We are Henkmedia Connect Ltd (HMC), publishers of the Lagos Metropolitan newspaper. We publish websites and mobile applications that many people enjoy regularly.
In this Notice we will refer to the website published by HMC and use the term Sites to refer to our websites.
Our users and readers are central to our business and always have been. Clearly, the world has changed a lot over the past 100 years but our vision of informing and entertaining people has not and we recognise users place a huge amount of trust in us, in our content and the way we do business. A large part of the change has been technology driven, much of which has been hugely challenging for publishing businesses.
We are committed to managing that change in a way that still allows you free access to the content that matters to you, across our digital platforms. However, we also want you to feel in control of the information you generate when you use our Sites and Apps. The information generated from your browsing, helps us to understand how people use our websites, how we can improve them and also make sure advertisers get a good return on their investment. Their advertising funds our activities and the content you read for free.
Like most websites and mobile applications, we use automatic data collection technology when you visit one of our Sites or use one of our Apps. This notice explains how we use so called “cookies” and other related technologies and how you can manage the behaviour of these cookies.
There is a detailed description of how we use the data we collect in our Privacy Notice.
What are cookies?
Cookies are small data files sent from a website to your web browser. They are stored in your web browser’s cache and allow a website or a third party to recognise your browser or mobile device. Mobile devices and browsers can be shared by a number of people, so cookies are not always wholly related to individuals.
We use three major types of cookies:
Analytics Cookies hold information as you view different pages of the website and help us to build up a profile of how our readers use the website. They help us to make the website work as efficiently as possible and provide better content and services in the future. We may also use analytics cookies to measure the effectiveness of advertising on the Sites and the Apps and elsewhere on the internet.
Example: By seeing that more browsers and devices from Lagos prefer football content on a Friday evening than Sunday morning, we may change when and how much content we produce for Lagos football teams on a weekday as opposed to a weekend.
Personalisation and Service Cookies remember your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. They remember your registration and login details and your settings and preferences. They are used to ensure you don’t have to login every time you use your browser to comment on articles and to ensure interactive services work effectively. They are also used to recommend content we think you’ll be interested in, based on what you’ve looked at before.
Example: We run a poll on a particularly contentious local issue so we will use cookies to prevent a device or browser voting hundreds of times to influence the poll results.
Advertising Cookies are placed by us and our advertising partners to deliver more relevant advertising. Our Sites, Apps and services are predominately free to consume, and in exchange we sell our advertising space to allow us to create high quality content and bring you the services you value. Cookies are a vital part of that value exchange.
These cookies may gather information about your browsing activity on our sites and for third parties, across different Sites and across different visits. They allow us and advertisers to show more relevant ads and allow advertisers to manage how many times a device sees an advert. They might also allow the advertiser to tailor advertising to you when you visit our Sites. Advertising Cookies are usually stored until you delete them or they expire based on the time period set in each cookie, which is normally around 30 days.
The third party advertisers are required to follow the applicable laws. However, HMC does not have control over the third party organisations that place cookies, who each have their own cookie and privacy policies. We aim to be transparent on who we work with. You can find a list of our partners and option to control advertising cookies in our cookie management tool here.
Example: If a browser or device is recognised to enjoy lots of content about celebrities, we and/or our partners may show that browser or device adverts that relate to relevant lifestyle, tech and consumer goods.
If you opt out of Advertising cookies, you are not opting out of seeing advertising! You will still see plenty of adverts. They just may not be as relevant to you and your interests. See ‘Managing your cookie preferences’ below for more information about “opting out”.
Other technologies
In addition to cookies, there are similar technologies that may be used by the Sites and the Apps. These include:
Web beacons: These are tiny graphics with a unique identifier that are used to understand browsing activity. Web beacons are invisible when you open a web page.
Social widgets: These are buttons or icons provided by third-party social media providers that allow you to interact with those social media services when you view a web page or a mobile app screen. These social widgets may collect browsing data, which may be received by the third party that provided the widget, and are controlled by the third parties.
UTM codes: These are strings that can appear in a web address when a user moves from one web page or website to another. The string can represent information about browsing, such as which advertisement or publisher sent the user to the receiving website.
Managing your cookie preferences
Most web browsers will allow you to turn off cookies. You should look at your web browsers Settings or Help menu to find out how this is done. However, please be aware that switching off cookies may affect the way the Site operates and adversely affect the quality of your experience on the website.
You can restrict the use of Advertising Cookies on our Sites using our cookie management tool here.
You can also click on the AdChoices logo that you will see in the corner of advertisements that carry behavioural targeting cookies (see Advertising Cookies above) and click on the link to control the settings Google uses to show you adverts https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated.
When using a mobile device, you can opt-out of receiving interest based advertising by selecting ‘Limit Ad Tracking’ in the Settings of your Apple iPhone or iPad, or the “Opt out of Ads Personalisation” in the Google Settings on your Android device. You may also be able to reset the unique identifier that Google uses for online behaviour based advertising (referred to as an “Advertising ID”) in the Settings on your Apple or Android device.
Ad Blocker Detection
We or our advertisers may use code in the website to detect if you are using an ad blocker. If we detect that you are using an ad blocker, we may display a warning message describing how this may affect your experience using the Sites and ask that you disable it
Social Media Technologies
When you use social media platforms with the Sites and the Apps, each platform has its own technologies and policies to be aware of. For information on limiting the use of widgets and sharing functions with social networks, see below:
For Twitter widgets, you can find more information here.
For Facebook widgets, you can find more information here.
For Pinterest widgets, you can find more information here.
Contact us
If you have questions or comments about the use of Cookie technologies at HMC, please see the “Contact” section of the HMC Privacy Notice or email us at info@lagosmetropolitan.com.
This Cookies and related technologies notice was published on 13th Apr, 2020.