What are cookies?

Cookies are small pieces of information, stored by your web browser on your computer. They enable things like keeping you logged in as you move around a website, or carrying address and delivery details from page to page as you make an online purchase.

Why all the fuss?

The EU is worried that some people may be misusing them and has created a directive that aims to prevent that.

The UK is one of the first EU member states to implement the directive as law although there still exists a lot of confusion about what's actually required of website owners.

Cookies aren't bad; they're a tool that has become essential to the way the internet works. Of course they can be used for nefarious purposes by unscrupulous websites but the same is true of many things available on the high street.

What cookies do we use?

We automatically set the cookies listed below, so if you're using our site you accept that we're doing so. We use two types of cookies:

• Session cookies which only exist while you're on the site. When you close the window and leave the site, your browser will delete them. These are used for things like logging you in to the site.
• Persistent cookies which are stored by your computer for your next visit to the site. These are used to maintain useful information such as what you added to your shopping basket.

ASPSESSIONID

This is set by our web server. It allows the site to identify you from one page to another during your visit. Your experience on the site would be pretty poor without it.

This cookie disappears when you close your browser. It doesn't contain any personally identifiable information about you, just a random string of letters.

__utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmz

We use Google Analytics (lots of websites do) to see how well our site is doing. These cookies are set by Google Analytics and allow us to view some anonymous information about the number of visits we get, the most popular pages and so on.

They don't provide us with any personally identifiable information. __utmc is destroyed when you leave the site and close your browser but the others will hang around and may be there next time you visit.

Other cookies

We sometimes use some widgets on our site to display 3rd-party content, e.g., tweets, like buttons, etc. It's possible that these might set cookies too so, to be on the safe side, we're letting you know.

Above all, we will never knowingly share any of your personal details with unscrupulous third parties. We don't use cookies to store personal or sensitive information. We don't use them to follow you around the web or send you spam emails or phone you when you're eating dinner.

But I don't want to accept any cookies

We hope that you're reassured by this explanation of what cookies we use and why we do so. If you do wish to block cookies from any sites, you can do so by changing your browser settings. Below are links to the appropriate pages for the most popular browsers.

Internet Explorer

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/10607/microsoft-edge-view-delete-browser-history

Firefox

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Blocking%20cookies

Chrome

https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95647&p=cpn_cookies

Safari

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Safari/5.0/en/ibr1074.html

More about cookies

A quick search for "EU cookie directive" will return a bewildering number of results. Below are a few sites we've found useful in our research. We're not experts and we're certainly not lawyers but we care about this stuff. After all, we use the internet too.

The Cookie Collective website is packed with useful information:

http://www.cookielaw.org/

The Information Commissioner's Office has the unenviable task of enforcing this law in the UK. Some good information but rather tedious reading

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/cookies.aspx

All About Cookies

http://www.allaboutcookies.org/

Wikipedia article on cookies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie