What is a cookie?
Cookies are small text files placed on your computer when you visit a website. We use cookies to make this site more useful. They help us identify your computer, and provide us with information on how this site is being used.
How to change your cookie preferences?
You can set your web browser to reject cookies. However, if you do so, you may not be able to use various parts of this website.
You can also use our cookie preferences to choose which cookies you’d like to accept and which you want to turn off. You can change these preferences at any time.
Find out how to see which cookies are being used and how to manage them on the All About Cookies website (opens new window).
What are cookies, exactly?
Cookies make your experience of using websites faster and easier. They are not programs and cannot carry viruses or install malware on your computer.
Cookies allow websites to create a customised view of pages to which you navigate. For example, they are commonly used to authenticate or identify registered users of a website without requiring them to sign in each time they access it.
Other uses include maintaining a ′shopping basket′ of goods a user has chosen to purchase, site personalisation (presenting different pages to different users) and tracking the pages a user has visited on a site for analysis purposes.
A cookie often includes a unique identifier, which is a randomly generated number. This is stored on your device′s hard drive. Many cookies are automatically deleted after you finish using a website.
Cookies may come with or without an expiry date. Cookies without an expiry date (session cookie) exist until the browser is closed, while cookies with an expiry date may be stored by the device until the expiry date passes.
You can restrict or block cookies but this may limit your use of some functionality, such as filling in forms and getting access to password protected areas that are in use across any of the sites we manage. However, most things you do on our site will still be possible even with cookies disabled.
Cookies are sent to your browser (whether you use Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari or any other browser) by a website and then stored in the cookies directory of your device.
Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies as soon you visit our site. If you continue to use our site, you agree to our use of cookies.
How long do we store cookies?
Cookies may come with or without an expiry date. Cookies without an expiry date (session cookie) exist until the browser is closed, while cookies with an expiry date may be stored by the device until the expiry date passes.
Cookies could remain on your device longer if you do not take action (i.e. clear your browsing data and cache).
Cookies are classified into one of the following five categories: essential, basic, marketing, statistics, preferences.
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CATEGORY
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DESCRIPTION
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|---|---|
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Essential Cookies
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Essential cookies are sometimes called “strictly necessary” as without them, we cannot provide many services that you need on our site. For example, essential cookies help keep you securely logged in.
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Basic Cookies
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These cookies are used to provide basic interactions and functionalities that allow you to access selected features of our service and facilitate your communication with us.
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Marketing Cookies
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These cookies are used to provide advertising that is tailored to you and your particular interests. Marketing cookies can also be used to restrict the number of times an advertisement is displayed and to measure the efficacy of advertising campaigns. Advertising networks usually place marketing cookies with the website operator’s permission.
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Statistics Cookies
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These cookies track information about how the service is being used so that we can make improvements and report our performance. They collect information about how visitors use our sites, which site the user came from, the number of each user’s visits, and how long a user stays on the site. We might also use analytics cookies to test new ads, pages, or features to see how users react to them. Analytics cookies may either be first-party cookies or third-party cookies.
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Preference Cookies
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These cookies allow the website to keep track of your choices (e.g. region, user name, language) in order to provide more personalised features that correspond with them. A website may, for example, provide you with local traffic information based on data stored about your current location.
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Necessary cookies
| NAME | PROVIDER | EXPIRY |
| .AspNetCore.Antiforgery.# | Microsoft | Session |
| .AspNetCore.Session | Microsoft | Session |
| AI_sentBuffer | Azure / Microsoft | Session |
| AI_buffer | Azure / Microsoft | Session |
| ARRAffinity | Azure / Microsoft | Session |
| ARRAffinitySameSite | Azure / Microsoft | Session |
| ai_session | Microsoft Azure App Insights | Session |
| CookieConsent | Visit Kielder | 1 year |
| timezoneOffset | Visit Kielder | Session |
| ai_user | Microsoft Azure App Insights | 1 year |
| EPiStateMarker | Optimizely | Session |
Statisitics cookies
| NAME | PROVIDER | EXPIRY |
| _ga_# | Google Analytics | Session |
| _ga | Google Analytics | Session |