What are Cookies?
Cookies are small pieces of data stored on your device by a website you visit, allowing that website to remember your actions and preferences when you return. They're used for various purposes, including tracking user interactions, storing login information, and optimizing site performance.
Why are Cookies Used?
Cookies help websites provide personalized experiences by remembering individual users' settings, such as language preferences, screen resolution, or font size. Without cookies, websites would need to store this data on their servers, leading to increased load times and potentially violating user anonymity.
Essential Cookies
Some cookies are strictly necessary for a website to function correctly. These essential cookies usually manage session management and security tokens, ensuring that users remain logged in while browsing the site. Essential cookies are stored temporarily and cannot be disabled as they're required for basic functionality.
Session Cookies vs Persistent Cookies
Cookies can be categorized based on their lifespan: Session cookies expire once you close your browser or end your session with a website. These cookies store temporary data related to specific interactions, like login credentials. On the other hand, persistent cookies remain stored in your device's memory and are used for longer-term purposes, such as retaining login information between sessions.
Functional Cookies
These cookies enable websites to provide improved functionality and user experience by remembering various preferences. Examples include storing previously visited pages, tracking changes made during editing processes, or recording form entries.
Analytics and Performance Cookies
Some websites use third-party services like Google Analytics to collect data about website visitors' behavior. These cookies help analyze traffic patterns, optimize site performance, and provide insights into user engagement.
Preference Settings and Language Options
Cookies can store users' preferred settings for their visit, such as language selection or timezone adjustments. This ensures that the content displayed is tailored according to individual preferences.
Login/Session Continuity
Cookies keep track of your login status by storing session tokens on our servers. When you log in with a username and password, we verify this information against our stored records before releasing a token for use during browsing sessions.
Device Recognition and Security-Related Cookies
Some cookies enable device recognition or collect browser-specific data to enhance security. They store details like IP addresses, timestamps of user actions, or provide login reminders when users return with different devices.
Browser Storage Technologies
Your browser uses various technologies beyond traditional cookies for storing local data. This includes session storage, web storage, and indexedDB, which also support the local database paradigm for offline access to some types of content on our website.
Third-Party Integrations and Marketing Preferences
Our website may include integrations with external services like advertising networks or tracking tools provided by third-party developers. When enabled through these connections, cookies from individual partner platforms can be stored locally until their next update. Note that specific options for blocking marketing preference targeting are described under the section on browser cookie control.
Cookie Consent Management
You'll notice a prompt to accept or reject our use of non-essential cookies when visiting our website. Please note that these selections will only affect cookies already present; it won't delete any information we have collected up until your choice is made.
Browser Cookie Controls and Clearing Cookies
Individual browsers provide built-in tools for controlling cookie storage and disabling/erasing them on request. Check the Help menu in your browser software for details about managing these settings. Some users may choose to clear all browsing history or remove stored cookies; however, this should only be done by experts as it affects multiple aspects of online navigation.
Impact When Cookies Are Disabled
While many features work without setting any additional persistent state variables across domains via cookie exchange, you'll encounter limitations where our system can no longer recall individual preferences or display them due to the lack of such variables. These cases are further explained in more detail at the end.
Aggregated Analytics and Performance Optimisation
Our website implements technical diagnostics tools aimed towards identifying performance bottlenecks that cause poor responsiveness while online. It includes features for collecting information related to how fast content loads across a specific group rather than individual users during particular periods of their interaction within an hour or less over our site.
