PUBLIC BETA

This service is currently in public beta

Cookies

Our website puts small files (known as ‘cookies’) onto your computer to collect information about how you browse the site.

What are cookies?

Cookies are used to:

  • measure how you use the website so it can be updated and improved based on your needs
  • remember the notifications you’ve seen so that we don’t show them to you again
  • Our website cookies aren’t used to identify you personally.

You’ll normally see a message on the site before we store a cookie on your computer.

How cookies are used on our website

Cookie name

Purpose

Expiry

CookieNoticeAcknoledged

Set by us when a user closes the cookie message to ensure it isn't needlessly displayed again.

 12 months

ARRAffinity

A Microsoft Azure cookie, which looks to ensure all traffic is sent to the correct server for each request (commonly used for load balancing, but not in use here).

 Session (until browser window closed)

AI_Session, and AI_User

Both used for Azure Application Insights, server and performance monitoring to ensure we can keep an eye on the site performance and any issues that may arise. Currently in the testing environment - could be disabled for production but we would recommend it stays in place if possible.

 12 months

__RequestVerificationToken

This is in place to mitigate against CSRF attacks (cross-site request forgery), to ensure that when forms are submitted, they are being sent from the same location that loaded the page, and not from a 3rd party location.

 Session (until browser window closed)

XSRF-Token/XSRF-V

Used if a user is on a page with a form.

Session (until browser window closed)

Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)

We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use our website. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements, for example improving site search.

Google Analytics stores information about:

  • the pages you visit on our website
  • how long you spend on each our website page
  • how you got to the site
  • what you click on while you’re visiting the site

We don’t collect or store your personal information (for example your name or address) so this information can’t be used to identify who you are.

We don’t allow Google to use or share our analytics data.

Google Analytics sets the following cookies:

Cookie name

Purpose

Expiry

_ga

This helps us count how many people visit our website by tracking if you’ve visited before

 12 months

_gid

This helps us count how many people visit our website by tracking if you’ve visited before

 1 day