Cookie Policy

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small file containing letters and numbers that is downloaded to your browser when visiting a website. Cookies are used by most websites and can help a website do lots of different things such as remember personal preferences, keep you logged in to a site, or count the number of people looking at a website.

What kinds of cookies are there?

There are two kinds of cookies to be aware of: first-party and third-party cookies. First party cookies are cookies created by the website you’re visiting. These kinds of cookies are usually used to help the website to function. For example, if you were to log into a site, the site would use a first party cookie to remember that you were logged in to a site next time you visit.

Third party cookies are cookies created by companies outside of the website you’re visiting. These kinds of cookies are usually used to track how a user has used a website (i.e., what pages they’ve visited/what links they’ve clicked on). The owners of the website use this information to make improvements to the site.

When is a cookie used?

Some first party cookies can be used as soon as a user visits a site. Usually, cookies like these are used straight away because the website can’t function without them. However, in most cases, cookies aren’t used until a user has given a website permission to use cookies. You may have seen this in action when you’ve visited a site and a pop up appears asking you to accept cookies. If a site uses third party cookies, it’s a legal requirement for the site to wait until the user has given permission to use cookies before the third-party cookies can be implemented.

In most cases, a cookie does have an expiry date in which it will be removed from the user’s browser. Once a cookie expires, it is no longer used and is removed from the user’s browser. A cookie is also not used if it is removed from the user’s browser.

How does our site use cookies?

First-party cookies

Our site uses a few first-party cookies

plumber-rightio-accept-cookie – This cookie is used to remember what a user’s cookie preferences are when they visit the site. It tells the site whether or not it is ok to use Google analytics’ and Force 24’s cookies.
PHPSESSID – To determine the landing page the user arrived on in order to provide the correct location text and phone number to the user as well as the correct campaign ID for any forms a user fills in on the site.
GCLID – Added when a user has been directed to the site from a Google Ad. This is used so conversions can be tracked once forms have been filled.

There are also first-party cookies generated by a plugin from VWO that aids in A-B testing. Below is a brief overview of the main cookies the VWO plugin adds:

_vis_opt_exp_{CAMPAIGNID}_goal_{GOALID} – This cookie lasts for 100 days and is created when a campaign goal is triggered. This cookie, when created, will always have a value of 1.
_vis_opt_exp_{CAMPAIGNID}_combi – This cookie lasts for 100 days and is created when a visitor is chosen for a particular variation for a test. This cookie makes sure that visitors see the same variation when they revisit the page in the future. Here the Control has a value of 1, Variation #1 has a value of 2, Variation #2 has a value of 3, and so on.
_vis_opt_exp_{CAMPAIGNID}_combi_choose – This cookie persists until campaign changes are applied. It stores the chosen combination. It’s a temporary cookie that gets deleted when the campaign changes are applied.
_vis_opt_exp_{CAMPAIGNID}_exclude – This cookie lasts for 100 days and cookie is created when a visitor has been excluded from a Test Campaign due to the traffic percentage specifications. The value is always 1.
_vis_opt_exp_{CAMPAIGNID}_split – This cookie lasts for 100 days and is created when one of the variations is chosen for the visitor, but the visitor is not yet redirected to the variation page. It exists so that VWO can verify that the variation page corresponds to the chosen variation after landing on the page. The value is >=2 (as 1 corresponds to Control and it’s not created in case the Control is chosen).
_vis_opt_s – This cookie lasts for 100 days and tracks sessions created for a visitor (i.e., the number of times the browser was closed and reopened). The value is >=1, followed by a pipe sign. For example, the value of 2 indicates that the visitor restarted the browser once while 3 means twice.
_vis_opt_test_cookie – This cookie expires when the browser is closed. It is created to detect if the cookies are enabled on the visitor’s browser or not. It also helps in tracking the number of browser sessions a visitor has gone through. The value of this cookie is always 1.
_vis_opt_out – This cookie lasts for 10 days and indicates that the visitor should not be made part of any campaign.
_vwo – This cookie is a jar of all the cookies. It is currently created only for the Safari browser. In the future, it would replace all the cookies. The actual expiry of a cookie doesn’t matter as it stores the expiry of cookies set in it and keeps on expiring them.
_vwo_ds – The time this cookie is kept for is dependent on the retention period of the account. This cookie stores persistent visitor-level data for VWO Insights
_vwo_referrer – This cookie lasts for 15 seconds. It stores referral info allowing VWO to identify the original Traffic source in case of the Split URL campaign.
_vwo_sn – This cookie lasts for 30 minutes and resets to 30 minutes again on visitor activity. It is used to store session-level information.
_vwo_uuid – This cookie lasts for 10 years and generates a unique id for every visitor and is used for the report segmentation feature in VWO, and it also allows you to view data in a more refined manner
_vwo_uuid_{CAMPAIGNID} – This cookie lasts for 10 years and is created for each cross-domain campaign. It generates a unique id for every visitor and is used for the report segmentation feature in VWO, and it also allows you to view data in a more refined manner.
_vwo_uuid_v2 – This cookie lasts for 366 days and calculates unique traffic on a website.

A list of all cookies used by VWO can be found here:

https://help.vwo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033990873-Cookies-Stored-by-VWO

Third-party cookies

Google Analytics

Google Analytics uses cookies to understand how a user interacts with a website. Google Analytics sets up the following cookies when a user accepts cookies:

_ga – this cookie lasts 2 years and is used to distinguish users.
_gid – this cookie lasts 24 hours and is used to distinguish users.
_ga_<container-id> – this cookie lasts 2 years and is used to persist session state.
_gac_gb_<container-id> – this cookie lasts 90 days and contains campaign related information for Google Ads.

These cookies are specific to an individual website (in other words, they can’t be used to track a user across different websites). More information about the cookies Google uses can be found here:
https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies?hl=en-US
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gtagjs/cookie-usage

Google Recaptcha

Recaptcha uses cookies to help confirm a user is not a bot, which in turn helps Rightio prevent bots from filling in forms so our agents can focus on genuine customers and reduce dealing with spam as much as possible. The following cookies are set up in relation to a user:

_GRECAPTCHA – Set when a user presses the “I am not a robot” button on a form for the purpose of providing its risk analysis.

Force 24

Force 24 uses cookies to track visitors to a website and what forms they fill for marketing purposes later on. Force 24 sets up the following cookies when cookies are accepted:

f24_autoId – this cookie lasts 6 months if left anonymous, or 10 years if not. Temporary identifier on a local machine or phone browser that helps us track anonymous information to be later married up with f24_personid.
f24_personId – this cookie lasts 10 years. This is an ID generated per individual contact in the Force24 system to be able to track behaviour and form submissions into the Force24 system from outside sources per user.

More information about Force 24’s cookies can be found here:
https://force24.co.uk/cookies

Microsoft Clarity

Clarity uses cookies to track user behaviour on a site such as what pages were loaded, and where the user hovered over.

_clck – Persists the Clarity User ID and preferences, unique to that site is attributed to the same user ID. This cookie lasts for 1 year.
_clsk – Connects multiple page views by a user into a single Clarity session recording. This cookie lasts for 1 year.
CLID – Identifies the first-time Clarity saw this user on any site using Clarity.
ANONCHK – Indicates whether MUID is transferred to ANID, a cookie used for advertising. Clarity doesn’t use ANID and so this is always set to 0.
MR – Indicates whether to refresh MUID.
MUID – Identifies unique web browsers visiting Microsoft sites. These cookies are used for advertising, site analytics, and other operational purposes. This cookies lasts for just over 1 year.
SM – Used in synchronizing the MUID across Microsoft domains.

How can I control my cookies?

You can use your browser to delete, block, or allow cookies. You can also set up your browser to block all third-party cookies and clear all cookies when you close the browser. If necessary, you can open a ‘private browsing’ or ‘incognito’ window which allows you to browse the web without recording your browsing history or storing cookies (though this can have its limitations).

How to control cookies in a browser

Different browsers have their cookie settings in different areas. Each of the links below will give you an idea of how to control cookies in your browser:

Other useful information

You can learn more about cookie from AboutCookies.org and AllAboutCookies.org. It may also be worth noting that Google has developed a browser add-on which lets uses opt-out of Google Analytics across any sites that use it. This is available to download from the Chrome web store.