Cookie Policy

Cookies are small data files that are placed on your computer’s web browser by websites that you visit. They are widely used to make websites work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site. Many web browsers accept cookies automatically by default, but it is possible to reject cookies by changing some simple settings on your web browser. If this is done it is important not to exclude some useful cookies. Choose an option that rejects all third party and long-lived cookies.

Further information on cookies can be accessed here: www.aboutcookies.org.

Cookies allow us to see how our visitors use thebfa.org. This allows us to structure the site for better usability and support the needs of our visitors. None of this data is used to identify users personally – it is used only to monitor and enhance thebfa.org 

There are several types of cookie that are used to keep track of information needed by a site user as they travel from page to page within a website. 

Basket ID cookies are a single shopping basket cookie that stores the Id of the users basket and then the contents are stored on the BFA website. This same cookie is used for both events and books. 

Session ID cookie is related to the Member login cookie. It is used by ASP.NET to create a session cookie that contains ‘session ID’ and is required for everyone visiting the site. This helps to maintain security and to keep track of visitor data. It is a required cookie for forms where it allows the data entered to be processed.

Cookies can be used to track internet activity after the user has left a website. These are normally facilitated by organisations external to the website being visited and are generally known as ‘third-party’ cookies. They usually have a long lifetime with several months being quite common. They are ‘harvested’ and ‘refreshed’ whenever the user visits a page where the same or a similar cookie is being used. The BFA does not control dissemination of third party cookies.

Third-party cookies on thebfa.org

Google Analytics;

We currently use Google Analytics to measure and analyse visitor information related to our web site. For that purpose, your IP address, Internet traffic data and data on your browser type and PC are collected using several cookies (_utma, _utmc, utmb, utmz):

  • _utma is used by Google Analytics to identify first-time site (‘unique’) visitors vs. returning visitors. It expires after two years
  • _utmc identifies unique visitors vs. returning visitors but expires when you close your browser.
  • _utmb is used for general visitor tracking and expires after 30 minutes.
  • _utmz tracks source visits (the origin of the visit). It expires after six months.

External Media;

We sometimes embed media content from external websites. Thebfa.org pages with embedded media content, for example videos from YouTube, may provide cookies from these websites. Cookies may also be presented by external providers of a share content service, such as digg or Twitter.

ShareThis

ShareThis allows visitors to easily share content from our site. The service presents three cookies:

  • _stid is a random unique identifier and is used to associate users with topics of interest, based upon the content they consume and share.
  • _uset is used to indicate when a user has been cookied so that the task is not repeated in the next 8 hours.
  • _unam counts number of unique users that share content and how many page views are generated from the resulting share.