Cookies and Privacy
The SOAS website uses “cookies” to help us to understand how people use the site so that we can ensure that it meets people’s needs. They are also used to help provide user-friendly access to a small number of services on the site.
What are cookies?
Cookies are pieces of information that we transfer to your computer's hard drive, or your mobile phone, through your web browser when you are viewing the Website. None of these cookies can be used to identify you personally, and they don’t collect information from your computer or mobile phone. Examples of how cookies are used on the SOAS website include:
- Measuring how people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there’s enough capacity to ensure that access is fast enough
- Understanding what technology people are using to access the site – for example the browser they are using or whether they are accessing it from a mobile phone - so that we can ensure that the site is designed to work well with those technologies that people are most likely to use
- 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 have to do it for every web page requested.
Find out more
Our use of cookies
This list is correct as of May 2012, but we will be updating it whenever new cookies are added to the site.
Cookies for measuring performance of the website
We use these cookies to understand how people use the SOAS website so that we can make improvements to the navigation and content of the site.
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics to gather data on the number of people accessing our site, where they are accessing from, what pages they visit, and what technology they are using. Google Analytics cannot identify you personally, but allows us to understand our users as a group, for example by recording what browsers are most commonly used.
| Name | Expiry | Typical Content/Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| _utma | 2 years | randomly generated number |
| _utmb | 30 mins | randomly generated number |
| _utmc | Not set | randomly generated number |
| _utmz | 6 months | randomly generated number and information about how the page was reached (eg directly or via a link, organic search or paid search) |
Find out more
- Further details about Google Analytics cookie use
- Opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites
Cookies to support specific elements of the site
Some parts of the SOAS site use cookies to make them easier to use.
SOAS Online Store
Whenever you use the SOAS Online Store to make payments online, cookies are used to remember items that you have added to your shopping basket, and to aid in processing the payment. These cookies are set by WPM and fall into the category of essential for running the site.
| Name | Typical Content/Purpose |
|---|---|
| WPM_Store | Used to track the user’s session (Online Store) |
| CompanyID | Used to track the user’s session (Online Store) |
| ASPSESSIONID | Used to track the user’s session (Online Store) |
| Site_Val | Used to track the user’s language e.g. Welsh (Card Payment Gateway) |
| ASPSESSIONID | Used to track the user’s session (Card Payment Gateway) |
Job applications at www.soas.ac.uk/jobs
Whenever you apply for a job at SOAS using the online application system cookies are used to track and process your application. These cookies are set by iGrasp and are essential for the running of the site.
| Name | Expiry | Typical Content/Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| ClientUseASPSession | Session | Determines whether or not session data should be stored in session or database |
| ASPSessionConfirmed | Session | The information in the cookie is used to control security logic |
| SecurityString | Session | Encrypted string of data used for security purposes |
| PersonID | Session | i-Grasp ID of current person. The ID links to a record in i-GRasp, but access to the backend is needed to link to any other data |
| Ljp | Session | This contains the Application ID |
| Jid | Session | This contains the ID of the current job in i-GRasp |
| ClientKeyID | Session | Used to control security logic |
| ASPSessionID | Session | Session ID to link information to user |
| GSPersonID | Session | ID of logged in superuser. This cookie is only set if the user has come from the Back End |
