Words from India
India has enriched English with dozens of words: BAEL a spiny tree BUSTEE, BUSTI a slum BHANG a drug made from hemp BINDI a decorative dot in the middle of the forehead… Read More
Blog
The letter J
The J is the least useful of the four power tiles (J, Q, X and Z), and it’s usually best to play it as soon as you can. It makes two two-letter words: JA (South African for yes) and JO (Scottish for… Read More
Double Trouble
Two of the same letter on your rack at one time is nearly always bad news. Why? Because it drastically reduces the number of alternative ways of arranging your rack. With seven different letters, there are 5,040 different ways of arranging the seven letters. No wonder it takes you so… Read More
Words from Australia
The land down under is not backward in adding its own unique stamp to the language. Here are a few Australian words that have made it in, with meanings that give clues to what preoccupies our antipodean cousins: ARVO afternoon BIFFO fighting… Read More
Looking out for compound words
A good way of spotting bonus-scoring words on your rack – and one that sometimes works well with the less common letters – is to look for compound words; two words joined together to form a new word with the meaning of both. They often add up to a handy… Read More
‘Hooks’ to hang your words on
In the same way that you can hang your coat on a hook, you can also use hooks to “hang” your words on to in Scrabble. When a word is played, have a quick think as to whether a single letter can be placed before or after it to form… Read More
Using the letter I
The I is similar to the A in that it is usually useful to have one of them, but their value goes down steeply once you get more than one. In contrast to the handy AA, EE and… Read More
What about tricky adjectives?
In case it’s a while since you have been to school (or you just weren’t paying attention when you were there), an adjective is a word that describes a noun. A tall man, a clever woman, a tricky adjective. You can generally add -ER and -EST to adjectives that are… Read More
Verbs in Scrabble
There are words you can play even though they are probably not shown in a dictionary (though they will be in Collins Official Scrabble Words). Verbs, for instance, can generally have S, ED or ING added to them. So PRINT can become PRINTS,… Read More
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- You read several articles on how to build a treehouse on a social media platform. This information might be added to a profile to mark your interest in content related to outdoors as well as do-it-yourself guides (with the objective of allowing the personalisation of content, so that for example you are presented with more blog posts and articles on treehouses and wood cabins in the future).
- You have viewed three videos on space exploration across different TV apps. An unrelated news platform with which you have had no contact builds a profile based on that viewing behaviour, marking space exploration as a topic of possible interest for other videos.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on your content personalisation profiles, which can reflect your activity on this or other services (for instance, the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects. This can for example be used to adapt the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find (non-advertising) content that matches your interests.
- You read articles on vegetarian food on a social media platform and then use the cooking app of an unrelated company. The profile built about you on the social media platform will be used to present you vegetarian recipes on the welcome screen of the cooking app.
- You have viewed three videos about rowing across different websites. An unrelated video sharing platform will recommend five other videos on rowing that may be of interest to you when you use your TV app, based on a profile built about you when you visited those different websites to watch online videos.
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- You were presented a video on fashion trends, but you and several other users stopped watching after 30 seconds. This information is then used to evaluate the right length of future videos on fashion trends.
Reports can be generated based on the combination of data sets (like user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics data) regarding your interactions and those of other users with advertising or (non-advertising) content to identify common characteristics (for instance, to determine which target audiences are more receptive to an ad campaign or to certain contents).
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- A technology platform working with a social media provider notices a growth in mobile app users, and sees based on their profiles that many of them are connecting through mobile connections. It uses a new technology to deliver ads that are formatted for mobile devices and that are low-bandwidth, to improve their performance.
- An advertiser is looking for a way to display ads on a new type of consumer device. It collects information regarding the way users interact with this new kind of device to determine whether it can build a new mechanism for displaying advertising on this type of device.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type, or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times a video or an article is presented to you).
- A travel magazine has published an article on its website about the new online courses proposed by a language school, to improve travelling experiences abroad. The school’s blog posts are inserted directly at the bottom of the page, and selected on the basis of your non-precise location (for instance, blog posts explaining the course curriculum for different languages than the language of the country you are situated in).
- A sports news mobile app has started a new section of articles covering the most recent football games. Each article includes videos hosted by a separate streaming platform showcasing the highlights of each match. If you fast-forward a video, this information may be used to select a shorter video to play next.
Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you, the publisher or the advertiser may encounter in the delivery of content and ads and in your interaction with them.
- An advertising intermediary delivers ads from various advertisers to its network of partnering websites. It notices a large increase in clicks on ads relating to one advertiser, and uses data regarding the source of the clicks to determine that 80% of the clicks come from bots rather than humans.
Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) is used to ensure the technical compatibility of the content or advertising, and to facilitate the transmission of the content or ad to your device.
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The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices.
- When you visit a website and are offered a choice between consenting to the use of profiles for personalised advertising or not consenting, the choice you make is saved and made available to advertising providers, so that advertising presented to you respects that choice.
Information about your activity on this service may be matched and combined with other information relating to you and originating from various sources (for instance your activity on a separate online service, your use of a loyalty card in-store, or your answers to a survey), in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
In support of the purposes explained in this notice, your device might be considered as likely linked to other devices that belong to you or your household (for instance because you are logged in to the same service on both your phone and your computer, or because you may use the same Internet connection on both devices).
Your device might be distinguished from other devices based on information it automatically sends when accessing the Internet (for instance, the IP address of your Internet connection or the type of browser you are using) in support of the purposes exposed in this notice.
With your acceptance, your precise location (within a radius of less than 500 metres) may be used in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
With your acceptance, certain characteristics specific to your device might be requested and used to distinguish it from other devices (such as the installed fonts or plugins, the resolution of your screen) in support of the purposes explained in this notice.