what3words Cookies Policy
This page outlines how we ( what3words Limited , a company with its registered address at Studio 301 Great Western Studios, 65 Alfred Rd, London, England, W2 5EU, UK) use cookies and similar technologies. You can find information on other matters relating to data protection in our Privacy Policy .
Cookies are small pieces of data saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website. Cookies can do lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently, storing your preferences, and helping website owners to authenticate you to deliver personalised content to you. Cookies make the interaction between you and websites and apps faster and easier.
Pixels are small blocks of code on web pages that are often used in connection with cookies and can allow another server to measure viewing of a web page. HTML5 Local Storage is a small database located inside your browser which websites can use to store data to speed up their processing. We may use all three technologies from time to time, to help improve your browsing experience.
We have outlined below the individual cookies (and associated pixels, where applicable) that we use, along with more detail on why we use them.
You have the ability, either by managing your settings on our cookie banner or by adjusting your browser settings, to turn off our utilisation of certain types of cookies. This may, however, mean that sections of the website or apps are not accessible in the same way or that their performance is altered.
Strictly necessary cookies
The following cookies are necessary for enabling certain functionalities on our website.
1. what3words
auth-token
site_language
threewordaddress_language
is-developer
IS_COOKIE_NOTICE_CLOSED
cookie_preferences
auth_id
auth_scope
oauth_provider
plugin
app_state_id
auth_type
An authentication cookie is stored by a user’s browser so that once that user has logged into a what3words account, it is not necessary to enter the username and password multiple times on one visit. In order to prevent a user having to enter this information multiple times, we also store a user’s language preferences, as well as if they have told us they are a developer (for our developer site). The other cookies remember if a user has already completed our tutorials or closed the cookie notice on the website.
2. Intercom
Intercom, Inc. and its affiliates provide a messaging platform (called Intercom) where users can contact us (e.g. send us questions) about what3words and we can respond. Intercom enables us to provide customer support to our visitors.
3. Stripe
Stripe is a payments system provided by Stripe, Inc. (and its affiliates) that we use to take payments for our API. Stripe sets cookies to enable payments to take place effectively and securely by linking your browser to your Stripe credentials.
4. Authentication
Facebook Authentication
Google Authentication
Apple Authentication
These cookies are necessary to show users the social sign-in options for what3words accounts and they enable social sign-in if users wish to use a Facebook, Google or Apple account to create or log in to a what3words account.
Cookies that measure website usage
The following cookies allow us to understand our visitors’ behaviour and use this insight to modify our website and apps to improve user experience. By using these cookies, we can compile anonymous and aggregated statistics on website usage.
5. what3words
device_group_id
onboarding-done
onboarding-variant
6. Branch.io
Branch.io is a web analytics platform provided by Branch Metrics, Inc. We use Branch.io to provide a seamless experience for users when moving between our website and our apps through deep linking (for example, to allow a user to click on a 3 word address on our website, download one of our apps and for that app to open on the same 3 word address). Using Branch.io also allows us to plan modifications to our products that will improve user experience.
7. HubSpot
Hubspot is a CRM (customer relationship management) service provided by Hubspot Inc. We use Hubspot to facilitate sign-ups for what3words accounts and newsletters, as well as to collect data on interactions with our website/apps (e.g. average page views) for our internal analytical purposes.
8. Hotjar
Hotjar is a web analytics service provided by Hotjar Ltd. We use Hotjar in order to analyse use of the website, as it provides us with heat maps: (anonymised) colour-coded representations of parts of the website which people are most or least interacting with.
9. Datadog
Datadog is a web analytics service that we use for measuring usage and performance of our web servers. For example, we use the tool to determine if we have the correct server capacity and if we have any performance issues that are making our site perform slowly.
10. Mixpanel
Mixpanel is a web analytics platform provided by Mixpanel, Inc. We use Mixpanel to collect information such as which pages our users visit on our website and referrer information (which website users visited from e.g. a search engine). We use this information for internal analytics purposes, so that we can improve user experience.
Cookies that help with our communications and marketing
We want to spread the word about what3words and to encourage visitors to return to our website/apps. We therefore show digital adverts on other websites, and the following cookies (and related pixels) allow us to measure the success of our digital advertising campaigns (e.g. how many people clicked on a what3words advert shown to them on their Facebook page, how many people installed one of the apps after seeing a what3words advert etc).
User behaviour on our website may also be used to build audiences for our Twitter, TikTok, Facebook and LinkedIn advertising campaigns (e.g. if you visit our website, you might be shown an advert for what3words on another website that shows adverts run by those third parties). We also use Google AdWords for “remarketing” purposes, which means showing adverts on other websites to people who have already visited our website or who have the what3words app installed in order to encourage users to return. In order to do this, we make use of cookies, which in this case are a randomly generated number that uniquely identifies a web browser on a specific computer as having visited the website or completed certain actions on the website.
The following links have more information on Twitter, TikTok, Google, Facebook and LinkedIn’s interest-based advertising and how to opt out or change user preferences.
11. what3words
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mp_w3w_mp_analytics
12. Twitter
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13. Google
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14. Facebook
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15. LinkedIn
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16. Tiktok (
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