A cookie is a small piece of information sent by a webserver to a web browser which enables the server to collect information from the browser. Find out more about cookies on www.allaboutcookies.org.
Most browsers will allow you to turn off cookies. If you want to know how to do this please look at the menu on your browser, or look at the instruction on www.allaboutcookies.org. Please note however, that turning off cookies could restrict your use of our website.
Some of these cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. The data collected is not shared with any 3rd party. The information we get through the use of these cookies is anonymous and we make no attempt to identify you or influence your experience of the site while you are visiting it. If you do not allow these cookies we will not be able to include your anonymous visit in our statistics.
We use the following cookies on our site:
__atuvc on www.addthis.com
About this cookie:
This cookie is associated with the AddThis social sharing widget which is commonly embedded in websites to enable visitors to share content with a range of networking and sharing platforms. It stores an updated page share count.
There is no specific information about how this cookie is used on this site. If you own this website, or have any information about how this cookie is used on this site, please get in touch.
About this cookie’s host: This domain is owned by Addthis. AddThis provides web widgets that site owners embed into their pages or other content, to enable visitors to create and share links to the content across social networks. They also make use of the data collected to provide advertisers and marketers with profile information for targeted, behavioural advertising. It has also recently been reported that Addthis makes use of experimental browser and canvas fingerprinting techniques, which enables tracking of visitors without the use of cookies. These techniques also mean that most browser privacy settings are bypassed.
Related general information about __atuvc:
Functionality Cookies
These cookies allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. For instance, a website may be able to provide you with local weather reports or traffic news by storing in a cookie the region in which you are currently located. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of web pages that you can customise. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect may be anonymised and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.
More about cookie classifications
First Party Cookies
One of the key attributes of a cookie is its 'Host' - this is the domain name of the site that ultimately sets the cookie. Only the host domain can retrieve and read the contents of the cookie once it has been set. If the host name is the same as the domain in the browser address bar when it is set or retrieved, then it is a First Party Cookie
First party cookies are only set or retrieved by the website while you are visiting it, so they cannot normally be used to track activity or pass data from one site to another.
However, the owner of that website can still collect data through their cookies and use that to change how the website appears to the user, or the information it displays.
Of course, they can also collect the data and use it outside their website, and even sell it on to other organisations. However, if they do this it must be explained in the site's privacy policy.
Most desktop browsers allow you to see a list of the cookies that have been set – and they will normally be listed by the host domain value.
Persistent Cookie
As the name suggests, this type of cookie is saved on your computer so that when you close it down and start it up again, it can still be there.
Persistent cookies are created by giving them an expiry date. If that expiry date is reached, it will be destroyed by the computer. If the expiry date is not set then it is automatically a session cookie.
The expiry date will normally be saved as the time the cookie was first created plus a number of seconds, determined by the programmer who wrote the code for the cookie. However, there is no real limit on the expiry date - so it could be set to be 20 years in the future. In addition, if you revisit the website that served up the cookie, it may automatically place an updated version on your computer - with a revised future expiry date.
If you login into a website, then shut down your computer, start it up again, and go back to the website to find you are still logged in - then it is using a persistent cookie to remember you.
Persistent cookies are also used to track visitor behaviour as you move around a site, and this data is used to try and understand what people do and don't like about a site so it can be improved. This practice is known as Web Analytics. Since Google started providing its own analytics technology free of charge to website owners, almost all websites use some form of it - although there are also paid-for services available to rival Google's.
Analytics cookies are probably the most common form of persistent cookies in use today.
However, persistent cookies can also oddly, have a shorter life span than some session cookies, as they can be coded to be destroyed within a second or two of being set, whereas a session cookie will always last until you close down your browser.
gat & git – these are google analytics
ga |
2 years |
Used to distinguish users |
_gid |
24 hours |
Used to distinguish users |
_gat |
1 minute |
Used to throttle request rate |
AMP_TOKEN |
30 seconds to 1 year |
Contains a token that can be used to retrieve a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. Other possible values indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. |
_gac_<propertyid> |
90 days |
Contains campaign related information for the user. If you have linked your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, AdWords website conversion tags will read this cookie unless you opt-out. |
Customisation
Read the analytics.js Domains & Cookies developer guide to learn all the ways these default settings can be customized.
Read the Security and privacy in Universal Analytics document for more information about Universal Analytics and cookies.
ga.js – cookie usage
The ga.js JavaScript library uses first-party cookies to:
- Determine which domain to measure
- Distinguish unique users
- Throttle the request rate
- Remember the number and time of previous visits
- Remember traffic source information
- Determine the start and end of a session
- Remember the value of visitor-level custom variables
By default, this library sets cookies on the domain specified in the document.host browser property and sets the cookie path to the root level (/).
ASP.NET – this records ID sessions on the site
When a client communicates with a server, only the session ID is transmitted between them. When the client requests data, ASP.NET looks for the session ID and retrieves the corresponding data. This is done in the following steps: The client hits the website and information is stored in the session.