A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer's hard drive.
Cookies provide us with information about how often someone visits our website and what they do during those visits. They do not of themselves contain any personally identifiable information, but if you provide such information to us, for example by registering to receive updates and bulletins, that information may be linked to the data stored in the cookie.
We use the following cookies:
- Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website or make use of e-billing services.
- Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. Information on Google's safeguarding and privacy policy can be found here.
- Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
- Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.
You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below:
|
Cookie Type |
Name |
Purpose |
Expiry |
|
Necessary |
complianceCookieHOW |
The cookie is set to record the user consent for the cookies. |
1 year |
|
Necessary |
PHPSESSID |
The PHPSESSID cookie enables the website to store serialised state data. It is used to establish a user session and to pass state data via a temporary cookie, which is commonly referred to as a session cookie. |
Session (expires when you close your browser) |
|
Functional |
__atuvc |
This cookie is set by Addthis to make sure you see the updated count if you share a page and return to it before our share count cache is updated. |
1 year, 1 month |
|
Functional |
__atuvs |
This cookie is set by Addthis to make sure you see the updated count if you share a page and return to it before our share count cache is updated. |
30 minutes |
|
Functional |
NID |
This is a preference cookie set by Google. This cookie contains an ID that is used by Google to set your preferences. It is required by the site to enable Google's reCAPTCHA service which is used to protect various parts of the site from attack by bots. |
6 months |
|
Performance |
_ga/_gat/_gid |
These cookies are set by Google to collect information about how visitors use the website. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the website. The cookies collect information in a way that does not directly identify anyone, including the number of visitors to the website and blog, where visitors have come to the website from and the pages they visited. |
1 minute |
|
Performance |
loc |
This cookie is set by Addthis to store location data. |
13 months |
|
Performance |
Ssc |
These cookies track sharing when the AddThis functionality is used |
13 months |
|
Performance |
Uvc |
Measures how often we see an AddThis user |
13 months |
|
Performance |
Xtc |
Anonymously tracks user behaviour on the websites that allow a user to share pages on social media using the AddThis tool. AddThis log the anonymous use to generate usage trends to improve the relevance of their services and advertising. |
2 years |
|
Performance |
YSC |
This cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos. |
Session (expires when you close your browser) |
|
Performance |
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE |
This cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website. |
6months |
|
Performance |
_hjTLDTest |
When the Hotjar script executes we try to determine the most generic cookie path we should use, instead of the page hostname. This is done so that cookies can be shared across subdomains (where applicable). To determine this, we try to store the _hjTLDTest cookie for different URL substring alternatives until it fails. After this check, the cookie is removed. |
Session (expires when you close your browser) |
|
Performance |
_hjid |
Hotjar cookie that is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. |
1 year |
|
Performance |
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress |
This cookie is used to detect the first pageview session of a user. This is a True/False flag set by the cookie. |
30 minutes |
|
Performance |
_hjFirstSeen |
This is set to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether this was the first time Hotjar saw this user. It is used by Recording filters to identify new user sessions. |
Session (expires when you close your browser) |
|
Performance |
_hjIncludedInPageviewSample |
This cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that user is included in the data sampling defined by your site's pageview limit. |
30 minutes |
|
Advertising |
__Secure-3PSID |
For targeting purposes to build a profile of the website visitor's interests in order to show relevant & personalised Google advertising |
2years |
|
Advertising |
Secure-3PAPISID |
For targeting purposes to build a profile of the website visitor's interests in order to show relevant & personalised Google advertising |
2 years |
|
Advertising |
__Secure-3PSIDCC |
For targeting purposes to build a profile of the website visitor's interests in order to show relevant & personalised Google advertising |
1 year |
Please note that third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.
You block cookies 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.