Cookies policy for the DCMS Blog website

About cookies

This website uses cookies. We use cookies to:

• make the user’s experience more efficient
• to provide social media features
• to analyse our traffic

The law states that we can store cookies on your device if they are strictly necessary for the operation of this site. For all other types of cookies we need your permission. To find out more about how to manage cookies on the ICO’s website.

How we use cookies

You may see a cookie banner when you first visit this site, asking you to choose your cookie preferences. 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 message	3 Months

Measuring website usage through Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use the website. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements.

Google Analytics stores information about:

• the pages you visit
• how long you spend on each page
• how you got to the site
• what you click on while you’re visiting the site

We don’t collect or store personal information so this information can’t be used to identify who you are.

We don’t allow Google to use or share our analytics data.

Name	Purpose	Expires
__utma	Used to distinguish users and sessions	2 years
__utmb	Used to determine new sessions/visits.	30 minutes
__utmc	this cookie operated in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine whether the user was in a new session/visit.	when you close your browser
__utmt	Used to throttle request rate.	10 minutes
__utmx	Used to determine a user’s inclusion in an experiment.	2 years
__utmxx	Used to determine a user’s inclusion in an experiment.	2 years
__utmz	randomly generated number and information on how the site was reached (e.g. direct or via a link, organic search or paid search)	6 months
_ga	This helps us count how many people visit the site by tracking if you’ve visited before	2 years
_gid	This helps us count how many people visit the site by tracking if you’ve visited before	24 hours
_gat	Used to manage the rate at which page view requests are made	1 minute

You can opt out of Google Analytics cookies using this link or by using the cookie settings page.

Third party cookies

YouTube videos

We embed videos from our official YouTube channel using YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode. This mode may set cookies on your computer once you click on the YouTube video player. Read more at YouTube’s embedding videos information page.

Name	Purpose	Expires
_use_hitbox	This is a randomly generated number that identifies your browser	When your browser session ends
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	Lets YouTube count the views of embedded YouTube videos	9 months

Third party websites

We do not take responsibility for any cookies placed on your device from third party websites. If you click through to a website that we have provided a link to, please see that organisation’s cookie policy and settings pages for details on how to manage its cookies.

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings.

Find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:
Google Chrome
Microsoft Edge
Mozilla Firefox
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Opera
Apple Safari

For information relating to other browsers, visit the browser developer’s website.