Department of Health and Social Care Engage Cookie Policy
The Department of Health and Social Care’s Engage platform puts small files (known as ‘cookies’) onto your computer to collect information about how you browse the site.
Cookies are used to:
- measure how you use the website so it can be updated and improved based on your needs
- remember the notifications you’ve seen so that we don’t show them to you again
- track your activity to inform online advertising, pay per click advertising, social media marketing, market research, product improvement, and debugging.
Cookies on Department of Health and Social Care Engage sites aren’t used to identify you personally.
You’ll normally see a message on the site before we store a cookie on your computer. Find out more about how to manage cookies.
How cookies are used on Department of Health and Social Care Engage sites
Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)
We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use Department of Health and Social Care Engage sites. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements, eg improving site search. Google Analytics stores information about:
- the pages you visit on Engage
- how long you spend on each Engage page
- how you got to the site
- what you click on while you’re visiting the site
- whether you scroll on the site
We don’t collect or store your personal information (eg your name or address) so this information can’t be used to identify who you are. We don’t allow Google to use or share our analytics data. Google Analytics sets the following cookies:
Universal Analytics
Name | Purpose | Expires |
_ga | This helps us count how many people visit Department of Health and Social Care by tracking if you’ve visited before | 2 years |
_gat | Used to manage the rate at which page view requests are made | 10 minutes |
_gid | This helps us count how many people visit Department of Health and Social Care sites by tracking if you’ve visited before | 24 hours |
_gcl_au | Used by Google AdSense for experimenting with advertisement efficiency across websites using their services | 3 months |
Google Analytics
Name | Purpose | Expires |
_utma | Like _ga, this lets us know if you’ve visited before, so we can count how many of our visitors are new to Department of Health and Social Care or to a certain page | 2 years |
_utmb | This works with _utmc to calculate the average length of time you spend on Department of Health and Social Care wites | 30 minutes |
_utmc | This works with _utmb to calculate when you close your browser | when you close your browser |
_utmz | This tells us how you reached Department of Health and Social Care sites (eg from another website or a search engine) | 6 months |
You can opt out of Google Analytics cookies.
Our introductory message
You may see a pop-up welcome message when you first visit Department of Health and Social Care Engage sites. We’ll store a cookie so that your computer knows you’ve seen it and knows not to show it again.
Name | Purpose | Expires |
CookieControl | Saves a message to let us know that you’ve seen our cookie message | 3 months |
YouTube
If the site contains a youtube video, some cookies are set as follows:
Name | Purpose | Expires |
GPS | Registers a unique ID on mobile devices to enable tracking based on geographical GPS location | 15 minutes |
PREF | This cookie is set by YouTube and is a 3rd party cookie served by the domain youtube.com. This cookie may be used by YouTube to store session preferences that relate to your activity when watching the embedded videos. These cookies don’t gather information that identifies a user. | 9 months |
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | Lets YouTube count the views of embedded YouTube videos | 9 months |
YSC | This cookie is set by YouTube and is a 3rd party cookie served by the domain youtube.com. These cookies don’t gather information that identifies a user. | When browser closed |
IDE | Used by Google DoubleClick to register and report the website user’s actions after viewing or clicking one of the advertiser’s ads with the purpose of measuring the efficacy of an ad and to present targeted ads to the user. | 12 months |
If you accept marketing cookies, we will set the following Facebook related cookies:
Name | Purpose | Expires |
fr | This is used by Facebook to make advertising more engaging to users | 3 months |
_fbp | Used by Facebook to deliver a series of advertisement products from third party advertisers | 3 months |