Privacy and Cookie Policy
When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.
These pieces of information are used to improve services for you through, for example:
- enabling a service to recognise your device so you don't have to give the same information several times during one task
- recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don't need to do it for every web page requested
- measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there's enough capacity to ensure they are fast
You can manage these small files yourself and learn more about them through Internet browser cookies - what they are and how to manage them http://www.direct.gov.uk/managingcookies
Our sites use two types of Cookies: 'Session' and 'Persistent'.
Session cookies: A session cookie lasts only for the duration of your visit to the website. It will expire when you close your browser, or if you haven't visited the site for certain period of time (called session idle timeout, in which case, the site will expire/invalidate the user session).
Persistent cookies: A persistent cookie will outlast user sessions. If a persistent cookie has its Max-Age set to 1 year, then, within the year, the initial value set in that cookie would be sent back to site every time the user visits the site. This could be used to record a vital piece of information such as how you initially came to the website. For this reason, persistent cookies are also called tracking cookies.
Cookies for measuring visitor numbers
Google Analytics sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the website and volumes of usage. This to ensure that the service is available when you want it and fast.
Name: _utma
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: 2 years
Name: _utmb
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: 30 minutes
Name: _utmc
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: when you close the browser
Name: _utmz
Typical content: randomly generated number + info on how the site was reached (e.g. directly or via a link, organic search or paid search)
Expires: 6 months
Name: __qca
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: 26 years
Cookies for sharing posts and commenting on blogs.mod.uk
This blog utilises the Share thiswidget which allows you to Share posts on other social networks. (The blog also uses Google Analytics - see above.)
If you leave a comment your author name and email addresses are store in a database for comment retrieval. The details are not used for any other purpose and are removed when the posts are removed. Your details are not passed onto any 3rd party or used by us in any other way than the purpose intended.
Name: _stid
Typical content: TBC
Expires: 1 day
Name: _uset_[random number]
Typical content: TBC
Expires: 1 day
Comments