Most interactive websites today use cookies in order to improve your user experience by enabling that website to ‘remember’ you, either for the duration of your visit (using something called a ‘session cookie’) or for repeat visits (using a ‘persistent cookie’ which lasts for longer periods of time).
Cookies can do lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages more easily, storing your personal preferences for the website, and generally improving your experience of a website.
Cookies make the interaction between you and the website faster and easier. If a website doesn’t use cookies, it will think you are a new visitor every time you move to a new page on the site – So if you try to go back a page it will not know which page you came from. Another example would be if you had logged into the website once you visited another page the website would not recognise you as being logged in so you would have to keep logging in to the website.
Cookies may be set by the website you are visiting (‘first party cookies’) or they may be set by other websites who run content on the page you are viewing (‘third party cookies’) such as Google Analytics.
What is in a cookie?
A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer or mobile device by a website so that the next time you visit the website can recognise you and ensure your preferences are loaded.
Each cookie is unique to your web browser. So if you use another computer you will have to accept cookies usage on that second computer and so on.
The Cookies will contain some anonymous information such as a unique identifier and the site name and some digits and numbers. It allows a website to remember things like your preferences or what’s in your shopping basket.
What to do if you don’t want cookies to be set
Some people find the idea of a website storing information on their computer or mobile device a bit intrusive, particularly when this information is stored and used by a third party without them knowing. Although this is generally quite harmless you may not want this information to be used.
It is possible to block some or all Cookies, or even to delete cookies that have already been set; but you need to be aware that you might lose some functions of that website.
To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.