What are cookies, and how do we use them?
Cookies are small text files that are sent to and stored on your web browser, smartphone or other devices to allow you to store specific information that can be used to improve the user experience on a website. They can remember your preferences by gathering and storing information. Further information about cookies (including how to disable them) can be found on allaboutcookies.org.
Keele Student’ Union uses cookies on our site to improve the user experience and to gather general statistics about the users of our services (not user-specific). Among other things, cookies allow you to log on to our service. This Cookie Policy gives a background of what cookies are, how we use them and how they benefit you.
What types of cookies are there?
You will encounter the following cookies;
- First party cookies
First party cookies are set by the website you are visiting and they can only be read by that site
- Third-party cookies
Third-party cookies are set by a different organisation to the owner of the website you are visiting. For example, the website might use a third-party analytics company who will set their own cookie to perform this service. The website you are visiting may also contain content embedded from, for example, YouTube or Flickr, and these sites may set their own cookies
- Session cookies
Session Cookies are stored only temporarily during a browsing session and are deleted from the user’s device when the browser is closed. We use these to allow you to login to the website
- Persistent cookies
This type of cookie is saved on your computer for a fixed period (usually a year or longer) and is not deleted when the browser is closed. Persistent cookies are used where we need to know who you are for more than one browsing session. For example, we use this type of cookie to store your preferences, so that they are remembered for the next visit
How can I prevent cookies being used
You can, should you choose to, disable the cookies from your browser and delete all cookies currently stored on your computer or smart device. You can find out how to do this for your particular browser by clicking "help" on your browser's menu or by visiting http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/index.html.
However, please be aware that should you choose to disable cookies from your browser it may prevent you from taking full advantage of our Sites and some of our Sites may fail to work properly which will greatly impact on your use and enjoyment of our Sites. You will see from the section below headed "How we use cookies" that most of the cookies used by us are recognised as being essential cookies, which are required in order to make our Sites work.
How we use cookies
We use cookies on all of our Sites. However, we do not collect or store personal data via the cookies used on any of our Sites.
When someone visits one of our Sites we collect standard internet log information. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of our Sites. We collect this information in a way which does not individually identify you.
If, in the future, we decide that we do want to collect personally identifiable information by using cookies, on any of our Sites, we will be up front about this. We will make it clear when we will collect such personal information, how we will collect it and what we intend to do with it.
1st Party Cookies
Google Analytics
These cookies are used to collect information (non-personal information) about how visitors use our Sites. We use the information to compile reports, which will help us to monitor our Sites performance and enable us to improve our Sites, where necessary. This cookie collects information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to our Sites, where visitors have come from and the pages they have visited.
Google Analytics has been assessed as posing a very low intrusiveness level to you however Google has produced a plugin for browsers that helps you to opt out of this form of analytics if you do not wish us to use it. Find out more:
3rd Party Cookies
Third party cookies are cookies that have been written on to your browser or device by a website that is different from the website you are actually visiting (i.e. by a site other than ours, in this case). We do not use 3rd Party Cookies.