Cookie Policy

Cookie Policy

Last Updated: August 14, 2021

Thank you for your interest in Firsthand, 132 West 31st Street, 16th Floor, New York, NY 10001 (referred to as the “Company”, “we”, “us” or “our”). This Cookie Policy explains our use of “cookies” and other tracking technologies, including, but not limited to web beacons, pixels, clear gifs, and other similar technologies (collectively, “Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies”) that are employed on our websites, applications, or other services (“Online Services”).

What are Cookies and Other Online Tracking Technologies?

Cookies are small files that are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. The cookie then sends information back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognizes that cookie. Other types of tracking technologies work similarly to cookies and place small data files on your devices or monitor your website activity to enable us to collect information about how you use our Online Services. Accordingly, Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies allow our Online Services to recognize your device from those of other users of the Online Services and therefore let you navigate between pages efficiently, remembering your preferences, and generally improving the user experience. The information provided below about cookies also applies to the other tracking technologies referenced above (i.e., web beacons, pixels, clear gifs, and other similar technologies).

You can find more information about cookies at: www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.eu.

Cookies are often categorized by function. We use four types of cookies by function on our Online Services:

Cookies can also be categorized by how long they remain on your device, and by who puts the cookie there. There are four broad categories of duration and placement cookies that we used on the Online Services:

How does our Online Services use Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies?

The Company uses Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies to identify you and your interests, to remember your preferences, to facilitate our marketing, and to track your use of our Online Services. We also use Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies to control access to certain content on our Online Services, protect the integrity and security of the Online Services, and to process any requests that you make of us. To administer our Online Services and for research purposes, the Company may, from time to time, contract with third-party service providers to track and analyze statistical usage and volume information from our Online Services users. These third-party service providers use persistent cookies to help us to improve the user experience, manage the content on our Online Services, and analyze how users navigate and utilize the Online Services. Here are the Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies we use on the Online Services:

Google Ads : Google uses cookies to help serve the ads it displays on the websites of its partners, such as websites displaying Google ads or participating in Google certified ad networks. When users visit a Google partner's website, a cookie may be dropped on that end user's browser. You can set your browser to block cookies from Google or follow their direction to opt out of all ads.

Google Analytics: The information stored in the local first-party cookie is reduced for analytics.js. Only an identifier made up of two randomly generated 32-bit numbers (e.g., 12345.67890) is used. Clearing or deleting cookies from a browser does not ensure that subsequent visits to a website will be considered new sessions in Analytics. Learn more about how to opt-out from Analytics via https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/181881.

Blogger: Google uses cookies to help deliver its services and analyze traffic related to blogs. Your IP address and user-agent are shared with Google along with performance and security metrics to ensure quality of service, generate usage statistics, and to detect and address abuse. Some blogging features may be limited if you choose to disable cookies from blogger.com.

YouTube: Google uses cookies for the advertising, including serving and rendering ads, personalizing ads (depending on your ad settings at g.co/adsettings), limiting the number of times an ad is shown to a user, muting ads you have chosen to stop seeing, and measuring the effectiveness of ads. Depending on your settings at g.co/privacytools, some cookies enable better recommendations within a service. For example, ‘VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE’ enables personalized recommendations on YouTube based on past views and searches. And ‘NID’ enables personalized autocomplete features in Search as users type search terms. These cookies expire 6 months after a user’s last use. These cookies can be disabled if desired.

Firsthand: The Firsthand application uses Session and XSRF cookies to ensure the user can log into and submit forms to the platform backend. These must be enabled for the platform to function. The platform uses an embedded chat widget from our ZenDesk Customer Support tool, which is not required for normal operation of the platform.

DoubleClick:  Google Marketing Platform advertising products (Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360, and Campaign Manager 360) and Google Ad Manager use cookies to improve advertising. Some common applications are to target advertising based on what’s relevant to a user, to improve reporting on campaign performance, and to avoid showing ads the user has already seen. Cookies themselves contain no personally identifiable information. Depending on the publisher’s and user’s settings, information associated with cookies used in advertising may be added to the user’s Google Account. These cookies can be blocked if desired.

Twitter: Twitter uses cookies to target content, preferred language or country, aid in analytics and provide Twitter and Periscope content. This cookie is not required for normal operations and can be blocked by the end users if desired.

Infobase: Infobase uses cookies for session and access to other Infobase sites. Disabling this cookie may impact portal access from other Infobase sites. Disabling this cookie will not impact functionality.

AddShoppers: Engagement/abandonment tool for ensuring purchase completion. Disabling this cookie will not impact functionality.

Location of information processing. The information collected by our cookies is processed in servers located in the United States.

Sharing information. The information we gather from our Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies will be shared in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Rejecting Cookies AND YOUR OPTIONS.

You can stop cookies from being downloaded on your device by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. Most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to be notified when you receive a new cookie, and how to disable existing cookies. You can find out how to do this for your particular browser by clicking “help” on your browser's menu or by visiting www.allaboutcookies.org.  Please note, however, that without cookies you may not be able to access or take full advantage of the Online Services.

Most browsers allow users to use a “private mode” by which cookies are deleted after your website visit.  Please read the help section of your browser to learn more about how to activate the “private mode.”  You could still visit our websites if your browser is in “private mode”; however, the user experience may not be optimal and some utilities may not work.  If you want to remove previously-stored cookies, you can manually delete the cookies at any time. However, this will not prevent the Online Services from placing further cookies on your device unless and until you adjust your browser setting as described above.

For more information on the development of user-profiles and the use of targeting/advertising cookies, please see www.youronlinechoices.eu if you are located in Europe or www.aboutads.info/choices if in the United States.   

COOKIE POLICY UPDATES.

At any time, we reserve the right to add to, modify or remove portions of our Cookie Policy. The effective date of our Cookie Policy will be included at the beginning of the Cookie Policy and will serve as a notice of when changes have been implemented to the Cookie Policy. It is your responsibility to review this Cookie Policy to determine if any revisions have been made to it. Your continued use of our Online Services after any revisions have been made to this Cookie Policy will indicate your acknowledgement of such changes and agreement to be bound by the updated terms and conditions set forth herein.

HAVE QUESTIONS?

If you have questions regarding this Privacy Policy, would like to request more information from us, or would like to exercise a data privacy right or privilege, please contact us at any of the following: Firsthand, ATTN: Privacy Counsel, 132 West 31st Street, 16th Floor, New York, NY 10001, or 1-800-322-8755 or privacy@firsthand.com.