Cookies
What are cookies?
A cookie is a small text file on your computer, created by a website to store information about your visit, such as any preferences you set or the duration of your visit. Once a cookie is saved on your computer, only the website that created the cookie can read it. EU legislation states that a website must let you know when it uses cookies.
Benefits of cookies
Some of the cookies on iow.gov.uk are used to remember things you have specifically selected, such as closing or opening the search panel, dismissing notification banners.
Other cookies help us understand how people browse the website. We use Google Analytics for this. The data we collect with Google Analytics is anonymous. We do not allow Google to use or share the data about how you use this site.
Surveys
We sometimes we conduct surveys to understand how we can make the site better for you, and we use cookies to stop the survey prompt from appearing if you have completed the survey, or if you have clicked to say you do not want to be asked again.
Cookie safety
Cookies won’t harm your device. They don't identify you or take any personal details. We track how you interact with our website, but the data collected is anonymous.
Cookie consent lifespan
When you give consent to any cookies on the website, a 30 day lifespan is given on your device. After this time the consent will expire and you will be shown the cookie consent banner again. This could be subject to change, but you will always be notified prior to any changes.
Tracking cookies
They allow us to collect information such as
- how many people visit the website
- what browsers they use
- how long they stay for
Understanding how people browse iow.gov.uk can help us identify areas that we need to improve, or fix problems.
| Name | Purpose | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| _ga | This helps us record how many people visit this website by tracking if you've visited before | 2 years |
| _gid | This helps us record how many people visit this website by tracking if you've visited before | 24 hours |
| _ga_3LV5S9F0RT | This helps us record how many people visit this website by tracking if you've visited before | 1 minute |
| NID | Unique ID used to remember preferences for Google reCaptcha | Various but tend to be approximately 6 months |
| CONSENT | Used by Google for cookie consent settings in Google reCaptcha | 20 years |
These are essential cookies do things like remember your cookie preferences and they can't be turned off.
Cookies set by third parties
We sometimes embed video, images or other content from websites such as Vimeo, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. We have no control over cookies set by third-party websites.