1. Our cookie
2. Third party cookies
3. Disabling cookies

Our cookie

This web site creates one cookie for each visitor.

For all visitors, this cookie contains:

session id

a system-generated code to identify the session

cross site request forgery (CSRF) token

a system-generated code that our system uses to ensure that any form data you submit is actually submitted by you and not by some malicious third party code pretending to be you.

Non-registered visitors can disable the cookie without affecting their browsing experience on this site.

For registered users, the cookie also contains:

user id

a user-specific id code based on the username the user supplied when they signed up to the site. For example, Iain's Dale's user id is 'iain-dale'. It is used by our system to authenticate the user in our database and persist their session across multiple page views.

'flash' messages

useful notifications that are sometimes displayed following some user action. For example, when a user updates their profile, a flash message such as "Your profile was successfully updates" is stored in the cookie so that it can be displayed on the following page. As soon as the message is displayed, it is permanently deleted from the cookie.

The cookie is essential for enabling registered users to sign in. If you disable our cookie, you will not be able to sign in.

Our cookie does not contain any further personal details.

By default, the cookie will expire when the browser session ends, i.e. when the user quits their browser application. For registered users who ticked the 'Remember me' checkbox during sign in, the cookie will remain until the user chooses to log out.

Third party cookies

The only third party cookies that are created when you visit this site are from Google Analytics. This site uses Google Analytics to get an insight into how visitors typically use our site. For example, we like to see what pages are the most and least used, what kind of devices people use to access the site, and so on. This helps us make decisions about how to improve the site in future. This information is only available to us at an aggregate level, that is we cannot identify individual visitors.

For more information about Google Analytics and your privacy, click here.

Disabling cookies

You can choose to disable cookies in your web browser. Doing so will not affect the browsing experience of non-registered visitors. However, please note that registered users will not be able to log into the site if they disable our cookie. For more information, see www.aboutcookies.org.