Cookie Notice
This notice provides information about how Hootsuite and its affiliates (collectively, “Hootsuite”) uses cookies and similar technologies on its websites and Services.
What is a cookie?
Cookies are small text files placed on your device to store data that can be retrieved by a website you visit. They serve a number of purposes, such as, making your visit easier by recognizing you once you have logged in, remembering your preferences (such as, displaying your preferred language), and allows us to improve and identify performance issues on our website by providing information about the usage of our website (such as, the number of visitors and user activity).
Cookies may be stored in your browser for different lengths of time. Session-based cookies last only while your browser is open and are automatically deleted when you close your browser. Persistent cookies last until you or your browser delete them or until they expire.
Does Hootsuite use cookies?
Yes. Hootsuite uses cookies and similar technologies like single-pixel gifs and web beacons. We use both session-based and persistent cookies. Hootsuite sets and accesses our own cookies on the domains operated by us. We also leverage the services of a number of third-parties which may also set cookies when you are visiting our websites or using our Services.
How Hootsuite uses cookies
We use cookies and similar technologies for storing and honouring your preferences and settings, enabling you to sign-in, monitoring the performance of our websites and Services and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns, providing interest-based advertising, combating fraud, analyzing how our products perform and fulfilling other legitimate purposes.
Below are definitions of frequently used types of cookies and their functions. You can find more information about each type of cookie in our .
Essential Cookies
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with our websites and Services. We use these cookies for different purposes, including:
Authentication: to remember your login status so that you do not have to repeatedly log in when browsing our websites or accessing our Services.
Security: to enable and support our security features, and to help us detect malicious activity, including Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks.
Traffic management: to assist with load balancing, and identify trusted web traffic.
Compliance: to remember your privacy preferences, and to facilitate the opting-out of data collection via optional categories of cookies.
If you do not allow or otherwise block such cookies, our websites and Services may no longer function for you, or may not function properly.
Functional Cookies
These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalization. For example, we use functional cookies to remember choices you have made or information you have provided, such as your username, language, or the region you are in. They are used to keep our websites and Services working properly, such as showing you the appropriate information for the location you selected. They may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages to improve your experience. If you do not allow these cookies, some aspects or our websites and Services may not function properly for you.
Marketing and Advertising (Targeting) Cookies
We use cookies and similar technologies to help us deliver marketing campaigns and track their performance (e.g., a user visited our Help Center and then made a purchase).
Advertising cookies are used on our websites to tailor marketing to you and your interests and provide you with a more personalized service in the future. These cookies remember that you visited our websites and we may share this information with third-parties, such as advertisers. Advertising cookies may also be used by such third-parties to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant advertisements on other sites. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
You may opt-out of the sharing of your data to these third-parties by disabling this category of cookies in our .
Performance Cookies
Hootsuite is dedicated to providing an exceptional user experience and we use many tools to help us improve our websites and our Services. To this end, we use reporting and analytics cookies to collect information about how you use our websites and Services, and how often. We also use performance cookies to understand, improve, and research products, features, and services, including to create logs and record when you access our websites and Services from different devices, such as your work computer or your mobile device. Although important to us, these cookies are non-essential to the use of our websites or Services. If you do not allow these cookies, we will not know when you have visited our websites or Services, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
Social Media Cookies
These cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to our websites to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other websites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies, you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.
What third-party cookies does Hootsuite use?
You can find a list of the third-party cookies that Hootsuite uses on our websites and in our Services, along with other relevant information, in our . While we do our best to keep this information updated, please note that the number and names of cookies, pixels and other technologies may change from time to time.
What can you do if you don't want cookies to be set or want them to be removed, or if you want to opt out of interest-based targeting?
Some people prefer not to allow cookies, which is why most browsers give you the ability to manage cookies to suit you. In some browsers you can set up rules to manage cookies on a site-by-site basis, giving you more fine-grained control over your privacy. What this means is that you can disallow cookies from all websites except those that you trust. You may also change your cookie preferences and settings for our websites and our Services at any time by clicking on our .
Browser manufacturers provide help pages relating to cookie management in their products. We have collected a short list of the main manufacturer’s help pages for your convenience below:
You can opt-out of interest-based targeting provided by participating ad servers through the Digital Advertising Alliance. In addition, on your iPhone, iPad or Android, you can change your device settings to control whether you see online interest-based ads. Email tracking pixels may be disabled by disabling images in your email client settings.
If you limit the ability of websites and applications to set cookies, you may worsen your overall user experience and/or lose the ability to access sites, services or save customized settings.
Does Hootsuite respond to Do Not Track Signals?
No. Our websites and Services do not collect personal information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or online services. Therefore, “do not track” signals transmitted from web browsers do not apply to our websites or Services, and we do not alter any of our data collection and use practices upon receipt of such a signal.
Does Hootsuite respond to Global Privacy Control (GPC) Headers?
No. The Global Privacy Control is a proposed standard for handling requests to opt-out of sharing or processing of data at a more global browser level vs. a site-by-site level. As described in the Mozilla Developer Network’s documentation, the Sec-GPC header is currently an experimental and non-standard proposal that is not recommended for use on production websites. Hootsuite will continue to monitor developments in this area and may update its websites and Services to respond to such headers if and when the GPC spec is adopted by standards organizations such as the W3C and major browser manufacturers.