Omega Scientific (www.omegascientific.co.uk) will set four removable Google Analytic cookies in your web browser software. These are listed in the table below.
What are cookies? A cookie is a parcel of text sent between a web browser and the server it accesses. Without a cookie a web server cannot distinguish between different users, or determine any relationship between sequential page visits made by the same user. For this reason, cookies are used to differentiate one user from another and to pass information from page to page during a single user's website session. A web server uses cookies to collect data about a given browser, along with the information requested and sent by the browser's operator (you the visitor). Cookies do not identify people, but rather they are defined themselves by a combination of a computer, a user account, and a browser.
For more information about cookies, see the Wikipedia article on HTTP Cookies.
Google Analytics (and most web tracking software) uses cookies in order to provide meaningful reports about website visitors.
Google Analytics cookies do not collect personal data about website visitors.
Google Analytics uses cookies to define user sessions, as well as to provide a number of key features in the Google Analytics reports. Google Analytics sets or updates cookies only to collect data required for the reports. Additionally, Google Analytics uses only first-party cookies. This means that all cookies set by Google Analytics for this domain send data only to the servers for this domain, therefore this Google Analytics cookies are the personal property of this website domain, and the data cannot be altered or retrieved by any service on another domain.
The following table lists the Google Analytics cookies used on this website.
| Name | Description | Expiration |
|---|---|---|
__utma |
This cookie is typically written to the browser on the first visit to this website. If the cookie has been deleted by the user and they return to this website, a new __utma cookie is written with a different unique ID. This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to this website and it is updated with each page view. Additionally, this cookie is provided with a unique ID that Google Analytics uses to ensure both the validity and accessibility of the cookie as an extra security measure. |
2 years from set/update. |
__utmb |
This cookie is used to establish and continue a user session on this website. When a user views a page on this website, the Google Analytics code attempts to update this cookie. If it does not find the cookie, a new one is written and a new session is established. Each time a user visits a different page on this website, this cookie is updated to expire in 30 minutes, thus continuing a single session for as long as user activity continues within 30-minute intervals. This cookie expires when a user pauses on a page on this website for longer than 30 minutes. | 30 minutes from set/update. |
__utmc |
This cookie is no longer used by the ga.js (Google Analytic Java Script) tracking code to determine session status. |
Not set. |
__utmz |
This cookie stores the type of referral used by the visitor to reach this website, whether via a direct method, a referring link, a website search, or a campaign such as an ad or an email link. It is essentially used to calculate search engine traffic, ad campaigns and page navigation within this website. The cookie is updated with each page view on this website. | 6 months from set/update. |
Since most web sites set cookies, you can look at this data yourself by inspecting the cookies via your browser's menu. For example, if you are using Firefox on a Apple computer select FIREFOX > PREFERENCES. Select PRIVACY in the tab bar and click on the SHOW COOKIES button to see a list of all cookies set on your browser - by domain or I.P. address. Once you select a domain or I.P. address from the list, click on the cookie name to see its settings. You can choose to remove the selected cookie(s) if you wish. See more details here: Removing cookies in Firefox.
When a cookie expires, it is no longer present on the web browser and therefore not sent to the server. As you can see from the cookie table listed above, the Google Analytics cookies have a variety of expiration dates, all of which serve different purposes.
Google Analytics sets an expiration date of 2 years for unique visitor tracking. However, if you delete these cookies and revisit this website site Google Analytics will set new cookies (including new unique visitor cookies) for each visitor.