What are cookies and what are they used for?
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile device by websites that you visit. Your web browser sends these cookies back to the website that set them on each subsequent visit so that they can make the website work more efficiently, as well as provide useful information such as how you are using the website.
The data we collect using cookies helps us understand our customers better so that we can provide a more focused user experience. Using the knowledge of your previous visits to our website, we can enhance subsequent visits by tailoring our content to match your requirements.
We use cookies principally because we want to make our websites and mobile applications user-friendly, and we are interested in anonymous user behaviour.
Generally our cookies don't store sensitive or personally identifiable information such as your name and address or credit card details.
Cookies are either referred to as session or persistent, depending on how long they are used:
- Session cookies only last for your online session and disappear from your computer or device when you close your browser.
- Persistent cookies stay on your computer or device after the browser is closed for a set period of time which is specified by the cookie.
We use cookies (and the resulting data) for the uses described in our Privacy Policy.
How cookies are used on Cambridge Assessment sites?
The main purposes for which cookies are used are as follows:
- Strictly necessary cookies.
These cookies are essential to the running of the website. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or analytics (see below). An example of this includes remembering your answers when completing an online interactive English game.
- Performance cookies.
These cookies collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and they let you store items in your shopping basket between visits. They may also show us which email or web page visitors clicked through from in order to visit our website, and whether you opened an email we sent you.
- Functional cookies.
These cookies allow our website to store choices you have made about how you would like it to function. Examples would be remembering if you’ve acknowledged the cookie policy notice, or whether you have taken part in a survey already, so that we know not to show you those messages again.
- Analytics cookies.
These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors access and use our site. This is used to monitor performance, for reporting, and for providing data that will influence the improvements made to the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of people visiting the site, their gender and age, how many pages they looked at, what pages they visited and how long they stayed.
- Third party cookies for marketing, advertising and remarketing.
Cambridge Assessment works with third parties who serve advertisements or present offers on our behalf and personalise the content that you see. Cookies may be used by those third parties to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store personal information directly but use a unique identifier in your browser or internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted content. An example of this might be where you are shown an advertisement about one of our products or services through a digital or social-media channel encouraging you to visit our website.
Controlling, turning off and deleting cookies
Most cookies can be controlled from the settings within your browser. You can:
- See individual cookies along with their expiry date, and delete them if you choose.
- Block third party cookies (or ask not to be tracked).
- Block all cookies.
- Delete all cookies when you close your browser.
If you choose to block all cookies, many websites will not work properly, and functionality may break. We do not recommend turning cookies off when using our website for this reason.
The links below will direct you to the instructions for changing the cookie settings in the most popular browsers:
This is not an exhaustive list of all browsers – please consult the ‘settings’ or ‘support’ section for your browser.
