Cookies and how they Benefit You
Our website uses cookies, as almost all websites do, to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites
Our cookies help us:
- Make our website work as you’d expect
- Save you having to login every time you visit the site
- Remember your settings during and between visits
- Improve the speed/security of the site
We do not use cookies to:
- Collect any personally identifiable information (without your express permission)
- Collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)
- Pass data to advertising networks
- Pass personally identifiable data to third parties
- Pay sales commissions
What are cookies
A cookie (web cookie, or browser cookie) is a small file which is stored on your computer when you visit a website. These files are used by the website for a number of things but mainly to track or trace where you have been on the website and what you are searching for. In some cases cookies also assist in any interaction between you and the website, for example when using social media such as facebook and twitter.
For a more details read more about cookies on Wikipedia.
Types of Cookie
Cookies are small files that allow a website to recognise and track users. The ICO groups them into three overlapping groups:
Session cookies
Files that allow a site to link the actions of a visitor during a single browser session. These might be used by an internet bank or webmail service. They are not stored long term and are considered “less privacy intrusive” than persistent cookies.
Persistent cookies
These remain on the user’s device between sessions and allow one or several sites to remember details about the visitor. They may be used by marketers to target advertising or to avoid the user having to provide a password each visit.
First and third-party cookies
A cookie is classed as being first-party if it is set by the site being visited. It might be used to study how people navigate a site.
It is classed as third-party if it is issued by a different server to that of the domain being visited. It could be used to trigger a banner advert based on the visitor’s viewing habits.
Standard uses for browser cookies
Website servers set cookies to help authenticate the user if the user logs in to a secure area of the website. Login information is stored in a cookie so the user can enter and leave the website without having to re-enter the same authentication information over and over.
Session Cookies are also used by the server to store information about user page activities so users can easily pick up where they left off on the server’s pages. By default, web pages really don’t have any ‘memory’. Cookies tell the server what pages to show the user so the user doesn’t have to remember or start navigating the site all over again. Cookies act as a sort of “bookmark” within the site. Similarly, cookies can store ordering information needed to make shopping carts work instead of forcing the user to remember all the items the user put in the shopping cart.
Persistent or tracking Cookies are also employed to store user preferences. Many websites allow the user to customize how information is presented through site layouts or themes. These changes make the site easier to navigate and/or lets user leave a part of the user’s “personality” at the site.
What Cookies do we use on this website?
| Cookie | Type | Duration | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| cdn.syndication.twimg.com | third party | Session | This cookie is used by Twitter when displaying our Twitter feed. Where twitter acts as a third party host, it collects data through a range of plug-ins and integrations, that is primarily used for tracking and targeting. The main purpose of cookies set by this host is: Targeting/Advertising |
| Cookie Law Info cookie | persistent | 365 days | Used to remember whether a visitor has “accepted” our cookie policy. If set it contains the word “yes”. It doesn’t track anybody’s personal data. |
| Wordpress Cookie | session | 48 hours or on browser close. Where "Remember Me" is checked it expires in 14 days. | WordPress uses cookies, or tiny pieces of information stored on your computer, to verify who you are. There are cookies for logged in users and for commenters. The actual cookies contain hashed data, so you don't have to worry about someone gleaning your username and password by reading the cookie data. A hash is the result of a specific mathematical formula applied to some input data (in this case your user name and password, respectively). It's quite hard to reverse a hash (bordering on practical infeasibility with today's computers). This means it is very difficult to take a hash and "unhash" it to find the original input data. WordPress uses the two cookies to bypass the password entry portion of wp-login.php. If WordPress recognizes that you have valid, non-expired cookies, you go directly to the WordPress Administration interface. If you don't have the cookies, or they're expired, or in some other way invalid (like you edited them manually for some reason), WordPress will require you to log in again, in order to obtain new cookies. |
Cookie security and privacy issues
Cookies are NOT viruses. Cookies use a plain text format. They are not compiled pieces of code so they cannot be executed nor are they self-executing. Accordingly, they cannot make copies of themselves and spread to other networks to execute and replicate again. Since they cannot perform these functions, they fall outside the standard virus definition.
Cookies CAN be used for malicious purposes though. Since they store information about a user’s browsing preferences and history, both on a specific site and browsing among several sites, cookies can be used to act as a form of spyware. Many anti-spyware products are well aware of this problem and routinely flag cookies as candidates for deletion after standard virus and/or spyware scans.
Most browsers have built in privacy settings that provide differing levels of cookie acceptance, expiration time, and disposal after a user has visited a particular site. Backing up your computer can give you the peace of mind that your files are safe.
How do we use cookies and what do these cookies look like?
Our website has been created using Worpress.
WordPress is a very popular Content Management System, used to provide website content for over 15 million websites. It uses cookies for two purposes.
- Registered members need a cookie to be able to log in. This is ‘strictly necessary’ as WordPress won’t work without it.
- Visitors who leave a comment on a blog post will also have a cookie set on their computer. This is a user preference.
In summary
We use cookies to improve your experience of the site.
We use some third party cookies to provide information to and from social media. For instance we need to allow Twitter.com to set cookies so that we can display our Twitter feed on our webiste.
If you do not wish to allow our cookies on your computer, please do not use this site. Cookies are not malicious.
The cookies we use are needed for the smooth running of this site and your use of it. We do not use cookies to capture your personal details for the purpose of 3rd party advertising or other forms of 3rd party communication.
