What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small file that can be placed on your device that allows us to recognise and remember you. It is sent to your browser and stored on your computer’s hard drive or tablet or mobile device. When you visit our sites, we may collect information from you automatically through cookies or similar technology, such as a tag, pixel, or other web beacon.
How do we use cookies?
We use cookies in a range of ways to improve your experience on our site, including
- Keeping you signed in
- Understanding how you use our site
- Showing you journalism that is relevant to you
- Showing you Volta Future Positive products and services that are relevant to you
- Working with partners to deliver to you relevant advertising
- Ultimately, this allows us to publish the journalism that you read on our sites and apps.
In the next section, we explain in more detail how we use cookies and similar technology on our sites and apps for a number of purposes.
Other organisations also collect user information on our sites through cookies, tags and pixels. Tags and pixels, also known as web beacons, are similar to cookies but are collected through embedded images.
What types of cookies do we use?
We use four types of cookies:
- Essential – cookies that are essential to provide you with services you have requested. For example, these include the cookies that make it possible for you to stay logged into your Volta Future Positive account and make comments. If you set your browser to block these cookies, then these functions and services will not work for you. In particular, we won’t be able to save your preferences about cookies.
- Performance – cookies which measure how often you visit our sites and how you use them. We use this information to get a better sense of how our users engage with our journalism and to improve our sites and apps, so that users have a better experience. For example, we collect information about which of our pages are most frequently visited, and by which types of users. We also use third-party cookies to help with performance. For example, the Google Analytics cookie gives us information such as your journey between pages and whether you have downloaded anything (details of how to opt out of it are below).
- Functionality – cookies that are used to recognise you and remember your preferences or settings when you return to our site, so that we can provide you with a more personalised experience. For example, if you are based in the United Kingdom, we will remember this and make sure that you receive the UK homepage when you visit our site, rather than the US or Australia homepage. A mix of first-party and third-party cookies are used.
- Advertising – cookies that are used to collect information about your visit to our site, including the content you have viewed, the links you have followed and information about your browser, device and your IP address. We have set out more details on this below.
| Provider | Name of Cookie | Purpose | Type | Duration |
| Google Analytics | _gid | These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the website. The cookies collect information in a way that does not directly identify anyone, including the number of visitors to the website and blog, where visitors have come to the website from and the pages they visited. | Persistant | 24 hours |
| Google Analytics | _ga | Persistant | 2 years | |
| _gali | Persistant | 30 Seconds | ||
| _gat | Persistant | 1 day | ||
| __Secure-3PAPISID | Google advertising cookie used for user tracking and ad targeting purposes. | Persistant | 2 years | |
| SAPISID | Google advertising cookie used for user tracking and ad targeting purposes. | Persistant | 3 years | |
| SSID | Google advertising cookie used for user tracking and ad targeting purposes. | Persistant | 2 years | |
| APISID | Google advertising cookie used for user tracking and ad targeting purposes. | Persistant | 3 years | |
| __Secure-3PSID | Google advertising cookie used for user tracking and ad targeting purposes. | Persistant | 2 years | |
| SID | Google advertising cookie used for user tracking and ad targeting purposes. | Persistant | 2 years | |
| __Secure-3PSIDCC | Google advertising cookie used for user tracking and ad targeting purposes. | Persistant | 1 year | |
| Youtube | YSC | Keep statistics of what videos the user have seen. | Session | |
| Youtube | LOGIN_INFO | These cookies are set via embedded youtube videos | Persistant | 2 Years |
| Youtube | HSID | These are security cookies to authenticate users, prevent fraudulent use of login credentials, and protect user data from unauthorized parties | Persistant | 2 Years |
| Youtube | PREF | This cookie helps YouTube collect visitor information and custom preferences | Persistant | 8 Months |
| Youtube | VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | This cookie tries to estimate the users’ bandwidth on pages with integrated YouTube videos | Persistant | 8 Months |
| WordPress | cppro-ft | These cookies are used for Cookie Control. These cookies are set in order to remember preferences in regards to cookies. | Persistant | 8 Years |
| WordPress | mkd-post-views_ | These cookies are to track how many users have viewed a post | Persistant | |
| WordPress | cookie_notice_accepted | To check if cookies can be placed. | Persistant | 1 Month |
| WordPress | wp-settings-time- | WordPress also sets a few wp-settings-{time}-[UID] cookies for logged in users. | Persistant | 1 Year |
| WordPress | wordpress_test_cookie | Test if the browser accepts cookies. | Session |
Third-party cookies
Third-party cookies are set by someone other than the owner of the website you’re visiting.
Some of our pages may also contain content from other sites like YouTube, which may set their own cookies. If you share a link to a page on one of our sites, the platform you share it on (for example, Facebook) may set a cookie on your browser. We have no control over third-party cookies – you can turn them off in your browser here, but not through us.
Turn off cookies in your browser
It is possible to stop your browser from accepting cookies by changing your browser’s cookie settings. These settings can usually be found in the “options” or “preferences” menu of your browser. The following links may be helpful, or you can use the “Help” option in your browser.
Useful links
If you would like to find out more about privacy, cookies and their use on the internet, you may find the following links useful: