Use of cookies on this website

To comply with the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations we periodically conduct a Cookie Audit of our website. This Cookie Audit was last updated on 19 July 2011.

Our website uses a number of cookies to store data on our visitor's computers.  For more information about managing cookies, please see http://www.aboutcookies.org/.  

In Summary

Our current assessment of the intrusiveness of the cookies used by our website is as follows:

• First-party cookies: we use cookies to monitor how visitors find and use our website.  We report on this activity in aggregate, and use this information solely for the purposes of monitoring and improving our website.
• Third-party cookies: we use a variety of widely-used third-party plugins as marketing tools for our own business and to provide convenience tools for our visitors.  In our belief the use of these plugins represents current "best practice".  We have no direct control over the content of the cookies they create, the use made of any data collected, or the security of that data. These third parties may collect information about your visit to our website, and they may use this with other data in order to serve advertising which may be more relevant to you. Some visitors may see this use of data as intrusive to some degree.

We believe there is no reason for our website visitors to be particularly concerned about the privacy implications of any of the cookies we use, but we do recognise the importance of making you aware of the purpose and scope of the data stored in the cookies which are created or updated on your computer when you visit our website. You may choose to delete these cookies from your computer between visits to our website.

We recommend that if you have concerns about the privacy implications of the cookies we use, then you should investigate how to do this using the cookie management tools in your web browser. 

In Detail: First party Cookies

First party cookies are specific to the host site that created them (in this case, escrivo.com) and cannot be accessed by a web server other than escrivo.com.

Session IDs: Our web server may create a session cookie called ASP.NET_SessionId ,which is essential for your use of some of the interative elements of the website, such as contact forms.  The cookie contains a session ID which is a mechanism for distinguishing your visit to our website from any other visitors that may be using the website at the same time. For more information you can read this technical article on the Microsoft website about Session IDs. This cookie expires when you leave our website.

Cookie Consent: If you have chosen to consent to our use of cookies, as outlined on this page, then we place a cookie called CookieConsent on your computer.  This stores the word "Yes" and is set to expire approximately 20 years after you first give us your consent.

Analytics: We use Google Analytics, which creates a number of first-party cookies, all prefixed __utm:

• __utma: contains a unique and anonymous identifying ID, which allows us to ensure that subsequent visits to our website are recorded as belonging to the same (unique) visitor. This cookie expires after two years.
• __utmb: used to establish and continue a unique user session. Each time you request another page from the website the cookie is updated to expire after 30minutes.
• __utmc: works with __utmb to determine when to create a new session for a website visitor. This is a session cookie and expires when you exit the browser.
• __utmz: tracks how you found us and is used to calculate traffic and navigation within the website. It is updated with every new page view and expires after 6 months.
• You may also sometimes find a __utmv cookie which relates to custom reporting segments, a feature which we occasionally use on Google Analytics.

Full details of the cookies which Google Analytics uses can be found in Cookies & Google Analytics in documentation for Google's Analytics tracking code. You can also read Google's Privacy Policy for Google Analytics. To opt out of our use of Google Analytics you may wish to consider using the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

Content Management and site navigation: Our content management tool creates a number of first-party cookies:

• graffitibot: our website's CMS provides some features to count views of pages on our website and uses this cookie to track your use of our website. We can report in aggregate against this tracking information, similar in functionality to Google Analytics. Graffitibot cookies expire 6hours after you leave our website, to allow us to catch situations where you make a return visit, e.g. later on the same day.
• Graffiti-Post-xx: these cookies are numbered (the "xx" is replaced with one or more numbers) and they used in conjunction with the graffitibot cookie to track page views.  They expire when you leave our website.
• .Graffiti: this cookie is used to identify and authenticate users that have logged in to our website's CMS. This includes our website administrators and users that may have logged in to leave a comment on a news article or similar page. If you have not logged in then the cookie is still used; in this scenario it records that you are an unauthenticated user and this information is used when deciding the content to display to you (for example, if you are not logged in then we might need to display a login box for you). This cookie has an expiry date several weeks in the future so that we can implement "remember me" style functionality for our users.

In all cases these first-party cookies do not store any personal or sensitive information, or anything that makes you personally identifiable to us.

We use the data that is collected using these first-party cookies to report, in aggregate, how our visitors find and use our website; we use those reports to understand overall visitor behaviour, and we use that understanding to update and improve our website.

In Detail: Third-party cookies

Third party cookies are cookies created by an external service when you use a page on our website. These cookies are specific to the third-party's domain and accordingly the data held in them can be seen and managed by the third party and not by us. We control whether or not we use the third-party service with our website, and how it is integrated and presented on our website. We do not have control over the cookies themselves. 

• We use Google Maps on our Contact Us page to provide detailed information on how to locate our office.  Google Maps stores two cookies, NID and PREF. We use Google's interactive maps because we beleive they provide a helpful way for our visitors to identify how best to travel to us. We use the Google Maps tools on the basis that Google adheres to its privacy policy which can be found at  http://www.google.co.uk/privacy/privacy-policy.html and its terms of service for Google Maps at http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/help/terms_maps.html. 
• We currently use the Google "+1" plugin to help us market and promote our business using Google's services.  The plugin allows visitors to use the "+1" button to recommend our website to their contacts.  The plugin creates at least two cookies, BEAT (a persistent cookie set to expire after 1 day) and ULS (a session cookie).  We use the plugin as a convenience for our visitors, and we use it on the basis that Google adheres to its Google +1 Button Privacy Policy.
• We currently use the Facebook "Like Box" plugin to help us market our business using the Facebook Social Network. The plugin detects whether you have "Liked" our Facebook page and uses this information to present either a "Like" button or a "You Like this" message with various other associated details from Facebook. If you are not logged in to Facebook, the plugin creates a third-party cookie called datr. If you are logged in to Facebook, the plugin creates a series of third-party cookies. We use the plugin as a convenience for our visitors, and we use it on the basis that Facebook adheres to its data use policy, which can be found at http://www.Facebook.com/about/privacy/. 
• We currently use the Twitter "Follow Button" plugin to help us market our business using Twitter. The plugin detects whether you are logged in to Twitter when you visit our website and uses this information to present either a "Follow" or "You Follow" message with various other details from Twitter. The plugin creates four Third-Party cookies - _twitter_sess, k, guest_id and original_referer - if a visitor accesses the site when not logged into Twitter, and a further five cookies if accessed while logged on to Twitter. We use the plugin as a convenience for our users and we use it on the basis that Twitter adheres to its Privacy Policy - see http://twitter.com/privacy for more information.

In Detail: Flash Local Shared Object (LSO) storage

If you want to manage the contents of your Flash Local Shared Objects, please use Adobe's Website Storage Settings panel here.

We rarely use Flash technology on our website, however in some limited circumstances we may use Flash as follows:

• YouTube video: We may periodically use the YouTube service to host video content, and embed YouTube's player in our web pages to allow you to watch the video without leaving our website.  YouTube's embedded player currently creates and updates a Flash LSO called s.ytimg.com.  We have no direct control over YouTube's use of the data stored in this object. For more information, please read YouTube's privacy policy.

In Detail: Other cookies we may be using

We occasionally trial other services which may create cookies on your computer. If we are currently doing so then these trials will be listed here:

• We are currently trialling GetClicky Analytics, which is similar in functionality to Google Analytics. GetClicky may in some cases create a first-party cookie called _jsuid to track your use of the website which can then be reported in aggregate using the GetClicky service. No personal data is collected or stored in this cookie. _jsuid is stored on your computer between visits.
• We are currently trialling Woopra Analytics, which is similar in functionality to Google Analytics. Woopra creates two first-party cookies, wooTracker and wooMeta. Again, neither of these cookies is used to store personally identifiable information on your computer. Both cookies are stored on your computer between visits.