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Cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small pieces of information.

Websites store cookies on your internet browser (eg Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer) when you visit.

Every time you return to the site and navigate around it picks up these bits of information.

Sometimes other companies working on our behalf can access the information stored in certain types of cookies. They might use it when deciding which adverts to show you as you browse the internet, for example.

Why do websites use cookies?

There are different types of cookies that do different things. Some cookies can be really helpful and most websites rely on them in order to work properly and to understand what their users do when they visit.

Cookies are crucial for understanding how people use a website and which articles or sections are popular. This helps make websites more engaging and ensures they’re developed in the right places.

Cookies are also used by advertising companies to direct adverts at people who might have shown an interest in the company, product or service before when using the web.

Are there different types of cookies?

As defined by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada there are 4 types of cookies.

Cookies

A cookie is a small piece of text that is placed on your computer when you visit a website.  Cookies were created so that information could be saved between visits to a website.  They collect and store information about you based on your browsing patterns and information you provide.  Cookies record language preferences, for example, or let users avoid logging in each time they visit a site.  Almost all of the most popular websites use them.  Cookies can be very useful because, without them, you would have to enter certain bits of your personal information each time you visit your favourite site.

Third-party cookies

When you visit a website that has advertisement on it, a cookie may be passed from the advertising company (the third party) to your computer.  Later, when you revisit that same website, or another site that uses the same advertising company, the third-party cookie can be read by the advertising company.  If the cookie contains a unique identifier, then information about your visits to different websites can be linked together.  In this way, a detailed profile can be built about you (or other people who also use the same computer as you) and your browsing habits.  It can then be used to target advertising to you.

Flash cookies

Flash cookies were created by Adobe’s Flash browser add-on for multimedia.  Flash cookies can be used to save information between sessions and they are also used to track the websites you visit.

Super cookies

Super cookies use new storage locations built into browsers to save information about you.  The storage mechanisms are larger and more flexible than traditional cookies, so more information can be stored.

What cookies do you use?

We use all four kinds of cookies on our websites and we only use them when we feel they’re useful and can benefit our visitors.

TYPE OF COOKIE WHAT IT DOES WHEN IT EXPIRES
Google Tag Manager Google Tag Manager is a tag management system created by Google to manage JavaScript and HTML tags used for tracking and analytics on websites. When you exit the browser
Google Analytics

_ga, _gat, _gid

We use Google analytics to see how our site is performing e.g. what articles are read, how many donations we receive and where visitors come from. The full list of Google Analytics cookies are below.

Google analytics collects no personal data or IP addresses.

Visitor ID: _utma Contains a unique ID, the date and time of first visit and total no of visits made. Two years
Session ID: _utmb Contains pages visited and decides when a session has timed out. Thirty minutes of inactivity
Session ID: _utmc Registers that the visit has ended. When you exit the browser
Google other:

SID, SAPISID, HSID, APISID, SSID, PREF

We use these cookies to supplement the Google cookies, they help improve user experience. One year
Google DoubleClick:

Id, DSID

We use Google DoubleClick to monitor the performance of our digital marketing campaigns, the ones that you seen in other websites.

Creates a unique transaction ID and identifies location, device used, page wiews, transactions and value.

Google double click collects no personal data or IP addresses.

Two years
MUID, MUIDB These cookies are used to integrate the site with the Bing search engine One year
ANON_ID These cookies are used to help coordinate ad campaigns across various digital channels Ninety days
Yahoo This cookie is used to integrate the site with the Yahoo search engine One year

How do you control your cookies?

You can control and/or delete cookies at any time.

You can also get rid of all the cookies already on your computer.

Check out the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada for information and advice.

If you tell your browser to stop allowing cookies, some websites may not work as well.