Website cookies and how we use them

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer or mobile phone if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.

We use the following cookies:

  • Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website.
  • Analytical/performance cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
  • Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to the website and record that you are a user of our website, or whether your web browser has Javascript enabled.
  • Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

You can also find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below.

 

Cookie

Used by

Description

Expiration

_utma

Google Analytics

Stores the amount of visits of a user, the time of their first visit, the previous visit, and the current visit. It does not contain any personal information and is used only for analytical purposes.

2 years from set/update

__utmz

Google Analytics

This performance cookie stores where a user came from (eg. search engine, search keyword, link).

6 months from set/update

_ga and _gid

Google Analytics

Used to distinguish between website users in Google Analytics.

2 years and 2 hours

_gat_UA-XXXXXXXX-X (where the Xs are replaced by the Google Analytics ID number)

Google Analytics

Used to moderate calls to the Google Analytics service.

1 minute

__unam

ShareThis

Set as part of the ShareThis service and monitors "click-stream" activity, e.g. web pages viewed, navigation from page to page, time spent on each page etc. The ShareThis service only identifies a user if they have separately signed up with ShareThis for a ShareThis account and given them consent. Checks how long you stay on a site: when a visit starts, and ends. It does not contain any personal information and is used only for analytical purposes.

14 months

cc_cookie_accept

Website

Stores whether the user has accepted the cookie message or not.

365 days

ASP.NET_SessionId

Website

Used for authenticating a user's session after logging in. Closes when you exit the browser.

End of session

ARRAffinity

Website

Tells our infrastructure which server to handle the request.

End of session

MemberLoggedIn

Website

A binary flag which stores whether a user is logged in or not.

End of session

ai_session and ai_user

Website

Tracks users as they navigate the website predominately for infrastructure performance insights.

1 day

DisplayName

Website

Keeps track of a donors preference to show their name during a Direct Debit.

End of session

IDE,  DSID,

_ct_rmm

Doubleclick.net

These cookies are managed by DoubleClick, an advertising platform we use to display adverts. They help us identify which visitors to our website have seen or clicked one of our adverts.

2 years from set/update

__cfduid

CloudFlare

Identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis

365 days

Third Party cookies

Please note that third parties (including for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.

Disabling cookies

You block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the settings of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

Except for essential cookies, all cookies will expire after 5 years.

Web browsers may allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. You can find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them at www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.  For information on how to do this on a mobile phone, please refer to the handset instructions.