We use cookies to make our websites more user-friendly. Find out about the main types of cookies we use, and what we use them for.
What are cookies?
Cookies are small pieces of text which are downloaded to your device, for example, when you visit a website. Cookies are useful because they allow Pearson to understand our customers better so that we can provide a more focused user experience. Using the knowledge of your previous visits to our website, Pearson can enhance subsequent visits by tailoring our content to match your requirements. You can find more general information about cookies at: www.allaboutcookies.org.
When we mention "cookies", we also mean other technologies such as web beacons and pixels that collect information in a similar way to cookies on websites or emails. When we mention "websites", we also mean mobile applications and emails.
How do we use cookies?
We use cookies principally because we want to make our websites and mobile applications user-friendly, and we are interested in anonymous user behavior. Generally, our cookies don't store sensitive or personally identifiable information such as your name and address or credit card details.
In the unlikely event that our websites use cookies to store personal information about you, Pearson encrypts the personal data to prevent unauthorized use by anyone else.
Pearson uses two main categories of cookie: (1) strictly necessary cookies; and (2) optional cookies:
1. Strictly Necessary Cookies
These cookies are essential to enable you to use the features of our services and websites, such as technically delivering content, setting your privacy preferences, logging in, making payments or filling in forms. Without these cookies, our services cannot be provided so you cannot decline them.
2. Optional Cookies
Optional cookies consist of all the other cookies we use to enhance our products and services and deliver you the best user experience. These optional cookies fall into several categories which you can read more about below.
Performance cookies
These cookies collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and they let you store items in your shopping basket between visits. They may also show us which email or web page visitors clicked through from in order to visit our website, and whether you opened an email we sent you.
Some of these are analytics cookies, set using third party web analytics software, which allow us to monitor our website traffic. For example, we use Google Analytics and Universal Analytics cookies to help us do this. These analytics cookies may also tell us how many of our visitors are male or female, and may summarize the number of visitors who fall within certain age ranges, or certain interest categories. However, this sort of information is not linked to any individual; it just shows us what percentage of our visitors fall in particular categories.
Find out more about how Google uses your data or opt out from having your data sent to Google.
We will not pass this data to third parties in such a way that would allow them to identify visitors personally. However, we may associate this cookie data with other personally identifiable data submitted by you (for instance when you submit a form, or partially complete a form, or leave items in your shopping basket), in order to make sure that our communications are as relevant to you as possible.
Sometimes we may use this data to highlight Pearson products or services which we think will be of interest to you based on your use of our websites, or to contact you and offer help if you appear to be having difficulty completing an order.
We may also use third party cookies during e-commerce transactions to help prevent fraud.
Functionality cookies
These cookies allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. For instance, these cookies can be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of web pages that you can customize.
They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect may be anonymized and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.
Behaviorally targeted advertising cookies
We use these cookies to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as to help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign.
These cookies remember that you have visited our website and use this information to tailor advertising for our products and services when you visit third party websites.
The cookies are placed by advertising networks. In line with Internet Advertising Bureau guidelines, our online advertising served via this method includes the AdChoices icon. Clicking on that icon will give more information about tracking cookies and allow you to opt out of receiving further targeted advertising. For more information, and how to opt out of these cookies, head over to AdChoices.
Third-party cookies and social networks
If you click on a hyperlink from Pearson's websites to any third-party websites (for example, if you 'share' content from Pearson’s websites with friends or colleagues through social networks), you may be sent cookies from these third-party websites.
Third-party websites will have their own privacy and cookie policies which Pearson cannot control. Please check the third-party websites for more information about their cookies and how to manage them.
Do we track visitors and users?
Our emails may contain a “web beacon pixel” to tell us whether our emails are opened and verify any clicks through to links or advertisements within the email.
We may use this information for purposes including determining which of our emails are more interesting to users, and to query whether users who do not open our emails wish to continue receiving them.
The pixel will be deleted when you delete the email. If you do not wish the pixel to be downloaded to your device, you should read the email in plain text view or with images disabled.
We use cookies from Pardot to track the browsing behavior of individual website visitors such as page view activity and impression time, in order to help us better monitor the success of our website. This information is compiled to make improvements to our website.
Personal information is stored in Pardot/Salesforce only if our visitors complete a form, for example for registration to events, contact/request forms or for subscription to our email communications.
Read more about this third party cookie, including the provider’s privacy statement
DO NOT SELL OR SHARE MY DATA (U.S. Customers)
When you visit Pearson sites and services, we may collect personal data related to you, your interests and/or your device. This data may be used for a variety of purposes, such as providing a more personalized experience. When this data is shared with third parties, it may be considered a “sale,” “sharing” or “targeted advertising” under various state laws. Those states typically provide their residents (or, in some cases, their authorized agents) with the right to opt out of “targeted advertising,” “selling,” or “sharing” of personal information. At Pearson, we extend this right to all our U.S. customers regardless of your state of residence. You can choose to opt out of such “sale,” “sharing” or “targeted advertising” of your personal data by turning off all non-essential cookies via our Cookie Preferences Management Tool.
