Cookies
1. Introduction
When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, your computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.
These pieces of information are used to improve services for you through, for example:
- enabling a service to recognise your device so you don’t have to give the same information several times during one task
- recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don’t need to do it for every web page requested
- measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there’s enough capacity to ensure they are fast
- analysing anonymised data to help us understand how people interact with government services so we can make them better
You can manage these small files and learn more about them from the article, Internet Browser cookies – what they are and how to manage them.
If you’d like to learn how to remove cookies set on your device, visit: About Cookies.
2. ‘First-party’ cookies
We don’t use these.
3. ‘Third-party’ cookies
We use a number of suppliers who may also set cookies on their websites on its behalf.
Cookies for improving service
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use this site. We do this to make sure the site is meeting users’ needs and to understand how we could do it better.
Google Analytics stores information about what pages you visit, how long you’re on the site, how you got here and what you click on. We do not collect or store your personal information (e.g. your name or address) so this information cannot be used to identify who you are. We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data.
The following cookies are set by Google Analytics:
Name: _utma
Purpose: Google Analytics sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the website and volumes of usage, e.g. website statistics. This to ensure that the service is available when you want it and fast
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: 2 years
Further information: Google Analytics
Name: _utmb
Purpose: Google Analytics sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the website and volumes of usage, e.g. website statistics. This cookie is used to determine new sessions/visits.
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: 30 minutes
Further information: Google Analytics
Name: _utmc
Purpose: 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.
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: when user exits browser
Further information: Google Analytics
Name: _utmt
Purpose: Performance – used to throttle request rate.
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: 10 minutes
Further information: Google Analytics
Name: _utmz
Purpose: Google Analytics sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the website and volumes of usage, e.g. website statistics. This cookie stores the traffic source or campaign that explains how the user reached the site.
Typical content: randomly generated number + info on how the site was reached (e.g. directly or via a link, organic search or paid search)
Expires: 6 months
Further information: Google Analytics
You can opt out of Google Analytics cookies.
4. How to control and delete cookies
We will not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you.
However, if you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our websites, or indeed any other website, you can do this through your browser settings. The ‘Help’ function within your browser should tell you how.
Alternatively, you may wish to visit About Cookies which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of browsers. You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your machine as well as more general information about cookies.
Please be aware that restricting cookies may impact on the functionality of our website.
If you wish to view your cookie code, just click on a cookie to open it. You’ll see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie.
For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone you’ll need to refer to your handset manual.
To opt-out of third-parties collecting any data regarding your interaction on our website, please refer to their websites for further information.