1. What are cookies?
Cookies are harmless text files that allow a website server to recognise you when you revisit the website. There are two main types of cookies:
| Transient (or session) cookies. | These are set and exist for the duration of your visit to a specific website and are removed when you finish. They recognise you as you move, and navigate between, the different website pages so that you do not need to re-enter who you are and often can help to maintain your security. |
| Persistent (or permanent) cookies. | These remain on your computer until they expire or are deleted. Many persistent cookies have automatic deletion dates to help ensure your computer doesn’t get overloaded with cookies. Persistent cookies will often retain previously entered information to ease and simplify subsequent data input. For example: your login user ID or email address. |
Like most websites, this website uses both types of cookies to simplify and ease a user’s journey and experience. Cookies can also be 1st (first) or 3rd (third) party cookies:
| 1st Party: | These are owned and created by us for the website you’re viewing. |
| 3rd Party: | These are owned and created by an independent company. Usually this is a company partnering to provide services to us as owners of the website. |
We use both our own (first-party) and partner companies’ (third-party) cookies to facilitate and support a simpler and more secure website experience for our users.
2. What we use cookies for
We use cookies to:
- Gather information on a user’s journey across our sites.
- Ensure your privacy is protected in our secure sites.
- Store your login details for our secure sites.
- Temporarily store input information in any of our calculators, tools, illustrations and demonstrations.
- Store details of your marketing, product and business preferences to improve our targeting to you and enhance your journey through our sites and partner sites.
- Evaluate our sites’ advertising and promotional effectiveness (we own the anonymous data collected and don’t share it with anyone).
We don’t and will never:
- use cookies to track your Internet usage after leaving one of our sites.
- store personal information in them that others could read and understand.
- sell or distribute cookie information without your prior consent.
3. Cookies we use on our sites
The following information is correct at the time of writing. It contains a list of cookies used on our sites with a brief information of their purpose and their key attributes.
3.1 Testing Cookies – Cookies which allow specific users to be allocated experimental functionality
| _vwo_uuid_v2 | Visual Website Optimiser |
| _vis_opt_s | Visual Website Optimiser |
| _vis_opt_exp_11_exclude | Visual Website Optimiser |
| _vis_opt_test_cookie | Visual Website Optimiser |
3.2 Advertising – Cookies used to provide advertising content to users
| _uetsid | Microsoft Bing Advertising cookie. |
| OX_plg | Google Ads cookie. |
| spid | Sellpoints ID Cookie |
| sp_ssid | Sellpoints Session Cookie |
| sp_apnxid | Sellpoints ID Cookie |
| sp_sync_ssid | Sellpoints synchronisation cookie. |
| _pubcid | Publisher Common ID cookie. |
3.3 Third Party Analytics – cookies used to identify website usage and drive optimisation
| __gads | Google Analytics |
| _gat | Google Analytics |
| _gid | Google Analytics |
| _ga | Google Analytics |
| __utmb | Google Analytics |
| __utma | Google Analytics |
| __utmv | Google Analytics |
| __utmc | Google Analytics |
| __utmt | Google Analytics |
| __atuvc | Google Analytics |
| __utmz | Google Analytics |
| __qca | Quantcast |
| s_sq | Omniture |
| s_fid | Omniture |
| _hjIncludedInSample | HotJar: Site analytics and optimisation tool, used to deliver surveys and polls. |
| __atuvs | AddThis social sharing widget – commonly embedded in websites to enable visitors to share content with a range of networking and sharing platforms. |
| mp_fd3d5759a07726972 | Mixpanel session cookie |
3.4 Core Site – Cookies which provide essential or enhanced functionality
| SMSOEducationcookieLawCookie | Used to store a user’s response to the Cookie banner. |
| geoCountry | Stores the country we think the user is currently residing in, used to personalise the site to ensure that currency and language are appropriate for each audience. |
| siteCountry | Stores the country the user has selected to view the site in, used to personalise the site to ensure that currency and language are appropriate for each audience. Values are GB (default), US, AU, NZ, CA, IE. |
| lastLogin | Stores the time of last login.. |
| has_js | Indicates if we think the current browser has javascript enabled, used to optimise the site delivery. |
| nagfooter | Stores the status of last presentation of our onsite footer, to ensure that users are not shown the same content in quick succession. |
| Csrf | Cross Site Request Forgery cookie, used to prevent common attack vectors for form submission. |
3.5 First Party Analytics – Cookies set by SMSO Education which provide site usage analytics
| __tess | SMSO Education Analytics: First party session cookie used to measure on site activity. |
| __tesu | SMSO Education Analytics: First party unique browser cookie used to measure on site activity. |
| __tese | SMSO Education Analytics: First party experiment cookie used to assign users to experiments to optimise onsite content and functionality. |
| __tesv | SMSO Education Analytics: First party visit cookie used to measure on site activity. |
3.6 Help Chat Widget
| __tawkuuid | TawkTo: Identify a user across sessions to retain chat history with customer support. |
| TawkConnectionTime | TawkTo: Used by our customer services chat widget to deliver service. |
| Tawk_596c9f1e1dc79b329518eb22 | TawkTo: Used by our customer services chat widget to deliver service. |
3.7 Marketing
| _ju_pn | JustUno: Used to present targeted marketing messages in response to user action. |
| _ju_dc | JustUno: Used to present targeted marketing messages in response to user action. |
| ju_v | JustUno: Used to present targeted marketing messages in response to user action. |
3.8 Session – cookies used to maintain state and manage the current browser session
| aucp13n | Authentication cookie used by our Content Management System. |
| SSESS6a207cf063c42ff9948ec180cec61f1c | Authentication cookie used by our Content Management System. |
4. Cookies categorised as intrusive
Cookies can be categorised as being ‘intrusive’ or not in relation to storing any data items that could potentially identify some aspect of an individual user’s identity; whether real or a pseudonym.
Whilst in legal interpretations there are degrees of intrusiveness, TES Global has adopted the more cautious definition where any cookie that has a single identifying data item is categorised as ‘intrusive’. All intrusive cookies, whether session or persistent, are stored in encrypted form to protect against any possibility of accidental or unintended disclosure.
5. How to manage cookies
You can manage the use of cookies, including advertising cookies, and disable the sharing of data with partners for advertising purposes by using the steps set out here. In some cases you can turn off advertising cookies on a cookie-by-cookie basis, and we give the most common examples below.
You can find information about how to opt out of the cookies provided by our key partners here:
AppNexus Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Comscore Performance cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Meta Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Google Adwords Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Google Adx Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Google Analytics Performance cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Google DoubleClick Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Improve Digital Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Index Exchange Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Krux Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
LinkedIn Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Microsoft Bing Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Nielsen Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
OpenX Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Outbrain Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Sonobi Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Twitter Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
Unruly Advertising cookie Opt out Privacy policy
You can switch some cookies off through the Your Online Choices site. You may need to do this again each time you use a different IP address or device.
It is also possible to stop your browser from accepting cookies altogether by changing your browser’s cookie settings. You can usually find these settings in the “options” or “preferences” menu of your browser. The following links may be helpful, or you can use the “Help” option in your browser.
Cookie settings in Internet Explorer
Cookie settings in Firefox
Cookie settings in Chrome
Cookie settings in Safari web and iOS
6. Secure online services
Any secure online services you subscribe to will probably use cookies to enable information about you and your preferences to be stored and to help protect your account and information. In such circumstances, cookies are essential to the service being provided securely and effectively.
If you choose to decline providing consent to use of cookies, it is unlikely that you will be able to continue to use the service.
7. Updates
This policy was created and posted on 30/12/2023.