-out of almost all advertising cookies - though opting out of advertising cookies will not mean you won't see adverts, just that they won't be tailored to you any longer.
Banner Adverts
These adverts are usually managed by a partner specialising in providing adverts for multiple sites. These partners place cookies to collect anonymous data about the websites you visit so they can personalise the adverts to you, ensure that you don't see the same adverts too frequently and report to advertisers on which adverts are working.
Remarketing Cookies
You may notice that sometimes after visiting a site you see increased numbers of adverts from the site you visited. This is because advertisers, sometimes ourselves, pay for these adverts. The technology to do this is made possible by cookies and as such you may obtain a "remarketing cookie" during your visit. We might use these adverts to encourage you to come back to My Home Abroad by showing properties that may be of interest. Don't worry, the whole process is entirely anonymised and you can opt out of these cookies at anytime as explained above.
For more information about how we use cookies, please contact us.