Cookies on the TaylorMade Websites

The TaylorMade Websites, like many others, use small files called cookies to help us customize your experience.  This page contains information on what cookies are, the cookies used by the TaylorMade Websites, how to switch cookies off in your browser, how to specifically switch off advertising cookies, and some useful links for further reading on the subject. If it does not provide the information you were looking for, or you have any further questions about the use of cookies on the TaylorMade Websites, please email privacy@taylormadegolf.com.

If you are covered by the General Data Protection Regulations (“GDPR”), we will ask for your explicit consent to use cookies when so required by the GDPR.   

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are stored by the browser (for example, Internet Explorer or Safari) on your computer or mobile device.  They allow websites to store things like user preferences.  You can think of cookies as providing a ‘memory’ for the website, so that it can recognize you when you come back and respond appropriately.

How do the TaylorMade Websites use cookies?

A visit to a page on the TaylorMade Websites may generate the following types of cookie:

Necessary cookies

These are cookies that are required for operation and navigation of the TaylorMade Websites.  They are necessary for the safety, security, and integrity of the TaylorMade Websites.  For example, they help support the structure of the pages that are displayed to you, allow you to return to pages you have previously visited, and uniquely identify you when you are signed into the TaylorMade Websites.  They keep track of the contents of your shopping cart, and allow our servers to determine if you are allowed access to a particular service.  You must accept these cookies to be able to make use of the TaylorMade Websites.

Site performance cookies

This type of cookie remembers your preferences for tools found on the TaylorMade Websites, so you don’t have to re-set them each time you visit.  Examples include volume settings for our video player and video streaming speeds that are compatible with your browser.

Geotargetting cookies

These cookies are used by software which tries to work out what country you are in from the information supplied by your browser when you click on a web page.  This cookie is completely anonymous, and we only use it to help target and localize our content – such as whether you see our UK or US home page – and advertising.

Anonymous analytics cookies

Every time someone visits the TaylorMade Websites, software provided by another organization generates an “anonymous analytics cookie”.

These cookies can tell us whether you have visited the site before.  Your browser will tell us if you have these cookies and, if you don’t, we generate new ones.  This allows us to track how many individual users we have, and how often they visit the site.

Unless you are signed in to the TaylorMade Websites, we cannot use these cookies to identify individuals.  We use them to gather statistics, such as the number of visits to a page.  If you are signed in, we will also know the details you gave to us for this, such as your username and email address.

Advertising cookies

These cookies allow us to monitor your online behavior and interests on the TaylorMade Websites.  For example, we use cookies to determine whether you have seen an advertisement or a type of advertisement, and how long it has been since you have seen it.

We also use these cookies to help us target advertisements and other communications shown and sent to you for goods and services.  For example, we may show advertisements about TaylorMade drivers if you have recently visited a product page related to one of our drivers.  These cookies are anonymous – they store information about what you are looking at on our site, but not about who you are.

We also set anonymous cookies on certain other sites that we advertise on.  If you receive one of those cookies, we may then use it to identify you as having visited that site if you later visit the TaylorMade Websites.  We can then target our advertising based on this information.

Third party cookies

Some content on the TaylorMade Websites is provided by other third-party organizations. Some of these organizations use their own anonymous cookies to track how many people have seen a particular piece of content, or to track how many people have seen it more than once.  For example, if you use your PayPal account as a payment method when conducting a transaction on one of the TaylorMade Websites, PayPal’s cookie may be called to remember your PayPal username and password.   

These third-party organizations may use their cookies to anonymously target advertising to you on other websites, based on your visit to the TaylorMade Websites.  Because of how cookies work, we have no access to read or write these cookies, nor can the other organization access the data in cookies we use on our website.  The organizations that generate these cookies have their own privacy policies and cookies policies, and TaylorMade has no control over, and assumes no responsibility for, the content, policies, or practices of any third party.

Use of Web Beacons to View and Access Cookies

The TaylorMade Websites and certain emails sent to opt-in consumers contain electronic images (called "pixels", "transparent GIF files", or "web beacons").  Web beacons allow us and our advertising partners to view and access cookies.  In general, any electronic image viewed as part of a web page, including an ad banner, can act as a web beacon.  Web beacons are small in order not to use valuable space on the computer screen that is better used to display helpful content.  In some cases these files are provided by our online management partner.  These files enable our online management partner to recognize a unique cookie on your web browser, which in turn enables us to learn which advertisements bring users to the TaylorMade Websites.  The cookie was placed by us or by another advertiser that works with our online management partner.  We may also include web beacons in HTML-formatted newsletters and other emails containing graphics that we send, so we may count the number of newsletters and emails that have been opened and read.

With both cookies and web beacons, the information stored by the web beacon or cookie does not contain your name, address, telephone number, or email address. Our systems do not recognize browser “Do Not Track” signals, but several of our service providers who utilize these cookies and other tracking technologies on the TaylorMade Websites enable you to opt out of this type of advertising.

How do I turn cookies off?

It is usually possible to stop your browser accepting cookies, or to stop it accepting cookies from a particular website.  However, the functionality of the TaylorMade Websites may be diminished if you do so.

All modern browsers allow you to change your cookie settings. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser.  To understand these settings, the following links may be helpful, or you can use the Help option in your browser for more details.

Cookie settings in Internet Explorer
Cookie settings in Firefox
Cookie settings in Chrome
Cookie settings in Safari web and iOS.

If you are primarily concerned about third party cookies generated by advertisers, you can turn these off by going to the Your Online Choices site.

You can also visit the trade body representing these advertising platforms for more information: Network Advertising Initiative.

They have provided a site where you can control all third-party online advertising. Please note that there are many more networks listed on this site than those that we use at TaylorMade.

Useful links

If you would like to find out more about cookies and their use on the Internet, you may find the following links useful:

Microsoft Cookies guide
All About Cookies

The IAB has provided the following website to give information specifically about privacy issues around Internet advertising:
youronlinechoices.co.uk/uk

For further legal information about privacy issues, you may find these links useful:

Data Protection Act 2018
The Information Commissioner’s Office

If you would like to contact us about cookies please email us at privacy@taylormadegolf.com.