Cookie Policy
This page documents the cookies and similar technologies used on William Hill, the role each plays, how long it lingers on your device, and the routes available for controlling or deleting them. The broader question of personal-data handling is addressed separately on the Privacy Policy page; the page you are reading is the technical companion to that one. The site as a whole is described on the About page, with the flagship operator review on the William Hill Casino homepage.
1. What a cookie is, briefly
A cookie is a tiny text file that a website asks your browser to keep on your device. The next time the same site loads, the browser hands the file back, letting the site recognise the visit, recall a setting, or count traffic. Cookies cannot execute code on your machine, cannot read other files, and cannot identify you personally without other information already tied to the cookie. Many things colloquially called "cookies" today are technically other browser-storage mechanisms — localStorage, sessionStorage, IndexedDB — operating in roughly the same way; for plain English, the word "cookie" on this page covers all of them.
2. Categories of cookies used on William Hill
William Hill operates with three categories of cookie. These are presented on your first visit through a consent banner, and the selection can be adjusted at any moment afterwards via the link in the site footer.
| Category | Purpose | Consent required |
|---|---|---|
| Strictly necessary | Make the site work: load the page, remember your cookie-banner choice, route traffic, prevent abuse. | No (legal basis: legitimate interest) |
| Analytics | Anonymous, aggregated traffic measurement: which pages are read, where readers come from, which links are clicked. | Yes |
| Affiliate tracking | Recognise that a click through to an operator came from William Hill so the partnership can be credited. | Yes |
No advertising cookies and no remarketing cookies are placed by William Hill. There is no display advertising loaded on the site, no programmatic ad network running in the background, and no pixel-tracking of readers across third-party properties. The funding model that keeps the operation going is explained at length on the Affiliate Disclosure page.
3. Specific cookies, third parties and lifetimes
Listed below are the cookies that may be placed when you visit William Hill. Third-party cookies are set by the external services William Hill uses; controlling their full behaviour rests with the third party in question, and links to those parties' own policies are supplied below.
| Name | Set by | Category | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|---|
williamhill_consent | William Hill | Strictly necessary | Stores your cookie-banner choice so the banner does not reappear on every page load. | 12 months |
williamhill_session | William Hill | Strictly necessary | Anonymous session identifier used to load assets and rate-limit abusive traffic. | Until browser closes |
_ga, _ga_* | Google Analytics 4 | Analytics | Aggregated traffic statistics: pages per session, traffic sources, average time on page. IP addresses are anonymised before storage. | 14 months |
williamhill_aff | William Hill | Affiliate tracking | Records that a click on an outbound operator link originated from William Hill so the partnership is credited. | 30 days |
Policy references for the third parties involved: Google Privacy & Terms is the document covering Google Analytics in particular. Operator partner sites drop their own cookies onto your device after you have clicked through — those cookies fall under the operator's privacy policy, not under William Hill's.
4. How to control cookies in your browser
Every browser worth mentioning lets you block fresh cookies, wipe the existing ones, or shut out third-party cookies entirely. The official documentation for each major browser is linked below:
As an alternative, browsing William Hill through your browser's private or incognito mode prevents cookies from being saved across sessions at all — the issue does not arise in the first place.
5. What happens if you decline non-essential cookies
The site keeps working as normal. Every page is still readable, every internal link still works, and click-throughs to operator sites still function. Three small differences follow: traffic statistics will not include your visit; if you click an affiliate link with affiliate tracking declined, the partnership cannot be credited — the operator still treats you, the user, exactly the same; only the commission back to William Hill fails to register; and the consent banner reappears if you clear your cookies, because the choice itself is stored in a cookie. The full editorial standards behind every page (including how affiliate links are flagged) live on the Editorial Policy page, and the player-safety commitments sit on the Responsible Gambling page.
6. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control
On William Hill the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal is honoured: whenever your browser transmits GPC, every non-essential cookie is automatically blocked and the consent banner is hidden. By contrast the older Do Not Track header lacks any agreed enforcement standard and is therefore not relied on here.
7. Updates to this policy
When the cookies used on William Hill change, this page is updated and the "Last updated" date at the top is bumped accordingly. Material changes — new categories of cookie, new third-party processors — trigger a one-off refresh of the consent banner so existing visitors are asked for consent again. Minor housekeeping changes (rewording, link updates) do not produce a fresh consent prompt.
8. Questions and complaints
Cookie-specific questions about William Hill are best raised through the Contact page. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) — found at ico.org.uk — is the body that handles complaints about UK sites under both the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.