Cookies

To make this site simpler, we sometimes place small data files on your computer while you browse. These are known as cookies. Most big websites do this too.

Cookies improve things by:

• measuring how you use the website so we can make sure it meets your needs
• remembering settings, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you visit a new page
• tracking the effectiveness of our content

Our cookies aren’t used to identify you personally. They’re just here to make the site work better for you. Indeed, you can manage and/or delete these small files as you wish.

To learn more about cookies and how to manage them, visit AboutCookies.org. Or please read on to find out more about how and where we use cookies.

MEASURING WEBSITE USAGE

We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use this site. We do this to make sure it’s meeting its users’ needs and to understand how we could do it better.

The cookies collect information such as the number of visitors to the site, which pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here and what you click on. We do not collect or store your personal information (eg 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 placed on your computer by Google Analytics:

Cookie ID	Typical content	Expires	Type	What it does
_utma	Randomly generated number	After 2 years	First party	Keeps track of the number of times you visit the site, when your first and last visit occurred
_utmb	Randomly generated number	After 30 minutes	First party	Records the time you arrive at the site
_utmc	Randomly generated number	As soon as you close your browser window	First party	Records the time you leave the site
_utmz	Randomly generated number	After 6 months	First party	Tracks which site you came from, which search engine you used, which link you clicked, which keyword you used, and where in the world you are

For more information about Google Analytics visit Google Analytics website.

 

TRACKING SOCIAL SHARING

The AddThis service allows you to share a webpage with social sites such as Twitter and Facebook, save it to your browser bookmarks, or send it to a friend via email.

AddThis places cookies on your machine to track the usage of their service, so we can see how people are using and sharing our content. It is the world’s largest content sharing platform and is used by many sites.

AddThis is owned and operated by Clearspring Technologies, who offer an opt-out service should you wish them to stop collecting non-personally identifiable information about you.

The following cookies are placed on your computer by AddThis:

Cookie ID	Typical content	Expires	Type	What it does
di	Randomly generated number	After 2 years	Third party	Determines expiration of other cookies
dt	Randomly generated number	After 2 years	Third party	Determines expiration of other cookies
loc	Country code and randomly generated letters and numbers	After 30 days	Third party	Identifies your rough location
psc	Randomly generated number	After 2 years	Third party	Counts number of views of this page
ssc	Randomly generated number	As soon as you close your browser window	Third party	Records the time you leave the site
ssh/sshs	Your preferences	After 2 years	Third party	Configures your preferences according to changes to settings you make
uid	Randomly generated letters and numbers	After 30 days	Third party	Tracks an anonymised user ID and log-in time
uvc	Randomly generated letters and numbers	Expires	Third party	Tracks usage of the social sharing buttons at the bottom of each page

 

LEAVING COMMENTS

We use the WordPress blogging platform for our News Pages. On some articles you can leave comments about the posts we write, and when you do, WordPress stores some information so you don’t have to write them all out again.

The following cookies are placed on your machine to allow you to leave comments:

Cookie ID	Cookie name	Typical content	Expires	Type	What it does
comment_author	WordPress	User name entered	A little under 1 year	First party	Remembers your name so you don’t have to re-type it when you leave another comment
comment_author_email	WordPress	Email address entered	A little under 1 year	First party	Remembers your email address so you don’t have to re-type it when you leave another comment
comment_author_url	WordPress	Website URL entered	A little under 1 year	First party	Remembers your website URL so you don’t have to re- type it when you leave another comment
wordpress_test_cookie	WordPress	WP+Cookie +check	As soon as you close your browser window	First party	Determines whether you have cookies enabled or not
wordpress_logged_in	WordPress	Y or N	A little under 1 year	First party	Determines whether you are logged in or not

 

OTHER THIRD-PARTY COOKIES

If you already use social media platforms, they might set cookies on your machine as you use our website. Data can then be collected by these companies that enables them to serve up adverts on other sites that they think are relevent to your interests.

Twitter Cookies: ab_sess_search_relevance_ranked_hits_189, dnt, t1, auth_token_session, secure_session, twll, twid, ab_sess_wtf_user_to_user_rec_155, ab_sess_search_relevance_social_167, ab_sess_t1_actions_156, _twitter_sess, _twitter_sess, ab_sess_activity_ddg_126, ab_sess_activity_up_top_98, ab_sess_promoted_arrows_and_pills_78, ab_sess_Relevance_V1-49, _sm_au_d, auth_token, external_referer, guest_id, k, lang, original_referer, pid

Facebook Cookies: lu, L, L, datr, e, c_user, c_user, presence, sct, sct, _sm_au_d, act, _e_bWDI_21, _e_bWDI_22, _e_bWDI_23, _e_bWDI_24, _e_CTMK_0, _e_CTMK_1, _e_CTMK_2, _e_e6Yv_0, _e_e6Yv_1, _e_e6Yv_2, _e_0ITr_10, wd, x-referer, xs, xs, reg_ext_ref, reg_fb_gate, reg_fb_ref, reg_ext_ref, reg_fb_gate, reg_fb_ref

Google Cookies: PP_TOS_ACK, IGTP, NID, ULS, OTZ, APISID, SAPISID, SSID, _sm_au_d, S, S_awfe, SID, SS, W6D, BEAT, HSID, PREF?

Microsoft Cookies: MC1, WT_FPC