What is a cookie?
A “cookie” is a piece of information that is stored on your computer’s hard drive and which records how you move your way around a website so that, when you revisit that website, it can present tailored options based on the information stored about your last visit. Cookies can also be used to analyse traffic and for advertising and marketing purposes.
Cookies are used by nearly all websites and do not harm your system.
If you want to check or change what types of cookies you accept, this can usually be altered within your browser settings. You can block cookies at any time by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.
How do we use cookies?
We use cookies to track your use of our website. This enables us to understand how you use the site and track any patterns with regards how you are using our website. This helps us to develop and improve our website as well as products and / or services in response to what you might need or want.
Cookies are either:
– Session cookies: these are only stored on your computer during your web session and are automatically deleted when you close your browser – they usually store an anonymous session ID allowing you to browse a website without having to log in to each page but they do not collect any personal data from your computer; or
– Persistent cookies: a persistent cookie is stored as a file on your computer and it remains there when you close your web browser. The cookie can be read by the website that created it when you visit that website again.
Name | Type | Purpose | Expiry |
---|---|---|---|
BIGipServer# | HTTP | Used to distribute traffic to the website on several servers in order to optimise response times. | Session |
TS# | HTTP | Session | |
_ga | HTTP | Google Analytics Registers a unique ID that is used to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the website. |
2 years |
_gid | HTTP | Google Analytics Registers a unique ID that is used to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the website. |
session |
_gat | HTTP | Google Analytics Used by Google Analytics to throttle request rate. |
Session |
lang | HTTP | Remembers the user’s selected language version of a website. | Session |
@@History/@@scroll|# | HTML | twitter.com | Persistent |
collect | Pixel | google-analytics.com | Session |
i/jot/syndication | Pixel | twitter.com | Session |