Cookies

Information about the cookies we use to assist you when using the website and improve your user experience.

What are cookies

A cookie is a piece of information in the form of a small text file that is generated and set by our website and placed on your computer's hard drive

Cookies make your interaction with our website faster and easier. Without cookies, it would be very difficult for our website to remember your preferences or registration details between each web page you use and between each time you visit the site.

They are not computer programs, and they can't be executed as code. Cookies cannot access any information on your computer - so a cookie cannot read any other information saved there such as your email address for example. We do not use cookies for identifying shopping habits or targeting advertising.

We use cookies mainly because they save you time and make your browsing experience more efficient and enjoyable. Without cookies you will have to reset your preferences on each page you visit. We also use cookies to record anonymous statistics on which parts of the website are popular and how many different people visit the site.

To find out more information about cookies generally, visit All About Cookies.

What happens if I allow cookies?

Unless you opt out of cookies, we will set a number of cookies on your computer to assist you when using the website and improve your user experience. With any future visits to our website, you will not be prompted with the notice.

What happens if I decline cookies?

If you do not accept cookies, this will remove all the cookies that are surplus to the basic functionality of this website, and we will not set them again on your machine. This may affect your user experience. Unfortunately, because cookies are the only way we have of remembering your preferences, we will have to ask this question on each page you visit; each time you visit our website.

Cookies on our website

We use cookies for a number of reasons on our website, including; keeping any settings you changed for accessibility, counting visitor numbers and counting social sharing numbers.

Google Analytics cookies: _ga, _gat, _gid, _gali

  • These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the website. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the website, where visitors have come to the website from and the pages they visited. Read Google's overview of privacy and safeguarding data.

has_js

  • Detects user side JavaScript

SESS

  • PHP session cookie

device_type

  • Detects user device type

Device

  • Used to tracked device user is using

AWSELB

  • "Amazon Web Services Elastic Load Balancer"
  • Used to direct your request to the appropriate server.
  • No personal information is contained or used.

firmstep2server

  • Used to direct your request to the appropriate server. No personal information is stored.

firmstep2session

  • A unique identifier given to you for the duration of your site visit.
  • It is used to ensure that you and only you are shown information relevant to you.
  • It contains no personally identifiable information, but is temporarily linked to your user account when you log in.

ASP.NET_SessionId

  • A unique identifier given to you for the duration of your site visit.
  • It is used to ensure that you and only you are shown information relevant to you.
  • It contains no personally identifiable information, but is temporarily linked to your user account if you log in.

PHPSESSID

  • This cookie is used by the PHP web server to identify the unique browsing session. It is required for Forms to work.
  • Expires: when the user closes the browser
  • Contains the unique ID for the browsing session

SESSfsauthsession

  • This cookie is used by the web server software to identify the unique browsing session. A similar function to PHPSESSID, but for a different part of the server. It contains the same information as PHPSESSID. It is required for Forms to work.
  • Expires: when the user closes the browser
  • Contains the unique ID for the browsing session

SimpleSAMLSessionID

  • A third session ID cookie. This one for the SAML login protocol. It is generated even if the SAML protocol isn't used, and simply ignored in that case. It is required for Forms to work if using the SAML login protocol.
  • Expires: when the user closes the browser
  • Contains the unique ID for the browsing session

lastlogin

  • It's used to keep track of usage and to manage caching
  • Expires: when the user closes the browser
  • Contains the epoch number of the last login.

fs2logevents

  • Only set by explicit user action.
  • Increases the level of internal debug information kept by the browser.

fs2debug

  • Only set by explicit user action.
  • Causes the display of a button to allow the user to submit browser debug information for diagnostics.

fs2diag

  • Only set by explicit user action.
  • Causes the display of a toolbar that can submit or display browser debug information.

ui-tabs

  • Used by the client to maintain tabs state when the user moves between pages.

combined.js and 0.js

  • 0.js and combined.js are used to indicate minification of some js code on the particular site.
  • These cookies last for the session.