What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small file made up of letters and numbers that is downloaded onto a device when a person visits a website. These cookies are used to improve your experience, for example we will use the information to:

  • Measure how many people use our website to keep it running quickly and efficiently
  • Analyse how people use the site so we can make sure we provide the best possible service for our customers
  • Cookies cannot be used to:

Extract information from your device

 

Types of cookies

There are a number of different types of cookies; session cookies, persistent cookies, first party cookies and third party cookies.

  • Session cookies: These cookies link your actions on a website to our data system and are used for a number of reasons such as remembering what you’ve put into your shopping basket while browsing the site. The session cookies expire as soon as the browser is closed so no information is stored permanently.
  • Persistent cookies: These cookies remember your preferences or actions across a website and help us to provide you with information that is relevant to you in the future. The information collected can be used to track actions across multiple browser sessions and may be used to make advertising more relevant to you.
  • First party cookies: These cookies are set and handled directly by WSL, they cannot be accessed or read by any other website.
  • Third party cookies: These are cookies that we have given a separate website permission to use on WSL, these allow the separate website to record certain actions you take on WSL.

We further differentiate cookies by whether they are essential, required or optional.

 

Essential:

Essential cookies are required for the site to function. These cannot be disabled, as they would seriously compromise the site’s performance. For example, a session cookie that keeps a note of whether you are logged in is essential.

Required:

Required cookies are different from essential cookies because the site would still function if they were removed. We class our analytics cookies as required because they allow us to use anonymous traffic data to improve how the site functions.

Optional cookies:

These cookies are used to enable functions that are not essential, and not required. For example, cookies used to track “likes” and tweets are considered optional. You can choose not to accept optional cookies by clicking the “Do not accept cookies” button in the Optional Cookies Preferences below.

What cookies does WSL use?

Functional

WSL uses a cookie that is set when you click “I understand” for our cookie policy widget to ensure you no longer see this on the site.
The name of this Functional cookie is:

  • cookie-policy

WSL uses a cookie that is automatically set by our server to assign you a unique visitor ID, this collects no personal information and provides all other session based functionality on the site.
The name of this Functional cookie is:

  • PHPSESSID

This cookie is essential.

WordPress is the CMS used for the WSL website, it creates a series of cookies necessary for the website to function. These cookies do not track personal information or store anything specific to the visitor of the website.

Third Party

All third party cookies used by the website can be opted out by a website user. This is done on the initial cookie notice, which will disable the following cookies:

  • LPVisitorID
  • LPVID
  • LPSessionID
  • LPSID-[id]
  • optimizelyBuckets
  • optimizelyEndUserId
  • optimizelySegments

By rejecting the use of third party cookies, Live Chat and additional tracking/split testing features will be disabled. To re-enable these features after rejecting third party cookies, clearing all saved cookies and allowing the use of third party cookies will enable the disabled services.

Analytical

Analytical cookies are used to measure site performance such as number of visitors, number of purchases and number of errors.
Specifically we use these to:

  • Gather anonymous statistics on how our website is used
  • Help us to identify any errors that may occur

We do not use these to:

  • Advertise products or services to you

The names of these analytical cookies are:

_ga 2 years Used to distinguish users.
_gid 24 hours Used to distinguish users.
_gat 1 minute Used to throttle request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed via Google Tag Manager, this cookie will be named _dc_gtm_< property-id>.
AMP_ TOKEN 30 seconds to 1 year Contains a token that can be used to retrieve a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. Other possible values indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID from AMP Client ID service.
_gac_ <property-id> 90 days Contains campaign related information for the user. If you have linked your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, AdWords website conversion tags will read this cookie unless you opt-out. Learn more.

How to control cookies

Altering your cookie settings is a relatively simple task however, the process does differ between browsers. Here’s how to access your cookie settings in the most popular browsers.

Google Chrome:
  1. Click on the Tools menu and select Options.
  2. Click the Under the Bonnet tab and look for the Privacy section.
  3. Choose the Cookie settings tab.
  4. From here you can change your settings as you see fit.
Internet Explorer 11 & Microsoft Edge:
  1. Choose Tools and then Internet Options.
  2. Click the Privacy tab.
  3. From here you can change your settings as you see fit.
  4. (For specialised cookie settings, click on Advanced, click the Override cookies handling button and change your settings)
Mozilla Firefox:
  1. Click on Tools and then Options.
  2. Select Privacy.
  3. Select Cookies.
  4. From here you can change your settings as you see fit.
Opera:
  1. Go to Tools in main menu.
  2. Go to Preferences at the bottom of the File menu (or press Alt+P to access them directly).
  3. Click Privacy.
  4. From here you can change your settings as you see fit.
Safari:
  1. Choose Preferences from the Safari menu.
  2. Select the Security icon.
  3. Cookie settings will appear in the window.
  4. From here you can change your settings as you see fit.

How to delete cookies

Deleting your cookie settings is also relatively easy but the process does differ between browsers. Here’s how to delete cookies in the most popular browsers.

Google Chrome:
  1. Click on the Tools menu and select Options.
  2. Click the Under the Bonnet tab and look for the Privacy section.
  3. Click Clear browsing data.
  4. Select Delete cookies and other site data to delete all cookies from the list.
  5. Select Clear browsing history to delete traces of which websites you’ve visited.
  6. Select Clear download history to delete records of which files and programs you’ve downloaded.
  7. Select Empty the cache to delete cached websites.
Internet Explorer 11 & Microsoft Edge:
  1. Choose Tools.
  2. Click Delete browsing history.
  3. Tick the Cookies box and click Delete.
Internet Explorer 9:
  1. Choose Tools and then Safety.
  2. Click Delete browsing history.
  3. Tick the Cookies box and click Delete.
Internet Explorer 8:
  1. Choose Safety on the command bar.
  2. Click Delete browsing history.
  3. Tick the Cookies box and click Delete.
Mozilla Firefox:
  1. Click on Tools and then Options.
  2. Select Privacy.
  3. Select Show Cookies.
  4. To remove a single cookie highlight it and click Remove cookies.
  5. To remove all cookies click Remove all cookies.
Opera:
  1. Go to Tools in main menu.
  2. Click Delete private data.
Safari:
  1. Choose Preferences from the Safari menu.
  2. Select the Security icon.
  3. Click Show cookies.
  4. Select the cookies that you want to delete.
  5. Click Delete.