About our website

Strictly necessary cookies

Some cookies we place on your browser ensure that the University website delivers you information and services securely and optimally.

You must accept these essential cookies to be able to make use of our online systems.

Cookie preferences

Name Data Stored Purpose Expires
_uoeCookiePrefs True or false cookie retention preferences. The cookie preferences are stored to retain visitor choices in the main cookie banner. This means that the main cookie banner can be minimised on future visits, and so that analytics and advertising cookies are not set for visitors who opt out of this tracking. One year

Session ID

Wikipedia page about Session IDs

Name Data stored Purpose Expires
JSESSIONID A random unique number or string of letters and numbers. A session cookie is required to follow your progress through the website. It is essential to ensure that any information you enter or routes you take are remembered by the website. Without this cookie, every page you visited would treat you as a completely new visitor. This cookie does not identify you personally and is not linked to any other information we store about you. The cookie is deleted when you close your web browser.

Javascript check

Name Data stored Purpose Expires
has_js A binary value of 1 (true) or 0 (false). This cookie helps the website understand if the browser javascript functionality is enabled or not, so as to proceed accordingly. The cookie is deleted when you close your web browser.

University website surveys

Name Data stored Purpose Expires
_uoeSurveyStatus No data stored. The survey application just looks for the presence of a cookie or not. To check if website visitors have completed the survey before. This is to stop the user experience of the site being degraded by offering the survey multiple times. 3 months

University Media Hopper service

Name Data stored Purpose Expires
Kms_ctamuls

It stores an identifier for the current session. This is a completely random string of letters and numbers.

The purpose is to be able to identify the session and know if a website visitor is logged in to the system.

It expires after the current session is over

 Consent cookie preferences for 3rd party services

Name Data stored Purpose Expires
ed_accept_cookies These cookies store information in text strings, i.e. youtube00, vimeo, y These cookies store information regarding user consent on loading specific features which then set third party cookies e.g. YouTube videos. This consent is requested on the first time the user loads a page which uses a relevant feature. It is then stored for reference during future visits to the University of Edinburgh website. All cookies expire 4 years after they 're set for the first time

Google reCaptcha

Google privacy policy

These are essential cookies, used by the Google reCAPTCHA service used in our forms to stop submissions from spammers.

Name Data stored Purpose Expires
NID unique ID

Unique ID used to remember preferences and also sometimes to customize ads

 

Various but tend to be approximately 6 months

CONSENT

unique ID Used by Google for cookie consent settings 20 years

University login for protected content

When viewing content that has been password protected cookies are set by the University login system in order for this process to work.

Name Data stored Purpose Expires
Cookies used by the web-login service and services using it are named 'cosign' or start with the word 'cosign' The web-login service uses cookies to store the fact that you have logged in, what your username is and that you should be given access for a certain period of time When logging in to view content that has been password protected by the University login system cookies are set as this is strictly necessary for the login process to work. As such the University is justified in having a legitimate interest to process and store the cookie information. Non acceptance of these cookies will mean you will not get access to websites protected by the authentication service. We do not use cookies to track any information other than the fact that you have logged in and used a particular web service These cookies are only valid for the time of your login and are deleted when you quit your browser

FindAPHD

FindAPHD privacy policy

Name Data stored Purpose Expires
Google analytics: _ga, _gid Google analytics - records visitor numbers and demographics Google analytics cookies record visitor numbers and demographics in the aggregate. Google analytics - _ga expires after 2 years, _gid expires after 24 hours
optimizelyBuckets, optimizelySegments, optimizelyEndUserId Optimizely cookies - random strings of numbers or letters Optimizely is split testing software that can serve different pages to audiences for testing purposes. Optimizely is split testing software that can serve different pages to audiences for testing purposes.
cfduit random strings of numbers or letters Set by the Cloudflare service. It is used to improve site speed and performance and does not record any personal information. 6 months
utmmedium, utmTrackIID, utmcampaign UTM tagging of listings UTM tags help advertisers monitor the performance of their listings/adverts on the internet. When enabled these cookies are used to tell Google Analytics for the destination website (in this case ed.ac.uk) which PhD listing the visitor has come from.  Data used in the aggregate. The cookie is deleted when you close your web browser.
ServerID Sets a number identifying a web server. Used to manage users’ sessions and balance website load to ensure that website performance is optimal. The cookie is deleted when you close your web browser.
FauVisitorId Random string of numbers or letters The FauVisitorId is used to store user preferences and navigation during a session. session only
FauUserInfo stores users country and city E.G.  ctry=GB&city=Edinburgh FauUserInfo data is not used by PhD Connect and the cookie is overwritten on any new session on FindAPhD or FindAMasters where users may be shown different content depending on their location. 1 year
ServerID Sets a number identifying a web server. ServerID is used to manage users’ sessions and balance website load to ensure that website performance is optimal. session only
Emailed Records if an email enquiry has been sent Records if a phd project email enquiry has been already sent this week by that user (used to prevent advertisers being spammed by a single user) 7 days
EmailedDetails stores previous email details Stores previous email details to speed up future email enquiries. 24 hours