Cookie Use
At Debt Help Scotland we want to provide a positive website experience for visitors to the Debt Help Scotland website so that our online services are easy to use, helpful and reliable.
In order to facilitate this we use an extremely common internet marketing technique that involves the placing of small amounts of information on your computer’s hard drive (or mobile phone or other device) by the server that hosts the Debt Help Scotland website. These small amounts of information are text files called ‘cookies’.
What are cookies?
Cookies are pieces of information that are stored on the hard drive of your browsing device (e.g. your computer) to enable you to interact with a web site in the most efficient way.
Cookies are usually small text files saved onto your computer’s memory; they cannot be used to identify you personally, nor can any cookies used by Debt Help Scotland harm the performance of your computer as they are only pieces of text (and not a program that can be infected with a virus).
Cookies cannot ‘read’ anything on your hard drive or ‘capture’ your email address or ‘steal’ any other information about you that might be stored on your hard drive.
While we recommend you accept the use of cookies because they are necessary for us to provide the best website viewing experience, it is possible for you to decide to prevent our ability to save cookies to your hard drive. We explain where to find out how to prevent the use of cookies below.
Please be aware that restricting or preventing cookies is likely to result in an adverse impact on the functionality of the Debt Help Scotland website, as well as any other websites you visit.
How do Debt Help Scotland use cookies?
Debt Help Scotland use a number of different cookies on the Debt Help Scotland website for various reasons as outlined below, but we do not collect any personally identifiable information about you via cookies.
Debt Help Scotland may make use of cookies to help provide a better experience while a user is browsing our website such as:
- Measuring how many people are using each different part of the Debt Help Scotland website, so the way we present our online information can be analysed.
- Analysing data to help us understand how you use the Debt Help Scotland website so we can improve them.
Why do Debt Help Scotland use cookies?
We use different types of cookies to enhance website visitors’ experience in two different ways:
1. Website usability & functionality
These kinds of cookies allow you to move around the different pages of the Debt Help Scotland website without retyping in any previously typed information.
Accepting these ‘usability’ cookies is a condition of using the Debt Help Scotland website, so if you prevent these cookies we can’t guarantee your security or predict how our website will perform during your visit.
2. Website analytics
These kinds of cookies allow us to note which pages of the Debt Help Scotland website are visited by people who browse through this website. This is particularly helpful for us at Debt Help Scotland, because it allows us to ‘track’ visitors to our site and see which pages are visited, as well as log any page errors you might encounter. These cookies do not collect any personal information that could identify any individual visitor to our websites.
Not accepting these cookies is likely to impair your online experience when using the Debt Help Scotland website.
Which cookies do Debt Help Scotland use?
This is a list of the cookies used by the Debt Help Scotland website, together with what each cookie is used for:
| Debt Help Scotland Cookies | Purpose |
| PHPSESSID | Debt Help Scotland session cookies are used to store details about submitted data, tracking data and identification of user’s session. |
| Google Analytics Cookies | Purpose |
| __utma __utmb __utmc __utmz |
‘Google Analytics’ cookies help ensure the visitor has a consistent experience during their visit to Debt Help Scotland |
How to prevent the use of cookies
If you decide that you want to restrict or prevent the use of cookies on all websites, then the actions you need to take will depend on the browser that you use to view web pages.
We recommend that you look at the About Cookies website, as this site can explain in clear, step-by-step terms how you can restrict or prevent cookies, depending on which browser you are using.
We do stress that cookies will enhance your experience of the Debt Help Scotland website, and they pose no threat to your computer or confidentiality at all.