Cookie Policy

1 Introduction

Like many websites, when you visit our website, in order to deliver a full browsing experience a small amount of information, known as a ‘cookie’ will be downloaded to your device, (e.g: your computer, laptop, tablet or mobile phone). These cookies cannot be used to identify you personally.
These cookies are used to improve your browsing experience by, for example:
enabling a website to recognise your device so you do not have to give the same information several times during one task or browsing session;
recognising if you have given a username and password so you do not need to do it for every web page you visit;
analysing anonymous data to help us understand how visitors interact with the website so we can make improvements and develop the website in an informed way for our visitors.
If you would like to learn how to manage and remove cookies from your device please visit the following website: www.aboutcookies.org\

2 Cookies we use on this website

2.1 First-party cookies

Session management
These are ‘session-based’ cookies used in order to ensure the smooth running of users’ web browsing sessions. This classification includes cookies used to support server load balancing:
Name: ASP.NET_SessionId
Purpose: ASP.NET session ID – the cookie is essential for the whole site functioning
Typical content: A 120-bit random number that is represented by a 20-character string
Expires: When user exits browser
Name: ARRAffinity
Purpose: Is being configured on the server farm end in order to provide a client affinity feature that maps a client to a content server behind Application Request Routing (ARR)
Typical content: randomly generated string
Expires: When user exits browser
Personalised content/interface
This classification covers cookies which are used to remember user settings for the duration of a user’s web browsing session, for example, their language preference:
Name: XplodeAdministration
Purpose: Identifier of the Xplode admin area user session (for back-end users)
Typical content: string representation of the encrypted and signed FormsAuthenticationTicket object
Expires: When user exits browser
Name: Xplode::LastLoginFlag
Purpose: This cookie is used with a specific site setting which tells the site not to allow simultaneous login to the admin area of one user from different locations (for back-end users)
Typical content: Globally Unique Identifier (GUID)
Expires: 6 months
Web analytics/metrics
This category comprises cookies used to evaluate site performance in terms of number of visits, unique visitors, drop-off rate for transactions, and so on:
Name: __utma
Purpose: Google Analytics cookie to track the number of times you access the site
Typical content: Randomly generated number
Expires: 2 years
Name: __utmb
Purpose: Google Analytics cookie to timestamp the exact time that you access the site
Typical content: Randomly generated number
Expires: 30 minutes
Name: __utmc
Purpose: Google Analytics cookie to timestamp the exact time that you leave the site
Typical content: Randomly generated number
Expires: When user exits browser
Name: __utmz
Purpose: Google Analytics cookie that keeps track of how you got to the site
Typical content: Randomly generated number and information on how the site was reached
Expires: 6 months
JavaScript detection
These cookies are used to ‘remember’ whether users’ terminals support the use of JavaScript. This facilitates an enhanced user experience as JavaScript-enhanced features can be made available to users:
Name: __atuvc
Purpose: This cookie is to make sure the user sees the updated count if they share a page and return to it before the share count cache is updated.
Typical content: Sequence of numbers
Expires: 2 years

2.2 Third-party cookies

We use third party suppliers and their services on this website, which may also use cookies as detailed below:
Cookies for improving service
We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use this website. We do this to make sure it is meeting our users’ needs and to understand how we could improve the overall user experience.
Google Analytics stores information about which pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here and what you click on. We do not collect or store your personal information (for example, your name or address) so this information cannot be used to identify who you are. We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data.
For detailed information about cookies used by Google Analytics on this site please view the above ‘Web analytics/metrics’ section, or for further information please visit www.google.co.uk/intl/en/analytics/privacyoverview.html

3 How to control and delete cookies
We will not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you.
However, if you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our website, or indeed any other website, you can do this through your web browser settings. The ‘Help’ function within your browser should tell you how to do this.
Alternatively, you may wish to visit the following website: www.aboutcookies.org
This website contains detailed information on how to manage cookies across a wide variety of browsers. You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your device, as well as more general information about cookies.
Please be aware that restricting cookies may have an impact on the functionality of our website.
If you have any questions about our cookie policy, please contact us at [email protected]