What are cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device (iPad, iPhone etc.) when you visit the site. 

Cookies contain a very small amount of information, usually consisting of a string of numbers and/or letters, they are not computer programs, they don’t give the website owners any kind of access to your computer or mobile device.

Cookies enable websites to remember visitor actions and preferences (for example remembering that the member has an account and should remain logged in, remembering that you prefer to see content in a different language to the default, remembering that you like to view the content of the website in a larger font size and other display preferences). Placing a cookie on your computer or mobile device means that you don’t have to make those choices every time you visit the site or browse from one page to another. Cookies can also allow websites to collect other forms of anonymous data, for example to help track how popular a website is.

This page explains the cookies we use and why.

 

How do we use cookies?

Like most other websites we use cookies to ensure that our website works properly, to enhance your experience when visiting and to provide anonymous analytical data. We do not use cookies for profiling or tracking individual visitors.

Depending on how a visitor uses our website the following types of cookies may be set:

  • Strictly Necessary Cookies
    Strictly Necessary Cookies have to be set in order for our website to work as intended.
  • Functionality Cookies
    Functionality cookies give visitors a better user experience and allow for some customisation when it comes to interacting with our website.
  • Performance Cookies
    Performance cookies are used by us, and by some of our embedded tools to collect anonymous usage data.

essexwi.org.uk

Source

Name

First Party?

Description

Duration

Google Analytics
  • _gid
  • _gat
  • _ga

Yes

Google Analytics uses these performance cookies to track anonymous user website activity on our website
This information is used by us to compile reports and to help us improve the website. 
 
Anonymous information collected includes the number of visitors to the website, where they came from (another website, Facebook etc.), the pages they visited, how long they stayed on the website/page and whether or not they have visited our website before.


More information: Google Analytics and cookies
Opt out of Google Analytics 

The longest cookie duration set by Google Analytics is 2 years, this helps make statistics relating to “new” and “returning” visitors more accurate. Other cookies have a much shorter duration, varying from 6 months to the moment you end your browser session.

Word Fence

wfvt_3799732124

wordfence_verifiedHuman

wfvt_

No

Wordfence uses cookies for three tasks:

  • To uniquely identify visitors shown in Wordfence Live traffic.
  • To track a user who was previously logged into WordPress but has logged out to ensure that Falcon cache does not show that user cached pages.
  • If a user has visited a unique page that allows them to bypass country blocking a cookie is set to identify that user so that country blocking does not prevent them from viewing the site

wordfence_verifiedHuman – Wordfence Cookie used to verify if the visitor is a bot or human

wfvt_ – Wordfence Tracks a user duration so that so that the page views can be grouped together

n/a

 

A first-party cookie is simply a cookie set by the website that you are visiting, a third-party cookie is a cookie set by a an external website.

As with first-party cookies, third-party cookies have a variety of uses. Although often used legitimately, there are privacy concerns raised by third-party cookie usage as they are often used for marketing purposes.

Because cookies allow you to experience our website as it was designed we recommend that as a minimum you keep first-party cookies enabled. It is becoming increasingly common for modern browsers to give you the option to block third-party cookies and doing so should not break any functionality on our website.

If you’d like more information or help disabling cookies please read the section below.

How to control cookies

You can of course control and/or delete cookies as you wish – for details, see aboutcookies.org. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed. If you do this, however, you may  have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site and some services and functionalities may not work.

Internet Explorer – http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/internet-explorer/delete-manage-cookies 
Google Chrome – https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647 
Mozilla Firefox – https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/cookies-information-websites-store-on-your-computer
Safari (Mac) – https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19214
Safari (iOS) – https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201265
Android – https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2392971