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What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we may store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer or device. They cannot be used to identify you personally.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of the Site. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse the Site and also allows us to improve the Site.
Cookies are used to improve services for you through, for example:
- enabling a service to recognise your device so you don’t have to give the same information several times during one task;
- recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don’t need to do it for every web page requested; and
- measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there’s enough capacity to ensure they are fast
Types of cookies used
The Site uses the following types of cookies:
- Site cookies – this type of cookie allows websites to link the actions of a user during a browser session so that the website is able to store certain information whilst the user is browsing the site.
- Google Analytics cookies – Google Analytics sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the Site and volumes of usage. This is to ensure that the service is available when you want it and fast.
- Mapbox cookies – Mapbox sets cookies to manage usage of the map facility.
You can find more detailed information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the tables below:
Site cookies
| Cookie name | Default expiration time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| vs_auth | 13 months | When a user logs in to Volunteer Scotland, this cookie is used to identify the user as they navigate between pages. This allows the user to save searches, notes and favourites to their account details, as well as to access their account pages. |
| cookie_consent | No expiry | A boolean value used to remember if the user has accepted the Cookie policy and show it if not |
Google Analytics cookies
The Google Analytics JavaScript libraries use HTTP cookies to "remember" what a user has done on previous pages / interactions with the website. From July 1, 2023 Google Analytics supports the JavaScript library (tag) for measuring website usage through gtag.js.
gtag.js (Google Analytics 4) - cookie usage
For Google Analytics 4, the gtag.js JavaScript library uses first-party cookies to:
- Distinguish unique users
- Distinguish sessions for a user
When using the recommended JavaScript snippet cookies are set at the highest possible domain level. For example, if your website address is blog.example.co.uk, gtag.js will set the cookie domain to .example.co.uk. Setting cookies on the highest level domain possible allows measurement to occur across subdomains without any extra configuration.
gtag.js sets the following cookies:
| Cookie name | Default expiration time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| _ga | 2 years | Used to distinguish users. |
| _ga_<container-id> | 2 years | Used to persist session state. |
Mapbox cookies
We use Mapbox for mapping services. Mapbox cookies policy
| Cookie name | Default expiration time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| session | 1 year | A unique ID for the Mapbox map system |