Under EU law all websites must get permission from users to use cookies. As nearly all websites use cookies you are going to see a lot of these messages I expect!
We use cookies for a variety of different reasons, some of the main ones being:
We don’t sell the information collected by cookies, nor do we pass the information on to anyone else, unless maybe if we are made to by a court order. Dont think we have anything very interesting though.
We dont have the time or resources to allow you specifically opt out of specific cookies we use, however below you can see a link to where you can change the settings in your browser to prevent the site from setting cookies, or prompt you every time the site tries to set a cookie. You may find this is very annoying and also it will severeley limit the functionality of the site.
which is also recommended by the BBC has lots of information on how to control cookies and how to delete cookies.
| Cookie Name | Information | Expires |
| Stricly Necessary Cookies |
| tipsterid, tipster | Connected to login authentication. Prefer not to give too much detail as it aids people trying to hack into your account! | 2 years |
| verify | Holds your memberid during the registration process when you arent logged in but we still need to keep track of you to ensure we register you correctly | Until you close your browser |
| consent | Tells us that you have given us consent to use cookies as required by EU law. That way we dont have to keep asking you for consent. Yes we do need to create an extra cookie to do this - the irony! | 90 days |
| Functionality Cookies |
| country_code | The country preference of the user. If you are from a country where we offer limited language options (see the flag icon at the top) then if they tell us they want say Spanish menus we save that data so we dont have to ask them the same question for every page | Up to 1 year |
| phpbb2mysql_data, phpbb2mysql_sid, __utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmz, PHPSESSID | Data about your forum activity such as the posts you have read. These are all standard cookies from the off the shelf forum software called phpbb. | 1 year |
| oddsformat | What odds format you prefer e.g. American, Decimal, Fractional | 1 day |
| annoucement | The text for the message you sometimes get at the top of the page which you can remove by clicking the "x". We save it as a cookie so we dont have to look it up every time you change pages. When you click the "x" it deletes the cookie. | 1 day |
| guides | When you have submitted a poll in betting school this cookies tells us to show you the results rather than ask you the question again! | 6 months |
| fb_auth, status_msg, tw_auth, access_token, oauth_token, ft_team_name, var | Remembers if you have just given us permission to post your tips/status to facebook/twitter and the content of the status | Until you close your browser |
| comp_data | If you are entering an OLBG competition AND registering at the same time (ie not already a member) we store you competition entry until you have got a memberid, and then we can save it in our records under your member id. We used this for our Mares Hurdle Competition for example. | Until you close your browser |
| event, selection, tip_data, stake | If you make a tip and register at the same time from one of our event pages then these cookies temporaily store your tip info until you have a membership set up and the data can then be stored in our records with your member id | Until you close your browser |
| Performance Cookies |
| review_title, review_comments | If you are kind enough to write a review of a bookmaker and something goes wrong with the validation of data you enter we give you an error message but we also save the data in a cookie so you dont lose it when you are returned to that page | 1 hour |
| views | Records how many times a user has used the hot tips page so we can ask them to register or login after a while. We wanted to allow non members some access to these pages but not unlimited access. | 10 hours |
| fviews | Records views on new posts so that we can restrict access for non members after a while. Similar to the views cookies on hot tips we want to give non members some access to the forum but not unlimited. | 12 hours |
| Tracking Cookies |
| affid | Records which affiliate sent a user to use so we can pay them a fee if the person becomes a member. This is a normal feature of performance marketing. If we didnt do it we wouldnt be able to advertise with many other sites and we wouldnt have been able to grow | 2 years |
| daily | Tells our scripts that this isnt the first page of the first time you have visited the site so we dont need to do certain bits of prcessing to do with stats like "last access" | 1 day |
| ref | A session cookie which stores the site you arrived from before OLBG | Until you close your browser |
| emailclick | Allows us to track visits to OLBG from the emails we send out. Helps us work out which emails are popular and which you dont like (because you didnt click) | Until you close your browser |
| __utma | This Google Analytics cookie is used to determine unique visitors to our site. | 2 years |
| __utmb, __utmc | These Google Analytics cookies work together to calculate the average length of time users spend on our site | __utmb 30 minutes, __utmc when you close the browser. |
| __utmz | This Google Analytics cookie records information about how the page was reached (for example via a search engine result or a direct link). | 6 months. |
| __utmmobile | This Google Analytics cookie is used to determine unique visitors to our site. | 2 years |
