Privacy and Cookies
East Herts Council does not capture and store any personal information about individuals who access this website, except where you voluntarily choose to give us your personal details via email, or by using an electronic form, or enquiring about any of our services.
Any personal data provided to East Herts Council will be used for providing you with the information or service you have requested. We do not pass any of your personal data to outside organisations and/or individuals, except with your express consent or where required for the purposes of fraud detection or prevention. We do not collect personal information for commercial purposes (e.g - we do not sell information to other companies or organisations) .
Types of Cookies we use
The East Herts Council website uses three types of 'cookies', which are small text files placed on your computer. Cookies set by one website cannot be accessed by any other websites.
Session Cookies
The first is a session cookie that does nothing more than identify to the server that a user session has started (in other words that someone has landed on a web page) and store the session ID to allow the server to properly send the information from the website (show them web pages).
Ingresscookie
An essential cookie that helps ensure the user's browser receives the site correctly from our infrastructure.
Google Analytics
The second is a type of cookies set by Google Analytics. The council uses Google Analytics to help analyse how visitors use the website site, to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information in an anonymous form.
More information on cookies and opting out of Google Analytics tracking
To find out more about cookies, including how to control and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org, or to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
What Information is collected
The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) is transmitted to Google. This information is then used to evaluate visitors use of the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity for East Herts Council. East Herts Council will not use the statistical analytics tool to track or to collect any personally identifiable information of visitors to our site. We will not associate any data gathered from this site with any personally identifying information from any source as part of our use of the Google statistical analytics tool. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. Neither East Herts Council nor Google will link, or seek to link, an IP address with the identity of a computer user.
| Functionality | Description of Cookie | Cookie Used |
|---|---|---|
| Essential site cookie |
Sets the start of the user session on the server and allows the server to deliver the website content. This cookie is created when someone arrives at the website, and deleted when they leave. |
JSESSIONID |
|
Setting the Scope of the Site Content (Google Analytics) |
Because any cookie read/write access is restricted by a combination of the cookie name and its domain, default visitor tracking via Google Analytics is confined to the domain of the page on which the tracking code is installed. | All Cookies |
|
Determining Visitor Session (Google Analytics) |
The Google Analytics tracking for ga.js uses two cookies to establish a session. If either of these two cookies are absent, further activity by the user initiates the start of a new session. | __utmb / __utmc |
|
Identifying Unique Visitors (Google Analytics) |
Each unique browser that visits a page on the site is provided with a unique ID via the __utma cookie. In this way, subsequent visits to the website via the same browser are recorded as belonging to the same (unique) visitor. Thus, if a person interacted with the website using both Firefox and Internet Explorer, the Analytics reports would track this activity under two unique visitors. Similarly if the same browser were used by two different visitors, but with a separate computer account for each, the activity would be recorded under two unique visitor IDs. On the other hand, if the browser happens to be used by two different people sharing the same computer account, one unique visitor ID is recorded, even though two unique individuals accessed the site. | __utma |
|
Tracking Traffic Sources & Navigation (Google Analytics) |
When visitors reach the site via a search engine result, a direct link, or an ad that links to your page, Google Analytics stores the type of referral information in a cookie. The parameters in the cookie value string are parsed and sent in the GIF Request (in the utmcc variable). The expiration date for the cookie is set as 6 months into the future. This cookie gets updated with each subsequent page view to the site; thus it is used to determine visitor navigation within the site. | __utmz |
|
Custom Variables (Google Analytics) |
This can define custom segments for reporting on data. | ___utmv |
|
Website Optimizer (Google Analytics) |
Can be used with Google Website Optimizer (GWO), a tool that helps determine the most effective design for websites. When a website optimizer script executes on a page, a _utmx cookie is written to the browser and its value is sent to Google Analytics. | ___utmx |
| Online chat Unique anonymous identifier |
Anonymous visitor identifier cookie. | intercom-id-[app_id] |
| Online chat Keeping track of sessions |
Identifier for each unique browser session. | intercom-session-[app_id] |
