Cookie Policy

We want your experience on comparethemarket.com to be quick, simple and easy. To ensure that you can make full use of comparethemarket.com's comparison service, your computer, tablet or mobile device will need to enable cookies. If cookies aren't enabled on your device, it may limit your experience on our website and will mean that you will not be able to save and retrieve your quotes. In some instances, it may mean that you cannot access some of our services at all. 

Data protection is of upmost importance to us at comparethemarket.com, so our cookies simply aim to make it easier for you, whilst allowing us to ensure that we can personalise your experience on our site.

What is a cookie? 

A cookie is deployed on your browser and is used by the website you are viewing to identify you as a user, that then enables information to be stored on the hard drive of your device. Cookies allow a device to be identified as corresponding to one that has accessed another website or visited a website previously. This allows us to recognise you as a unique customer and provides us with information about how you use our website. Cookies are commonly used on the Internet and do not harm your device system. 

How we use cookies 

We use four categories of cookie on our websites, based upon the International Chamber of Commerce UK Cookie Guide

  • Strictly Necessary 
  • Performance 
  • Functionality 
  • Targeting and Marketing  

Some of these are 'Session Cookies', these only exist for the duration of your visit to our website and are deleted when you leave the website. Others are 'Persistent Cookies', these stay on your device until they expire or are deleted. Majority of cookies are managed and controlled by comparethemarket.com, these are first party cookies, however, cookies may also be placed by our approved business partners, these are known as 'third party cookies'.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookies are required for the operation of our website. 

These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. Without these, we cannot guarantee that you will be able to use our websites. 

Our use of Strictly Necessary Cookies include: 

  • providing quotes, account information and rewards to you 

  • identifying the customer experience & the features used within the web session 

  • authenticating and verifying web requests 

  • ensuring the information entered on our website is secure and not subject to access from third parties 

Performance Cookies

These cookies collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance, which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. 

These cookies do not collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. It is only used to improve how a website works. Some Performance Cookies are managed for us by third parties, for further details of these  click here. 

Our use of Performance Cookies includes: 

  • collating anonymous aggregated information that is used to manage and plan enhancements to our services 

  • how you use our website and to assist us in tailoring the website to customer needs 

  • measuring advertising effectiveness

Functionality cookies

These cookies are used to provide services (such as videos) or allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) to provide enhanced, more personal features. 

Our use of Functionality Cookies includes: 

  • remembering preferences you have chosen to customise your experience 

  • providing live chat functionality 

We do not use Functionality Cookies to target you with adverts on other websites.

Targeting and Marketing Cookies

Targeting Cookies record your visit to our website, including the web pages you have visited, the links you have followed, when you visited the website and your IP address and device ID. We use carefully selected and approved advertising and marketing providers (as set out in the table below) to help us to serve our advertising to users. These providers will set targeting cookies on our websites and will use them to make sure that our advertising that they serve to you is relevant to your interests and needs. These cookies collect information about your web browsing activity and allow our providers to track you when you visit different websites, so that they can serve our advertisements to you on those websites. For example, if you visit our homepage but didn't obtain a quote, the cookie will collect this information and serve you an advertisement on a different website to encourage you to come back and get a quote. Our providers control these cookies and are responsible for how the cookies, and any information collected by the cookies, are used. None of the information collected by the cookies is shared with us. 

Although these cookies do not collect information that you enter into forms on our website (such as your name and email address), we sometimes share your email address, IP address and information about whether or not you have purchased a policy or claimed a reward with our providers. Information is shared in an encrypted form and our providers can combine this information with the data that their cookies collect to serve our advertisements to audiences that we select. 

We and our providers also use targeting cookies to: 

  • improve our website, for example by enabling us to understand how our customers interact with our website; 

  • evaluate the effectiveness of our advertising and promotions on third party websites, for example by tracking whether these advertisements are clicked on by customers and how many times; 

  • inform the content of marketing emails that we send to you and trigger those emails, where we have your consent to send you these emails. For example, if you have looked at pet insurance quotes but not taken out a policy, these cookies may trigger an email to you to remind you of your quotes and encourage you to come back and take out a policy; and 

  • trigger service support communications to you.

Other Technologies

Web beacons and pixel tags

These are similar to cookies and allow us to collect information about how you use our website and help us to offer you the best service. We may use web beacons and pixel tags alongside cookies both on our website and in any emails we send to you. 

Again, web beacons and tags are commonly used across many websites and do not harm your device system. 

Further information can be found at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/web-beacons/ 

How to stop cookies 

You can stop cookies from being deployed on your device by configuring your browser not to accept them or opt-out. For more information on how to do these on popular browsers please use the links below: 

If cookies are already on your system, you can delete them. For more information on cookies and deletion of cookies please visit: http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/ 

Please be aware that restricting or deleting certain cookies can result in difficulties when navigating around websites.

Key 3rd Party Providers

Google Analytics 

Our websites use Google Analytics, which is a web analytics service provided by Google. 

For more information please see: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/ 

Search Ads

Online advertising supplier, these are used to serve our internet advertisements on other sites. Some of our webpages may contain electronic images that help us see how customers interact on these pages. They may also provide Search Ads with information about the interaction. 

For more information please see: https://support.google.com/dfp_premium/answer/2839090?hl=en&ref_topic=7395141 

OPTIMIZELY (Optimisation) 

Our website optimisation supplier, these are used to store the page variants assigned to a customer for performance testing, to ensure the customer gets a consistent experience. 

SessionCam

This website also uses SessionCam to help us to carry out research into the usage of our website.   SessionCam may record your interaction on this website, including recording mouse clicks, mouse movements, page scrolling and text entered into web forms. This data is used by us in order for us to constantly improve this website.

Last updated: 25th September 2019