What are Cookies?
Cookies are small plain text files sent between a website and an Internet browser.
They are commonly used to identify a single visitor to a website.
Your Internet browser will commonly store them for a specified time on your device and send them with any requests to the same website.
Cookies can be categorised in a variety of ways, such as:
- first or third-party
- session / persistent
- secure
- HTTP-only
- path-restricted
They can also be categoried by their use, such as:
- essential / necessary
- functional
- analytics / performance
- targetting / tracking / advertising
Cookie Types
First-party cookies
These are created by the site you have chosen to visit. Uses include:
- allowing registration/login/session management
- e-commerce / online shopping
- securing a user's account and session
- storing tailored settings (user preferences)
Third-party cookies
These are created by websites referenced in a page you visit.
This is a potential result of including an image, video, script or other content from a third-party website.
These cookies can be used to track you across many websites and build up an automated profile of your Internet use and interests.
Session cookies
These are usually deleted once you leave the website although some browsers attempt to persist sessions across visits and may behave differently.
Persistent cookies
The website can specify a time-to-live or an expiry date for cookies. The browser will delete them after this point.
Secure cookies
These can only be sent by your browser if connected to a website secured with TLS (also known as SSL certificates).
HTTP-only cookies
These cannot be seen by javascript or other scripts that may be a part of the website.
Path-restricted cookies
These can only be seen by parts of a website within a specified path (not commonly used).
Essential / Necessary Cookies
Without the use of these cookies, you would not be able to effectively use the website.
Functional Cookies
Are an integral part of some enhancement on the website, such as personalising language content, currency or location.
Analytics and Performance Cookies
These monitor site performance and follow user actions. They may collect identifiable information and may be used to profile a user.
Targeting/Tracking/Advertising Cookies
These are commonly used to track a users interaction across more than a single website. They can be used to build a user profile for targetted advertising or marketing.
How do we use cookies?
We use cookies on our website.
Insofar as those cookies are not strictly necessary for the provision of our website and services,
we will ask you to consent to our use of cookies when you first visit our website.
We use third-party organisations to provide payments services.
When you are using these facilities you are effectively visiting their website and they may send cookies which we do not control.
Essential / Necessary Cookies
- ASP.NET_SessionId
- used for session persistence
- this allows us to maintain your session on the website so you can login or add items to the basket
Functional Cookies
Analytics and Performance Cookies
Targeting/Tracking/Advertising Cookies
How to manage cookies
Since we currently only use essential cookies, we do not need a cookie preferences facility.
Additional Information
You can find more information about Cookies on the following external websites:
Managing cookies
Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies and to delete cookies.
The methods for doing so vary from browser to browser, and from version to version.
You can however obtain up-to-date information about blocking and deleting cookies via these links:
Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites.
If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website.