How do we track your online activity?

There are various technologies that allow tracking of online activity.

The most commonly used technology is cookies. Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information, which your computer or mobile device creates when you visit a website. When you return to the website, the site can read these text files, and recognise your device, helping to enable site features and functionality.

Other related technologies collect data from your browsing session by requesting an image from a server, known as a ‘pixel’. As part of the request, information about your browsing session is passed through – allowing the technology to collect and store the information.

We also use Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics to collect and use data relating to your online activity.  More information can be found here for Google and here for Adobe.

Cookies and related technologies are useful in many ways. They:

• provide us with information on how our site is being used,
• help us to tailor marketing message to your interests, both on and off our sites,
• let you navigate between pages more quickly and securely,
• help detect and defend against fraud,
• recognise you when you return to websites and remember your preferences, 
• assist us with product and service research, development and business strategy, and
• generally improve your browsing experience.

When do we place cookies?

Ego places cookies (and other similar technologies) on your device when you visit Ego sites or other third party sites Ego advertise on. This helps Ego provide the best possible browsing experience for you. Other sites will also place cookies on your device, and may allow Ego to access their cookie data, for example when we partner with them for advertising purposes.

What types of cookies do we use?

There are different types of cookies:

Session-based cookies

These cookies store temporary information and are usually deleted when you close your browser.

Persistent cookies

These cookies are stored in your browser for a set amount of time and stay on your computer after you close your browser. They usually contain information you may want to keep from session to session (e.g. your location or username).

First party cookies

These are ‘our’ cookies – the ones that Ego sets up on your device.

Third party cookies

Other websites or servers set these cookies up on our behalf, or allow Ego to access their cookies for activities such as tailored advertising, or tracking our ads’ performance on other websites.

These cookies can have different functions:

Authentication, Security and Basic Functionality

Sometimes called “necessary cookies”, these cookies are needed for our sites to work properly. Without these cookies, core site services, such as accessing secure areas, can’t be provided. Some of these cookies even help us to detect fraud and keep the sites secure. These cookies don’t gather information about you and are not used for marketing or remember where you’ve been online.

Site Performance

These cookies collect information about how our sites are performing. For example, they tell us which content is popular, which pages create errors, or how people are moving around our sites. The information they collect is anonymous, and is used to help us improve how our websites work the sites works.

Preferences

These functional cookies are all about the choices you make both on our sites and our advertising partners’ sites. They store information about your choices (such as your user name, language or the region you’re in) and tailor your internet experience to provide relevant features and content for you, such as localised information or news. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you’ve made to text size, font and other customisable content.

Without these cookies, our website won’t remember any choices you’ve previously made, or personalise your browsing experience.

Advertising, Marketing and Analytics

These functional cookies are all about the choices you make both on our sites and our advertising partners’ sites. They store information about your choices (such as your user name, language or the region you’re in) and tailor your internet experience to provide relevant features and content for you, such as localised information or news. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you’ve made to text size, font and other customisable content.

Without these cookies, Ego’s website won’t remember any choices you’ve previously made, or personalise your browsing experience.

How are tracking technologies used for advertising/marketing purposes?

Cookies and other technology help us personalise your online experience more effectively. By recognising where you’ve been and what you’ve been looking at online, they allow Ego to better tailor advertising and offers both on our websites and our advertising partners’ sites to be more relevant to you.

Often, this tailoring is just done based on your anonymous browsing history – Ego does not actually know who you are. But sometimes, if you identify yourself (eg. by logging on to a customer hub or following a link in an email we’ve sent you) we may connect this tracked data to information we have about you to make your internet experience more relevant and deepen our understanding of you. If you don’t want this to happen, you can exercise your choice in a few ways:

• to stop all tailoring of advertising based on tracked information (anonymous and personal), you can delete or block cookies as explained below. This will allow you to remain anonymous online.
• if you don’t want Ego to use information we know about you as an identified individual for marketing, you can opt out of marketing (follow the prompts in personalised ads, or refer to the relevant brand’s privacy page online for contact options). Please note though, opting out of marketing means you won’t get served online ads because of what we know about you, but you may still get similar ads based on your anonymous browsing history and untargeted ads.  

Ego uses the Google Analytics Advertising Features for tracking and advertising/marketing purposes as follows:

• Remarketing with Google Analytics - we use this remarketing feature to re-engage users who visit our site but do not complete an activity, such as purchasing a policy, obtaining a quote or completing an enquiry form.   
• Google Display Network (GDN) Impression Reporting – this feature allows us to understand the impact of GDN ads on user behaviour and their subsequent engagement and activity on our sites.
• Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting – we use this feature to gain a better understanding of who visits our site. The report provides us with a breakdown of visitors by: age, gender, and interests.
• Integrated services that require Google Analytics to collect data for advertising purposes, including the collection of data via advertising cookies and identifiers – this feature allows us to collect information about our users via the Google advertising cookie, together with information collected via our Google analytics cookie.  This information is then used by us to support reporting and remarketing activities as described above.

If you are a user or account holder with a digital platform such as Google or Meta (Facebook and Instagram), you may wish to consider managing your advertising and personalisation preferences with these platforms which can often be done by adjusting the relevant settings of the account which you hold with each respective platform.  For example, Google account holders may wish to ensure the Ads Personalisation feature is turned off in their My Account console.

What if I don’t want to be tracked online?

By changing your browser settings, you can control how cookies are used on your computer or device. Usually, you can do this by opening the menu in the browser, and choose settings, options or privacy (it depends on which browser you’re using). From there, you can tailor how your device stores cookies. Options may include deleting all or some cookies, not accepting any cookies or being notified when cookies are being used. For example, if you are using Google Chrome browser, you can choose to browse “incognito” which will only allow session-based cookies.

You can delete existing cookies on your device and block new cookies if you don’t want your online activity to be tracked and remembered. Perhaps you share a device and previous online activity is by someone else so not relevant for you, or maybe you don’t want to be recognised online or served interest-based advertising. Without cookies, we can’t recognise you across visits.  Image-related technologies can be blocked by disabling javascript, but this would interfere with your ability to use websites that rely on javascript.

If you are a user or account holder with a digital platform such as Google or Facebook, you may wish to consider managing your tracking preferences with these platforms which can often be done by adjusting the relevant settings of the account which you hold with each respective platform.  For example, Google account holders may wish to use the My Activity console to ensure the Web&App Activity, Location History, and YouTube History features are turned off.  In addition, the Delete Activity feature can be used to manually or auto delete your Google activity.

Please remember:

• some cookies are essential for protecting financial and personal information,
• your experience on our site may be limited if you decide to delete or block certain cookies,
• if you delete all your cookies, you will have to update your preferences with us again,
• if you use a different device, computer or browser you will have to tell us your preferences again, and
• unless you block cookies entirely, new cookies will continue to be placed on your browser as you interact online, so you will need to check and delete cookies each time you go online.

How to opt out of third-party online behavioural advertising?

You can use the sites below to opt out of behavioural advertising from certain third-party advertising networks:

• if you are in Australia: youronlinechoices.com.au,
• if you are in the EU: youronlinechoices.eu, and
• if you are in the US: networkadvertising.org.

Opting out of online behavioural means that advertising that you do see is likely to be less relevant to your interests. However, opting out:

• does not mean that the advertising of our products and services on our own websites will stop being personalised to your interests,
• may not stop all online behavioural advertising because it only applies to those third-party advertising agencies that have signed up to those services, and
• does not mean that there will be no more advertising on this website or other websites you access.