What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files that the websites you visit place on your computer to store information about your visit. Cookies are ‘passive’ in that they contain information your browser can retrieve, but do not contain programmes, viruses or malicious software. Cookies normally expire after a certain length of time, although that time can be anywhere from a few minutes to more than a year.
Cookies can be divided into two categories: ‘session’ and ‘persistent’. Session cookies are temporary and are deleted when you close your browser or after a period of inactivity. Persistent cookies remain on your computer until the expiration date/time set by the cookie creator.
What do cookies do?
Cookies can contain many types of information about your visit to a particular website, but most commonly are used to store the preferences you’ve selected, such as language, privacy settings and logins. Cookies do not contain personal or private data about you, but can compile information about your browsing habits, such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
For the most part, cookies enhance your browsing experience by keeping you from having to select the same options each time you visit a site. However, cookies can also be used by websites to serve you advertising targeted to your particular interests based on the preferences you’ve selected or the content of the pages you have visited. For this reason, some web users choose to delete or reject cookies of certain types or from certain sites.
What cookies does Rare Dementia Support use?
Most cookies you will encounter when browsing the Rare Dementia website are considered ‘third party’ cookies. This simply means this website has used a feature supplied by an external provider, such as Facebook or Google Maps which sets the cookie. Third party cookies are not inherently more or less risky than first party cookies. The only thing to bear in mind is that the external provider, not Rare Dementia Support, determines what type of information is stored and how it is used.
The most common type of cookie used on this site is Google Analytics, which collects anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages. Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website and ensure you have the best user experience.
How do we use cookies?
Rare Dementia Support use cookies in a range of ways to improve your experience on our site, including
- Understanding how you use the website
- Embedding third party social content (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc.)
- Giving you tools to share content via social media channels
- Remembering your site preferences (For example, to remember not to show the cookie pop up)
Can I delete or block cookies?
Yes, you can both view the cookies stored on your computer and delete some or all of them. Note that in some cases, deleting cookies will impact your experience in revisiting a site. For example, you may be forced to log in again, or items added to your shopping cart will have disappeared.
How to delete cookies
Most browsers allow you to specify which types of cookies you will accept or to reject all cookies. As each browser is different, here are some of the most common ones:
You may see an alert message when visiting some sites that recommends you accept cookies for an optimal browsing experience.
If you have any questions or concerns about how the Rare Dementia Support website uses cookies, please contact us.
