Cookies
What is a cookie?
Cookies are small text files that are sent by websites that you visit to recognise who you are when you return there. There files are stored on your computer’s hard drive, and are read by your web browser.
How are cookies used?
Cookies perform several functions, such as remembering who you are on a particular site (your welcome message), to keeping you logged in to your account screen on an ecommerce site (however, you should always log out if you are using a public computer). Advertising agencies also use cookies to find out if they have served you an advert from a particular brand on a site, or if you have seen a particular advert before. Website owners will use cookies to follow which pages that you’ve read so that they can see what parts of the site are popular or not. In short, cookies are a way of providing statistics on site visits as well as some limited functionality that makes your site visit easier. When used properly cookies are an asset to a site visitor and a site owner. They are not viruses, but some unscrupulous outfits will use them maliciously – we follow best practice for cookie use.
A list of all the cookies used on this website by us, and our technology partners can be found in our cookies list.
Flash cookies?
Adobe uses a particular type of cookie called a 'Local Shared Object', which is typically collected if you watch a video for example that uses the Adobe Flash media player, i.e. an embedded YouTube video on a page that is being played via Flash. Please note that these types of cookie will not be found on iPads, which do not support Flash.
Have a look at Adobe's website if you want to control Flash cookies on your computer. If you’ve got a Firefox browser you can also get an add-on to detect and delete Flash cookies.
Opting out of cookies?
There are a number of options available so that you do not have to store any cookies at all. You can either set your browser so that it will not accept and store any cookie, or if you have a little more time and knowledge you are able to allow only certain 'trusted' sites to store cookies on your computer. These sites may include us (of course!), or the site where you carry out your online banking, or possibly your favourite news service.
It's worth bearing in mind that if you decide to delete all of your cookies, then you will likely have to re-enter all of your usernames and passwords on all of the sites that you visit, which you previously didn’t even have to think about. As we mentioned before, cookies can be a real asset to your web surfing experience.
The Information Commissioner's Office (http: //www.ico.gov.uk/) provides some advice about cookies and their use, but it also provides a link to 'About cookies' (www.aboutcookies.org) which is run by the law firm Pinsent Masons. This website provides even more information about cookies if you feel that this page and the ICO is not enough information for you, but it also details how you might delete any cookies that you find, and it also shows you how to allow those trusted sites to store their cookies on your computer.
What is a web beacon?
Web beacons are also sometimes referred to as 'web bugs' and are small single pixel transparent image files. They allow website owners to know when a visitor has reached their website, and are used in conjunction with cookies to allow further website tracking to be monitored. Again, these files are not viruses, but are useful in helping us to make your web surfing experience better.
They provide us with reporting statistics where required, and will serve cookies on our behalf to enable any site personalisation and log in functionality.
Cookie Listing
The aim of this Cookies list is to provide you with an understanding as to the types of cookies we use on our site.
We have tried to cover all cookies in this list that we or our technology partners use. Please be aware that there may be a delay in updating this list. If you do notice any discrepancies please be sure to contact us and let us know.
JSESSIONID
This cookie is a 'session cookie' and tells us that you are actively using our site. This way we can always know, at any given time, how many users we have visiting.
__utma
This Cookie is used to identify unique visitors to our sites. The results are sent to our Google Analytics account so that we may see how many unique visitors come to this site based over a period of time.
__utmb
This cookie is used by Google Analytics to determine the visitor session times on our sites. Each time you visit a new page on the site the cookie is set to expire within 30 minutes, if it does not find an existing cookie, a new one is created.
__utmc
This cookie is used by Google Analytics in conjunction with __utmb to determine visitor sessions. Unlike __utmb this cookie does not have an expiry date, it determines whether a new session should be created based on whether you have previously closed your browser, re-opened it and come back to the site.
__utmz
This cookie is used by Google Analytics to determine the type of referral used by each visitor to arrive at our site. The cookie determines if the user has come directly to the site or via a search engine, email or email campaign. We use this data to understand how our users arrive at the website.
