Cookie Policy

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Effective Date: 20th March 2026


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This Cookie Policy sets out the basis on which we, The Gulf Capital Market Association NPIO (GCMA), use cookies and similar technologies on or in relation to our website https://www.gulfcapitalmarket.org/ (our website). 

‘Essential’ cookies are automatically placed on your computer or device when you access our website or take certain actions on our website. ‘Non-essential’ cookies and other technologies are only placed on your computer or device if you have consented to us doing so. For information on the difference between essential and non-essential cookies, see the section below entitled About cookies.

For information on how you consent and how you can withdraw your consent to us placing non-essential cookies and other technologies on your computer or device, see the section below entitled How To Accept Or Reject Cookies.

About Cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small data files sent by a website’s server to a web browser, processor memory, or hard drive and stored there. They can be used for a range of different purposes, such as customizing a website for a particular user, helping a user navigate a website, improving that user’s website experience, and storing that user’s preferences and login information.

Essential and non-essential cookies

Cookies can be classified as either ‘essential’ or ‘non-essential’.

Essential cookies:

  • these are cookies that are either:
    used solely to carry out or facilitate the transmission of communications over a network; or
  • strictly necessary to provide an online service (e.g. our website or a service on our website) that you have requested.

Non-essential cookies: 

  • these are any cookies that do not fall within the definition of essential cookies, such as cookies used to analyze your behavior on a website (‘analytical’ cookies); or
  • cookies used to display advertisements to you (‘advertising’ cookies).

Session and persistent cookies

Cookies can be classified as either ‘session’ or ‘persistent’, depending on how long they last after they are placed on your browser.

  • Session cookies: session cookies last for as long as you keep your browser open. They expire when you close your browser.
  • Persistent cookies: persistent cookies expire at a fixed point in time or if you manually delete them from your browser, whichever occurs first.

First and third-party cookies

Cookies can be classified as ‘first party’ or ‘third party’.

  • First-party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by our website domain.
  • Third-party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by third-party website domains.

If you require further information about cookies in general, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org

List Of Cookies Used

We use the following cookies on or in relation to our website:

Name of Cookie Essential or Non-essential Type of cookie First or Third party? Session or Persistent? Expiry Time Purpose
_ga Non-essential Analytics First Party Persistent 1 year 1 month 4 days To distinguish website visitors
_gid Non-essential Analytics First Party Persistent 1 day To distinguish website visitors
_gat Non-essential Analytics First Party Persistent 1 minute To distinguish website visitors
CookieControl Non-essential Cookie Preferences First Party Persistent 3 months Your cookie preferences
pll_language Non-essential Language Preferences First Party Persistent 1 year Your language preferences
popuptimer Non-essential Functional First Party Persistent 1 year To control repeat display of popups
wpEmojiSettingsSupports Non-essential Functional First Party Persistent 1 year To emoji preferences

Essential Cookies

These are cookies that are strictly necessary for our website to be able to operate or to provide you with a service on our website, which you have requested. We use the following essential cookies on our website:

  • First-party session parameter storage. These cookies are PHPSESSID

How to opt out of essential cookies:

  • Most browsers allow you to block all cookies, including essential cookies. Please note, however, that if you block all cookies, parts of our website and its functionality may not work or display properly.
  • You can delete existing cookies from your browser by clearing your browsing data and ensuring that the option to delete cookies is selected.

For more detailed information on how to accept and reject cookies, including guidance for specific browsers, please see the section below entitled How To Accept Or Reject Cookies.

Non-Essential Cookies

We use the following types of non-essential cookies on our website:

  • Functional cookies
  • Analytical (or performance) cookies
  • Targeting (or advertising) cookies

Functional cookies

These are cookies that are designed for purposes such as enhancing a website’s functionality. These are either not strictly essential for the website or functionality that you have requested to work on, or are cookies that serve non-essential purposes in addition to their essential purpose. We use the following functional cookies on our website:

First-party persistent cookies to recognize whether you have accepted the use of cookies on our website. These cookies are CookieControl. These cookies expire after 3 months.

How to opt-in or out of functional cookies

See the section below entitled How To Accept Or Reject Cookies.

Analytical (or performance) cookies

Analytical (or performance) cookies track and gather data about what a user does on a website. These cookies are not essential for our website or its functionality to work. 

We use Google Analytics cookies on our website. It help us understand how you engage and interact with our website, including how you came to our website, which pages you visited, for how long and what you clicked on, your location (based on your IP address), and what device you are using and demographics.

The Google Analytics cookies used on our website are _ga, _gat, _gid. These cookies are session cookies.

These cookies expire after 1 year 1 month 4 days.

The information we collect using analytical cookies is collected on an anonymized basis.

More information

Google Analytics cookies are classified as first-party cookies as they are set by our website domain, although Google collects and processes information from our use of Google Analytics. To find out more about how Google handles information collected from Google Analytics, see Google Analytics’ privacy policy, which is available here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245

For information on how Google uses data from cookies it uses, please visit www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/

How to opt in or out of analytical cookies

See the section below entitled How To Accept Or Reject Cookies.

To opt out of Google Analytics tracking across all websites in general, you can do so here: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Third-Party Cookies 

Third parties use cookies to analyze your use of our website and/or to display advertisements (including third-party advertisements) to you and advertisement conversion tracking, such as Google AdWords, when applicable. Third-party cookies used in relation to our website include: _gcl_aw, _gcl_au, IDE, NID, ANID and test_cookie.

NID Cookie: Most Google users will have a preferences cookie called ‘NID’ in their browsers. A browser sends this cookie with requests to Google’s sites. The NID cookie contains a unique ID Google uses to remember your preferences and other information, such as your preferred language (e.g. Arabic, English), how many search results you wish to have shown per page (e.g., 10 or 20), and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on.

More information

For information about the cookies Google uses in relation to the above, see the ‘Advertising’ section on the Types of cookies used by Google page in Google’s cookies policy, which is available here: https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/types/.

For information about how Google uses data from cookies for its own purposes, please visit the following link: www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/.

How to opt in or out of third-party cookies

See the section below entitled How To Accept Or Reject Cookies.

Other technologies

We also may embed web beacons where appropriate in our emails and/or on our website. Web beacons are small GIF image files that enable us to track your receipt of our emails, how often you view our website pages, your location, IP address and browser information. Web beacons are activated whenever you open an email or access a page on our website that contains a web beacon. 

Web beacons transmit data when you view them but are not capable of accessing any other information on your computer. Web beacons are not stored on your hard drive unless you download a GIF image containing them.

Some (but not all) browsers enable you to restrict the use of web beacons by either preventing them from sending information back to their source (for example, when you choose browser settings that block cookies and trackers) or by not accessing the images containing them (for example, if you select a ‘do not display images (in emails)’ setting in your email server).

How to opt-in or out

See the section below entitled How To Accept Or Reject Cookies.

How To Accept Or Reject Cookies

There are a number of different ways in which you can accept or reject some or all cookies and similar technologies. Some of the main methods of doing so are described below:

  • You are welcome to block the use of some or all of the cookies we use on our website. However, please be aware that doing so may impair our website and its functionality or may even render some or all of it unusable.
  • You should also be aware that clearing all cookies from your browser will also delete any cookies that are storing your preferences, for example, whether you have accepted cookies on a website or any cookies that are blocking other cookies.

You can find more detailed information about cookies and adjusting your browser settings by visiting www.allaboutcookies.org 

Accepting Or Rejecting Cookies

Cookie control tool

You can accept or reject non-essential cookies by using our cookie control tool accessed at the bottom left of our website, found here https://www.gulfcapitalmarket.org/.

Browser settings

You can accept or reject some or all cookies (for example, blocking all third-party cookies) by adjusting your browser settings. If you do not know how to do this, the links below set out information about how to change your browser settings for some of the most commonly used web browsers:

Some browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox, allow you to change your settings to browse in ‘incognito’ mode, limiting the amount of data placed on your machine and automatically deleting any persistent cookies placed on your device when you finish your browsing session. There are also many third-party applications that you can add to your browser to block or manage cookies.

Existing cookies

To clear cookies that have previously been placed on your browser, you should select the option to clear your browsing history and ensure that the option to delete or clear cookies is included when you do so.

Google Ad Settings

You can manage and opt-out of personalization of advertisements by Google by visiting Google’s ad settings page here https://adssettings.google.com/ and by:

  • unticking the button entitled ‘Also use Google Account activity and information to personalize ads on these websites and apps and store that data in your Google Account’; and
  • switching the ‘Ads Personalisation’ setting off (e.g., by ensuring the switch at the top of the page is set to the left/grey and not the right/blue).

Alternatively, you can install a free browser plugin here: https://support.google.com/ads/answer/7395996

Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on

You can opt-out of Google Analytics tracking by installing the browser add-on, which is available here: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance Tool

You can opt out of Facebook and other companies that participate in the Digital Advertising Alliance in Europe from showing your interest-based ads by visiting http://www.youronlinechoices.com, selecting your country, clicking ‘Your Ad Choices’, then locating Facebook (and any other companies you want to block) and selecting the ‘Off’ option.

You give your consent to the purposes for which we process your information using cookies by clicking I accept cookies in our cookie tool pop-up on our website. 

For further information on how we use the information gathered from cookies or regarding your privacy and your Statutory Rights, refer to our Data Protection and Privacy Policy.

For Any Inquiries Please Contact Us