Cookie Policy

What Are Cookies

As is common practice this website uses cookies. Cookies are tiny text files that are downloaded to your computer and stored in your browser. They're used to help websites record information, helping them function, often to improve user experience. For more general information on cookies see the Wikipedia article on HTTP Cookies at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie.

How We Use Cookies

Cookies may be used for a variety of reasons. They might be used to track your session on the website or record sales order information so you don't have to re-enter a form the next time you visit the website.

This website currently only uses one necessary Cookie (directly) to limit malicious attacks opportunities, but does include some third party components which use additional Cookies (indirectly) to provide their -often necessary - services. These 3rd party components are listed and explained below. 

Necessary cookies

Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions.

 

Analytics and Performance cookies

Analytics cookies help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. The cookies collect information in a way that does not directly identify anyone. 

Performance cookies improve website performance, such as those added by the Cloudflare to speed up the website's load times. 

 

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies, including all necessary cookies, by adjusting the settings on your browser (read your browser's documentation to find out how to do this).

Disabling Cookies will affect the functionality of this website, it will certainly prevent the contact form from working and is therefore not recommended, but feel free to give it a go and let me know what problems you experience and I'll see if there's a workaround.

The Cookies We Set

__RequestVerificationToken: 
This is an anti-forgery cookie set by ASP.NET MVC technologies to prevent Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks when forms are submitted. It holds no information about the user and is destroyed on closing the browser.

UMB_UCONTEXT,
UMB_UCONTEXT_C,
UMB-XSRF-TOKEN,
UMB-XSRF-V
UMB_UPDCHK:
Typically front-end users should not see these cookies, they administration specific cookies, for site administrators accessing the website control panel, used to maintain session state of the logged in user.

Third Party Cookies

Cookies may also be used by trusted third party services used on or by this website. These third party services and cookies include:

Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a widespread and trusted analytics solution for helping website managers understand how a site is used. It may use Cookies to track such things as: how long you spend on the site and the pages you visit. More information on how Google uses cookies may be found at https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies, the types of Cookies used at https://policies.google.com/technologies/types, and how to opt out at http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. Cookies known to have been injected on this site by Google Analytics include:

_ga: This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. By default it is set to expire after 2 years, although this is customisable by website owners.

_gaexp: Used to determine a user's inclusion in an experiment and the expiry of experiments a user has been included in.

__gat: According to documentation it is used to throttle the request rate - limiting the collection of data on high traffic sites. It expires after 10 minutes.

__gid: This appears to be a new cookie and as of Spring 2017 no information is available from Google. It appears to store and update a unique value for each page visited.

1 Google may inject other Cookies dynamically of which I am unaware and which are not listed here. I will update this list as soon as I become aware of additional cookies being used.

Google AdSense: Blog pages on this website may show adverts from Google. These pages may contain cookies which Google uses to profile and personalise adverts. These adverts should be related to the content and are there to raise revenue from website content. More information on Google Adsense's use of cookies may be found at https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies.

Microsoft Azure: This site has been, and may again be, hosted using Microsoft Azure, which injects the following cookies:

ARRAffinity : Provide a smooth, consistent and reliable experience in a Cloud hosting environment; enabling load balancing.

See https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devschool/2015/06/19/azure-arraffinity-makes-affinity-cookies/ for more information.

1 Azure might inject other Cookies dynamically of which I am unaware and which are not listed here. I will update this list as soon as I become aware of additional cookies being used.

Cloudflare: Cloudflare is a reputable content delivery provider used to improve website performance and security. Cookies known to be injected by Cloudflare include:

__cfduid: Used to speed up page load times. According to CloudFlare it is used to override any security restrictions based on the IP address the visitor is coming from. It does not contain any user identification information. Read more here: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170156-What-does-the-Cloudflare-cfduid-cookie-do- 

_hp2_id.3538148622, _hp2_props.3538148622: CloudFlare technical cookies, believed to be Heap Analytical Cookies used to track how you use this website.

optimizelyEndUserId: This cookie is a unique user identifier

trwv.uid: Records the number of visits to the website.

1 Cloudflare might inject other Cookies dynamically of which I am unaware and which are not listed here. I will update this list as soon as I become aware of additional cookies being used

More Information

This document will be updated when new Cookies are added, third party services used, or improved information becomes available. If you notice a fault or omission in this document or require more information please get in touch, the relevant contact information is provided in the website's footer below.