Cookies

Cookies help us to provide you with a good online experience when you browse this website and allow you to make full use of the online shopping and personalised features we have available. We do not use cookies to collect or record information such as your name, address or payment details.

University of Plymouth Students’ Union (“we”, “our” or “us”) use cookies on our websites to distinguish you from other users. This statement explains how we use cookies when you visit our website and online applications (our “Sites”). This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our websites and also allows us to improve our websites.

By law, website operators are required to ask for a website user’s permission when placing certain kinds of cookie on their devices for the first time. Where consent is required, the law states that it should be “informed consent”, which means we must ensure that you understand what cookies are and why we want to use them. We are committed to providing the best digital service to you whilst at the same time fully protecting your privacy.

 

What are cookies

Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information, which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another websites that recognises that cookie. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognise a user’s device. Cookies do many different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently, remembering your preferences, and generally improving your user experience. They can also help to ensure that adverts you see online are more relevant to you and your interests.

 

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.

 

First Party Website Cookies

Type	Description	Expiry
ASPXAUTH	When you are logged in, this cookie stores a value which identifies you to the site. This value is encrypted and can only be read by the server. If you use the Remember Me function this cookie remains on your computer for 3 months, otherwise it is removed when you log out of the site.	3 months
ASP.NET_SessionID	Stores a temporary unique identifier for your session no other information is stored.	Expires on exit of browser
cookieconsent_status	Created by the Cookie Consent widget and enables you to accept our cookie statement once every year.	1 year

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Third Party Analytics Cookies

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: About the opt out tool and About Google's privacy policy.

We partner with Microsoft Clarity to capture how you use and interact with our website through behavioral metrics, heatmaps, and session replay to improve and market our products/services. Website usage data is captured using first and third-party cookies and other tracking technologies to determine the popularity of products/services and online activity. Additionally, we use this information for site optimization, fraud/security purposes, and advertising. For more information about how Microsoft collects and uses your data, visit the Microsoft Privacy Statement. We improve our products and advertising by using Microsoft Clarity to see how you use our website. By using our site, you agree that we and Microsoft can collect and use this data. 

Google Analytics Cookies

Type	Description	Expiry
_ga	Created by Google Analytics and is used to distinguish users.	2 Years
_gat	Used to throttle request rate.	1 minute
_gid	Used to distinguish users.	24 hours

Microsoft Clarity Cookies

Name	Purpose	Value Passed
_clck	Persists the Clarity User ID and preferences, unique to that site is attributed to the same user ID.	String
_clsk	Connects multiple page views by a user into a single Clarity session recording.	String
CLID	Identifies the first-time Clarity saw this user on any site using Clarity.	String
ANONCHK	Indicates whether MUID is transferred to ANID, a cookie used for advertising. Clarity doesn't use ANID and so this is always set to 0.	Flag
MR	Indicates whether to refresh MUID.	Flag
MUID	Identifies unique web browsers visiting Microsoft sites. These cookies are used for advertising, site analytics, and other operational purposes.	GUID
SM	Used in synchronizing the MUID across Microsoft domains.	Character Flags

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Third Party Cookie Indentities

Our website makes use of third party widgets, plugins and resources. This includes, but not limited to:

Identity	Description	Use
Facebook	https://www.facebook.com/policies/cookies/	on page widgets and buttons.
Twitter	https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-cookies	on page widgets and buttons.
Youtube	https://policies.google.com/technologies/types - for more information.	on page iframes and embedding of videos plus buttons.

Because of how cookies work, we do not have access to these cookies, nor can they access cookies that we use. Due to the nature of third party plugins, we are unable to document what cookies will be stored. It is up to the user to check what cookies will be stored. We are not responsible for third party cookies, all we can do is make them aware to you