When you visit most websites, a cookie stores information in a text file in your browser. The website can then refer back to this information to help provide a better experience when using the website.
Cookies are often used to improve your browsing experience. In most cases, they just store a number that has been allocated to your browsing session. When you are accessing areas that require you to log in this allows you to move from page to page without having to log in repeatedly. We also use cookies to support advertising campaigns, testing and analytical information.
Are they dangerous?
They are not dangerous to your computer in any way, they are not executable programmes, viruses or code and cannot read information that exists on your computer.
Types of cookies
Session cookies only exist until you close your browser and end the current browsing session. Session cookies are never written on the hard drive.
Permanent cookies (also called persistent or stored cookies) store a text file on your computer so if you visit the same website again it recognises you and remembers your preferences.
Advertising and retargeting cookies
Advertising cookies let us make advertising more engaging for our users using third-party vendors. Some common applications of cookies are to select advertising based on what’s relevant to a user. To do this we base the advertising on the information that the user has viewed on the Solent website. They also help with reporting the performance of our advertising and to avoid showing adverts that the user has already seen.
Retargeting cookies allow us to advertise to visitors to our websites via third-party vendors. Third-party vendors will show our adverts on sites across the internet and use cookies to serve adverts based on past visits to our websites.
You can see the cookies we use for advertising and retargeting in the list below.
If you wish to opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for interest-based advertising visit www.youronlinechoices.com.
Other third-party cookies
To make your experience on the website more enriched we embed video and audio content from websites such as Vimeo, YouTube and SoundCloud. As a result, when you visit a page with content embedded from these websites you may be presented with cookies from these websites.
We use third-party cookies to help us better understand the visitors to our website, for example, we use a call tracking cookie to help us understand what has driven a user to call us. This can help us to improve our website by providing richer information.
We also use third party software under sub-domains of solent.ac.uk. For example, our careers site is provided by a third party (Hireserve) that specialises in job sites. This allows us to provide users with a better experience but it will also mean that the software will make use of cookies.
Please see the websites' individual cookie policies for more information (we have provided links where possible).
Cookies used on the Solent University website
We have compiled a list of cookies that may be used when you visit the solent.ac.uk website. The cookies that you receive will depend on your activity around the site and how you arrived at the site. While we have made every attempt to create a comprehensive list of cookies, there may be some that we have not listed. If you have any concerns about the cookies that we use, please contact us.
Necessary
Functional
Performance
Advertising
Disabling cookies
You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of a website. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.
