Cookies

What are cookies?

When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable.

Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, computer or mobile phone.

These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.

These pieces of information are used to improve services for you by:

• recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don't need to do it for every web page requested;
• measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there's enough capacity to ensure they are fast; and
• analysing anonymised data to help us understand how people interact with government services so we can make them better.

Managing cookies

You can manage these small files yourself. To learn more about cookies and how to manage thema please see Directgov.

There are 2 types of cookie you may encounter when using the UK Border Agency websites:

• First party cookies - these are our own cookies, controlled by us and used to provide information about usage of our site.
• Third party cookies - these are cookies found in other companies' internet tools which we are using to enhance our site, for example Facebook or Twitter have their own cookies, which are controlled by them.

First party cookies

UK Border Agency websites use cookies in several places. Cookies are set by our web servers to ensure that your session is maintained for the duration of your visit (until you close your web browser).

We've listed each of them below with more details about why we use them and how long they will last. We will let you know before we store a cookie on your computer.

Table containing the cookies which we set:

Name	Typical content	Expires
DCT-Legacy	Randomly generated number	When user closes browser
DCT-Morello	Randomly generated number	When user closes browser
JSESSIONID	Randomly generated alpha-numeric value	When user closes browser
iApply-PROD-COOKIE	Alpha-numeric value	When user closes browser

Third party cookies

When we use a supplier they may also set cookies.

We use Google Analytics and Comscore Digital Analytix to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to our websites and volumes of usage. For more detailed information on these cookies, please see the Google Code website and the Comscore Digital Analytix website.

Table showing cookies used by Google Analytics:

Name	Typical content	Expires
_utma	Randomly generated number	2 years from set/update
_utmb	Randomly generated number	30 minutes from set/update
_utmc	Randomly generated number	When user closes browser
_utmz	Randomly generated number and information on how the site was reached (for example, directly or via a link, organic search or paid search)	6 months from set/update

Table showing cookies used by ComScore Sitestat Analytics Cookies:

Name	Typical content	Expires
ns_cookietest	"true" or "false"	When user closes browser
ns_session	"true" or "false"	When user closes browser

Table showing cookies used by Cisco ArrowPoint:

Name	Typical content	Expires
ARPT	Randomly generated alpha-numeric value	When user closes browser

For infomation about how we use cookies on our 'apply online' in the UK service please see our cookies on apply online page.