Cookies

What are cookies?

• Cookies are small pieces of information, stored by your browser
• They can't contain viruses, they just don't work like that
• They're very commonly used, right across the web

Why all the fuss?

• The EU is worried that some people may be misusing them and has created a directive that essentially says "Websites must get permission from users before setting cookies". There's a lot of other detail, not all of it terribly clear, but that's the condensed version.
• The UK is one of the first EU member states to implement the directive as law although there still exists a lot of confusion about what's actually required of website owners.
• We don't believe that cookies are bad - they're useful. Of course they can be used for nefarious purposes by unscrupulous websites but the same is true of many things available on the high street.
• We want to play it safe and make sure our users are fully informed of the cookies we use.

What cookies do we use?

ASPSESSIONID
This is set by our web server. It allows the site to identify you from one page to another during your visit. This cookie is essential to the site and disappears when you close your browser. It doesn't contain any personally identifiable information about you, just a random string of letters.

__utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmz
We use Google Analytics (lots of sites do) to see how well our site is doing. These cookies are set by Analytics and allow us to view some anonymous information about the number of visits we get, the most popular pages and so on.

They don't provide us with any personally identifiable information (we wouldn't want them to). __utmc is destroyed when you leave the site and close your browser but the others will hang around and may be there next time you visit.

Other cookies
We may also use some widgets on our site to display Tweets and social networking links. It's possible that these might set cookies too so, to be on the safe side, we make you aware

Above all, we will never knowingly share any of your personal details with third parties. We don't use cookies to store personal or sensitive information. We don't use them to follow you around the web or send you spam emails or phone you when you're eating your tea. It's all a bit far fetched anyway but we take this stuff seriously.

Why use cookies?

Cookies that are essential to the site's use, or to complete any action that you've requested are exempt from the law. If you believe a non-essential cookie has been set, please contact us, telling us the name of the cookie and we will be happy to investigate for you.

Where can I read more about this?

A quick search for "EU cookie directive" will return a bewildering number of results. Below are a few sites we've found useful in our research. We're not experts and we're certainly not lawyers but we care about this stuff. After all, we use the internet too.

The Cookie Collective website is packed with useful info and is rather dashing:
http://www.cookielaw.org/

The Information Commissioner's Office has the unenviable task of enforcing this law in the UK. Some good information but rather tedious reading:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/cookies.aspx

All About Cookies
http://www.allaboutcookies.org/

Wikipedia article on cookies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie