Cookie Policy
In line with new EU regulations, we would like to inform you of the use of cookies on the ISTD website.
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a simple text file containing a small amount of data which is downloaded to your computer when you visit a website.
Most websites you visit will use cookies and tracking technologies to enable them to “remember” you and help them to arrange their content and layout to your particular preferences and improve your user experience. For example, when you go back to a website to purchase items again, data such as your name and email address may be automatically filled in, which will help to make your interaction with a 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 – for example, when you enter your login details and move to another page it won’t recognise you and it won’t be able to keep you logged in or remember what’s in your shopping basket.
A cookie is downloaded by the server of the website you have visited and only that server will be able to retrieve or read the contents of that cookie. Each cookie is unique to your web browser and will contain some anonymous information such as a unique identifier and the website name.
A ‘session cookie’ is used for the duration of one visit to a website and is deleted from your computer when the browser is closed. A persistent cookie is used when you visit a website repeatedly (and the website would like to remember your preferences for your next visit) and is saved on your computer for a fixed period (usually a year or longer).
Some websites will also use cookies to enable them to target their advertising or marketing messages based on information such as your location and the types of searches that you do.
Cookies may be set by the website you are visiting (‘first party cookies’) which can only be read by that site, or they may be set by other websites which run content on the page you are viewing (‘third party cookies’). Third party cookies are set by a different organisation to the owner of the website you are visiting.
How the ISTD website uses cookies
The ISTD website uses a session cookie to remember settings and help you move around the site and use certain features more effectively, such as accessing secure areas of the shop.
These are non-persistent session cookies which are deleted after you leave the ISTD website. These cookies do not retain sensitive information such as contact details or payment information.
We do not use advertising cookies. Any adverts placed on the ISTD website by external companies remain on set pages of the website, and are not based on your preferences or how you navigate around the website.
We do include links to external websites, for example in our news articles, and to social networks like Facebook, which may set their own (third party) cookies once linked to. We also use Google Analytics in order to tell us which of the pages and links on our website are viewed most often so that we can improve our content.
What can I do to control cookies?
Although cookies are generally harmless you might not like the idea of third party cookies being set to target you with certain content or advertisements.
If you don’t want to receive cookies, you can modify your browser so that it notifies you when cookies are sent to it or you can refuse cookies altogether. You can allow only certain sites that you trust to set cookies and you can also delete cookies that have already been set. If you do delete certain cookies altogether you should be aware that you might lose some of the functions of that website, such as remembering your login details.
In Internet Explorer you can refuse all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Internet Options”, “Privacy”, and selecting “Block all cookies” using the sliding selector. In Firefox you can block all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Options”, and un-checking “Accept cookies from sites” in the “Privacy” box.
The website www.aboutcookies.org provides lots of information on how you can manage cookies on a range of browsers.
| Cookie Name | Purpose |
|---|---|
| JSESSIONID | Used to store a unique random identifier for each visit to this website. No other information is written to this cookie on your computer/device. This cookie is required by the webserver software to remember certain settings such as whether you have logged into the site. This cookie is destroyed each time you close your browser and all information stored against this unique identifier is automatically deleted from the server 30 minutes after your last access of the web-site. This cookie is essential to ensure that all web-site functionality is available to you. |
| Cookies | Used by the privacy module to store the fact you have implicitly agreed to having cookies set on your machine by proceeding past the warning notification. This cookie is set each time you view any page on a site using the privacy module, and expires 90 days after the date you last visited the site. |
| Add This
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Set by AddThis when the user views a page containing AddThis social sharing widget. As this cookie is set by a third party system it is impossible for us to specify under exactly which conditions it is set, but it appears to expire exactly two years after it was last set. More information on AddThis cookies. |
