Many websites use cookies in order to improve your user experience by enabling the website to remember you for the duration of your visit or for repeat visits. Cookies do lots of different jobs. They help you navigate between pages efficiently, storing your preferences, and generally improving your experience of a website. Cookies make the interaction between you and the website faster and easier. If a website doesn’t use cookies, it will think you are a new visitor every time you move to a new page on the site it won’t be able to keep you logged in.
Some websites will also use cookies to enable them to target their advertising or marketing messages based for example, on your location and/or browsing habits. Cookies may be set by the website you are visiting (‘first party cookies’) or they may be set by other websites who run content on the page you are viewing (‘third party cookies’).
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a simple text file that is stored on your computer or mobile device by a website’s server and only that server will be able to retrieve or read the contents of that cookie. Each cookie is unique to your web browser. It will contain some anonymous information such as a unique identifier and the site name and some digits and numbers. It allows a website to remember things like your preferences or what’s in your shopping basket.
Third Party Cookies
If you use a share button on our website, a cookie may be set by the service you have chosen to share content through. We do not control these cookies and by clicking on these buttons you are agreeing to the terms of these services. You should check the relevant third party website for more information about these.
Web Browser Cookies
If you don’t want to receive any cookies, you can modify your browser so that it notifies you when cookies are sent to it or you can refuse cookies altogether. You can also delete cookies that have already been set.
If you wish to restrict or block web browser cookies which are set on your device then you can do this through your browser settings; the Help function within your browser should tell you how. Alternatively, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org, which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of desktop browsers.
The use of the Collected Data
The Data concerning the website user is collected to allow the website owner to provide its services, as well as for the following purposes: Analytics, Advertising, Interaction with external social networks and Tag Management. The Personal Data used for each purpose is outlined in the specific sections of this document.
Detailed information on the processing of Personal Data
Personal Data is collected for the following purposes and using the following services:
Analytics Cookies
The services contained in this section enable the Owner to monitor and analyze web traffic and can be used to keep track of User behaviour.
Google Analytics (Google Inc.)
Google Analytics is a web analysis service provided by Google Inc. (“Google”). Google utilizes the Data collected to track and examine the use of this Application, to prepare reports on its activities and share them with other Google services. The Google Analytics JavaScript libraries use HTTP Cookies to ‘remember’ what a user has done on previous pages and interactions with the website. Google may use the Data collected to contextualise and personalise the ads of its own advertising network.
Personal Data collected: Cookies and Usage Data.
Place of processing: United States – Privacy Policy – Opt Out.
Tag Management
This type of service helps the Owner to manage the tags, or scripts, needed on this Application in a centralised fashion. This results in the Users' Data flowing through these services, potentially resulting in the retention of this Data.
Google Tag Manager (Google LLC)
Google Tag Manager is a tag management service provided by Google LLC.
Personal Data collected: Cookies and Usage Data.
Place of processing: United States – Privacy Policy.
Displaying content from external platforms
This type of service allows you to view content hosted on external platforms directly from the pages of this Application and interact with them. This type of service might still collect web traffic data for the pages where the service is installed, even when Users do not use it.
YouTube video widget (Google Inc.)
YouTube is a video content visualization service provided by Google Inc. that allows this Application to incorporate content of this kind on its pages.
Personal Data collected: Cookies and Usage Data.
Place of processing: United States – Privacy Policy.
Vimeo video (Vimeo, LLC)
Vimeo is a video content visualization service provided by Vimeo, LLC that allows this Application to incorporate content of this kind on its pages.
Personal Data collected: Cookies and Usage Data.
Place of processing: United States – Privacy Policy.
Identifying Cookies
| Cookie Name | Expiration Time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| _ga | 2 years | Used to distinguish users. |
| _gid | 24 hours | Used to distinguish users. |
| _gat | 1 minute | Used to throttle request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed via Google Tag Manager, this cookie will be named _dc_gtm_<property-id>
|
| AMP_TOKEN | 30 seconds to 1 year | Contains a token that can be used to retrieve a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. Other possible values indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. |
| _gac_<property-id> | 90 days | Contains campaign related information for the user. If you have linked your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, AdWords website conversion tags will read this cookie unless you opt-out. Learn more from Google Adwords Help. |
| __utma | 2 years from set/update | Used to distinguish users and sessions. The cookie is created when the javascript library executes and no existing __utma cookies exists. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
| __utmt | 10 minutes | Used to throttle request rate. |
| __utmb | 30 mins from set/update | Used to determine new sessions/visits. The cookie is created when the javascript library executes and no existing __utmb cookies exist. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
| __utmc | End of browser session | Not used in ga.js. Set for interoperability with urchin.js. Historically, this cookie operated in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine whether the user was in a new session/visit. |
| __utmz | 6 months from set/update | Stores the traffic source or campaign that explains how the user reached your site. The cookie is created when the javascript library executes and is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
| __utmv | 2 years from set/update | Used to store visitor-level custom variable data. This cookie is created when a developer uses the _setCustomVar method with a visitor level custom variable. This cookie was also used for the deprecated _setVar method. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. Learn more from Google Analytics Reference Pages. |