Most websites you visit will use cookies in order to improve your user experience by enabling that website to remember you, either for the duration of your visit (using a session cookie) or for repeat visits (using a persistent cookie).
Cookies do lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently, storing your preferences, 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 – 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.
What is in a cookie?
A cookie is a simple text file that is stored on your computer or mobile device by a website’s server and only that server will be able to retrieve or read the contents of that cookie. Each cookie is unique to your web browser. It 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, for example, want to see advertising that has been targeted to your interests. If you prefer, 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.
Our use of cookies
We use session cookies for the duration of your visit to improve your browsing experience, the session cookies we use help provide the following:
Shopping basket
We use session cookies to help identify your shopping basket and any products that you have added, in which the session cookie will time out if you have not completed the checkout process within 2 hours or you close/restart your internet browser.
Sign-in and Authentication
We use session cookies to hold sign-in information, which lets the website recoginse that you have signed-in to your account and provides a better browsing and checkout experience.
Disable cookies
If you do disable our cookies you may find that certain sections of our website do not work. For example, you may have difficulties logging in or adding products to your shopping cart.
Google Chrome
- Click the wrench icon on the browser toolbar
- Select Settings
- Click ‘Show advanced settings’
- In the “Privacy” section, click the ‘Content settings’ button
- To enable cookies in the “Cookies” section, pick ‘Allow local data to be set’, this will enable both first-party and third-party cookies. To allow only first-party cookies pick ‘Block all third-party cookies without exception’
- To disable cookies, in the “Cookies” section, pick ‘Block sites from setting any data’
- Note there are various levels of cookie enablement and disablement in Chrome. For more information on other cookie settings offered in Chrome, refer to the following page from Google: http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95647
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, 7.0, 8.0
- Click on ‘Tools’ at the top of your browser window and select ‘Internet Options’
- In the options window navigate to the ‘Privacy’ tab
- To enable cookies: Set the slider to ‘Medium’ or below
- To disable cookies: Move the slider to the top to block all cookies
- Note there are various levels of cookie enablement and disablement in Explorer. For more information on other cookie settings offered in Internet Explorer, refer to the following page from Microsoft: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-vista/Block-or-allow-cookies
Mozilla Firefox
- Click on ‘Tools’ at the browser menu and select ‘Options’
- Select the Privacy panel
- To enable cookies: Check ‘Accept cookies for sites’
- To disable cookies: Uncheck ‘Accept cookies for sites’
- Note there are various levels of cookie enablement and disablement in Firefox. For more information, refer to the following page from Mozilla: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Enabling%20and%20disabling%20cookies
Opera
- Click on ‘Setting’ at the browser menu and select ‘Settings’
- Select ‘Quick Preferences’
- To enable cookies: check “Enable Cookies”
- To disable cookies: uncheck “Enable Cookies”
- Note there are various levels of cookie enablement and disablement in Opera. For more information on other cookie settings offered in Opera, refer to the following page from Opera Software: http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/security/privacy/
Safari
- Click on ‘Safari’ at the menu bar and select the ‘Preferences’ option
- Click on ‘Security’
- To enable cookies: In the ‘Accept cookies’ section select ‘Only from site you navigate to’
- To disable cookies: In the ‘Accept cookies’ section select ‘Never’
- Note there are various levels of cookie enablement and disablement in Safari. For more information on other cookie settings offered in Safari, refer to the following page from Apple: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Safari/3.0/en/9277.html
All other browsers
Please check the help section of your broswer for information on how to disable cookies.
