Cookies
What are cookies and pixel tags?
Cookies are small amounts of data that are created in your web browser’s temporary files folder and stored on your device. Cookies enable you to use e-commerce sites and to personalise your experience. This is not harmful. If you continue without changing your settings, we’ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the National Trust for Scotland website.
A pixel tag is an invisible tag placed on certain pages of our website but not on your computer. When you access these pages, pixel tags generate a generic notice of that visit. They usually work in conjunction with cookies, registering when a particular computer visits a particular page. If you turn off cookies the pixel tag will simply detect an anonymous website visit.
How does the National Trust for Scotland use cookies and pixel tags?
Cookies tell us which parts of our websites people have visited and give us insights into user behaviour so we can improve our communications and products. Many websites do this, because cookies enable website publishers to do useful things like find out whether the device has visited the website before.
The National Trust for Scotland may work with other companies that may use cookies and pixel tags to collect information regarding your interaction with our websites. This information may be used to serve you National Trust for Scotland advertisements that may be of interest to you when you visit other websites.
We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of the National Trust for Scotland website. Google Analytics data is anonymous and aggregated. This means that it cannot be used to track you in any way or personally identify you.
We also do not, under any circumstances, pass on or sell any data we collect either from Google Analytics or filled-in contact forms.
Cookies used by the National Trust for Scotland
We will send to you the following cookies:
| Cookie Type | Cookie Use | Strictly Necessary | Consent Required |
| Session | An essential cookie ‘PHPSESSID’ is produced by server functionality, which tracks the current session ID and only lasts as long as the browser is open / session hasn’t timed out. | Yes | No |
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 your domain send data only to the servers for your domain. This effectively makes Google Analytics cookies the personal property of your website domain, and the data cannot be altered or retrieved by any service on another domain.
The following table lists the type of information that is obtained via our Google Analytics cookies and used in Analytics reports.
| Functionality | Description of Cookie | Cookie Used |
| Setting the Scope of Your Site Content | 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. For the most common scenario where the tracking code is installed on a single domain (and no other sub-domains), the generic set up is correct. In other situations where you wish to track content across domains or sub-domains, or restrict tracking to a smaller section of a single domain, you use additional methods in the ga.js tracking code to define content scope. | All Cookies |
| Determining Visitor Session | 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. This description is specific to the ga.js tracking code for web pages. If you use Analytics tracking for other environments—such as Flash or mobile—you should check the documentation for those environments to learn how sessions are calculated or established. | __utmb __utmc |
| Identifying Unique Visitors | Each unique browser that visits a page on your site is provided with a unique ID via the __utma cookie. In this way, subsequent visits to your website via the same browser are recorded as belonging to the same (unique) visitor. Thus, if a person interacted with your 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 | When visitors reach your 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 your site; thus it is used to determine visitor navigation within your site. | __utmz |
| Custom Variables | You can define your own segments for reporting on your particular data. When you use the setCustVar() method in your tracking code to define custom variables, Google Analytics uses this cookie to track and report on that information. In a typical use case, you might use this method to segment your website visitors by a custom demographic that they select on your website (income, age range, product preferences). | ___utmv |
| Website Optimizer | You can use Google Analytics with Google Website Optimizer (GWO), which is a tool that helps determine the most effective design for your site. When a website optimizer script executes on your page, a _utmx cookie is written to the browser and its value is sent to Google Analytics. | ___utmx |
Cookies set by Google Analytics
Google Analytics sets the following cookies as described in the table below. A default configuration and use of Google Analytics sets only the first 4 cookies in the table.
| Name | Description | Expiration |
| __utma | This cookie is typically written to the browser upon the first visit to your site from that web browser. If the cookie has been deleted by the browser operator, and the browser subsequently visits your site, a new __utma cookie is written with a different unique ID. This cookie is used to determine unique visitors to your site 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 with your site. When a user views a page on your site, 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 your site, 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 your site for longer than 30 minutes. You can modify the default length of a user session with the setSessionsCookieTimeout() method. | 30 minutes from set/update. |
| __utmc | This cookie operates in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine whether or not to establish a new session for the user. In particular, this cookie is not provided with an expiration date, so it expires when the user exits the browser. Should a user visit your site, exit the browser and then return to your website within 30 minutes, the absence of the __utmc cookie indicates that a new session needs to be established, despite the fact that the __utmb cookie has not yet expired. | Not set. |
| __utmz | This cookie stores the type of referral used by the visitor to reach your site, whether via a direct method, a referring link, a website search, or a campaign such as an ad or an email link. It is used to calculate search engine traffic, ad campaigns and page navigation within your own site. The cookie is updated with each page view to your site. | 6 months from set/update. |
| __utmv | This cookie is not normally present in a default configuration of the tracking code. The __utmv cookie passes the information provided via the _setVar()method, which you use to create a custom user segment. This string is then passed to the Analytics servers in the GIF request URL via the utmcc parameter. This cookie is only written if you have added the _setVar() method for the tracking code on your website page. | 2 years from set/update. |
| __utmx | This cookie is used by Website Optimizer and only set when the Website Optimizer tracking code is installed and correctly configured for your pages. When the optimizer script executes, this cookie stores the variation this visitor is assigned to for each experiment, so the visitor has a consistent experience on your site. | 2 years from set/update |
Third party cookies on National Trust for Scotland webpages
We sometimes embed content from social media and other third party websites. These may include YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Soundcloud. As a result, when you visit a page containing such content, you may be presented with cookies from these websites and these third party cookies may track your use of the National Trust for Scotland website. The National Trust for Scotland does not control the dissemination of these cookies and you should check the relevant third party's website for more information.
Changing cookie preferences
You can modify your browser settings to decline cookies if you prefer, although this may prevent you from taking full advantage of a website. Each browser version works in a slightly different way, but you generally have the ability to accept all cookies, be notified before accepting a cookie, block or restrict cookies from certain sites, or reject all cookies