What are cookies

Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website. 

We use cookies to store information about how you use our websites, such as the pages you visit.

Why we use cookies

We use cookies to improve things by:

  • remembering the things you select while on our website, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you visit a new page
  • remembering data you’ve given (for example, your address) so you don’t need to keep entering it
  • measuring how you use the website so we can make sure it meets your needs

We do not use cookies on this website that collect information about what other websites you visit (often referred to as privacy intrusive cookies).

Our cookies are not used to identify you personally. They’re just here to make the site work better for you. You can manage and delete these files as you wish.

Unless the law allows us to, we do not:

  • share any of the data we collect about you with others
  • use this data to identify individuals

Cookies use by this website

Necessary cookies

Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as page navigation and access to secure areas. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.

Analytical cookies

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. We do not allow Google to use or share the data about how you use this site. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about:

  • how you got to the site
  • the pages you visit and how long you spend on each page
  • what you click on while visiting the site

Read Google's overview of privacy and safeguarding data.

Name Description Retention Period
_ga ID used to identify users 1 years
_ga_* Used to identify and track an individual user session. 2 years
_gid ID used to identify users for 24 hours 24 hours
_gat Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests when using Google Tag Manager 58 seconds
_dc_gtm_ Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests 1 minute
AMP_TOKEN Contains a token code that is used to read out a Client ID from the AMP Client ID Service. By matching this ID with that of Google Analytics, users can be matched when switching between AMP content and non-AMP content. 1 year
_gat_* Used to set and get tracking data 1 hour
_gac_ Contains information related to marketing campaigns of the user. These are shared with Google AdWords / Google Ads when the Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are linked together. 90 days
__utma ID used to identify users and sessions 2 years
__utmt Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests 10 minutes
__utmb Used to distinguish new sessions and visits. This cookie is set when the GA.js javascript library is loaded and there is no existing __utmb cookie. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to the Google Analytics server. 30 minutes
__utmc Used only with old Urchin versions of Google Analytics and not with GA.js. Was used to distinguish between new sessions and visits at the end of a session. session
__utmz Contains information about the traffic source or campaign that directed user to the website. The cookie is set when the GA.js javascript is loaded and updated when data is sent to the Google Anaytics server 6 months
__utmv Contains custom information set by the web developer through the _setCustomVar method in Google Analytics. This cookie is updated each time new data is sent to the Google Analytics server. 2 years
__utmx Used to determine whether a user is included in an A / B or Multivariate test. 18 months
__utmxx Used to determine when the A / B or Multivariate test in which the user participates ends 18 months
FPAU Assigns a specific ID to the visitor. This allows the website to determine the number of specific user-visits for analysis and statistics. session
FPID Registers statistical data on users' behaviour on the website. Used for internal analytics by the website operator. 1 years
FPLC This FPLC cookie is the cross-domain linker cookie hashed from the FPID cookie. It’s not HttpOnly, which means it can be read with JavaScript. It has a relatively short lifetime, just 20 hours. 20 hours

You can opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites.

Marketing

YouTube

Name

Description

Retention Period

GPS

Registers a unique ID on mobile devices to enable tracking based on geographical GPS location.

1 day

VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE

Tries to estimate the users' bandwidth on pages with integrated YouTube videos. Also used for marketing

6 months

PREF

This cookie stores your preferences and other information, in particular preferred language, how many search results you wish to be shown on your page, and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on.

10 years

YSC

Registers a unique ID to keep statistics of what videos from YouTube the user has seen.

Session

DEVICE_INFO

Used to detect if the visitor has accepted the marketing category in the cookie banner. This cookie is necessary for GDPR-compliance of the website.

180 days

LOGIN_INFO

This cookie is used to play YouTube videos embedded on the website.

2 years

VISITOR_PRIVACY_METADATA

Youtube visitor privacy metadata cookie

6 months

__Secure-YNID

Security and session identifier

6 months

__Secure-ROLLOUT-TOKEN

Manages experimental feature consistency

6 months

Other people’s cookies

We use videos from YouTube and feeds from other websites such as Facebook and Twitter. These websites place cookies on your device when watching or viewing these pages which can influence adverts when browsing the internet.

Find out more about each of their cookie policies:

How do I manage cookie settings?

You can change your cookie preferences at any time by selecting the ‘Cookie Control’ icon. You can then adjust the available sliders to ‘On’ or ‘Off’. You may need to refresh your page for your settings to take effect.

You can stop cookies being downloaded on to your computer or another device by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. If you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website.

To find out more or control and delete cookies as you wish, visit allaboutcookies.org.

Find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:

To find information relating to other browsers, visit the browser developer's website.

For further guidance on the use of personal information, visit the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) website.