Cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small pieces of information sent to your computer or mobile phone (referred to as a “device”) browser from a website and stored on your device. Further general information on cookies can be found at aboutcookies.org.

How are they used?

Cookies enable us and our partner organisations to identify your device when you access our website. The information they contain can then be used to: Personalise the website by storing the preferences a user selects for the site; Store information as part of the function of the website, such as shopping basket contents; Restrict access to registered user’s data and limit access to “paid for” services; Collect aggregated statistical information about the use of the website.

What information do they contain?

There is no personally identifiable information held in our cookies or the cookies used by our partner organisations. Cookies often contain a unique identifier, for example: 413EA8A33A38AC8CCE09CC624E8B4758, and may contain data you have supplied, such as user preferences and shopping basket contents. In some cases they can contain information about what you have done on our website, for example whether you have pressed a particular button or viewed a particular page. There are a few instances where we need to record more detailed information in the cookie, for example the cookie we use to indicate that you are logged into our website. In this case we store your unique identifier and time that you logged in. In such cases the contents of the cookie are encrypted, meaning that only our website can read that information.

How do I control which cookies I accept?

You have the opportunity to set your device’s browser to accept all cookies, to ask you when the websites sends a cookie, or not to receive cookies at any time. Not allowing cookies means that certain features of our website will not work and accordingly you might not be able to take full advantage of all of our services. Each browser is different, so check the “Help” menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences.

You can also find up-to-date information clearly explaining how to control or delete cookies on your Windows PC or Apple Mac at aboutcookies.org. To control or delete cookies on your mobile phone, please refer to the manufacturer’s documentation.

Other types of cookie

We use Macromedia Flash Player to deliver certain services on our sites. To improve user experience, Local Shared Objects – or Flash Cookies as they are commonly known – are employed to provide features such as auto-resume or saving preferences. Flash Cookies are stored on a user’s terminal much the same as cookies are, but it is not possible to manage them at browser level in the same way.

The Adobe website provides comprehensive information on how to delete or disable Flash cookies, either for a specific domain or for all websites – see Adobe’s website for details. Please be aware that restricting the use of Flash Cookies may affect the features available to you for Flash-based applications on our sites.

Why does your website use 3rd party cookies?

We use partner organisations to provide additional services to us and to you, for example analysing the use of our website to help us improve it, and for providing advertising. Most of our partner organisations use cookies that only they have access to. These cookies are called “3rd party” cookies.

To find out more information about how our partner organisations use cookies please visit their websites: Adtech, Atlas, Emediate, Webtrends, Criteo, Google, Omniture and Epsilon. More information on opting out of the services provided by advertising partners can be found on their websites, or at networkadvertising.org.