Cookies used on our sites
The information below sets out the cookies used by our sites, and the purpose of each one. It also gives some general information about cookies on associated sites, for example, for the third party services that we use to take payments.
You can block cookies using browser functionality. However, if you block necessary cookies, the site features listed below as depending on those cookies are likely to stop working properly. For background about cookies, please see our Cookies page.
Necessary cookies are often referred to as 'essential' cookies.
Your cookie preferences on our sites will determine which of these cookies are set. You can change these preferences using the panel that appears if you click on the cookie icon at the bottom left of most of our pages.
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www.autism.org.uk
Necessary cookiesAs explained above, these will be set unless you block them using settings in your browser:
Cookie: CMSCookieLevel
Expiry: 1 year
Purpose: Records the user's current cookie settings.Cookie: ASP.NET_SessionId
Expiry: session end
Purpose: Keeps the user session ID for security reasons.Cookie: assets
Expiry: 1 year
Purpose: Keeps a hashcode of the website assets (JS/CSS) in order to provide better performance.Cookie: colour_theme
Expiry: 1 year
Purpose: Stores the user's current preferred colour theme - Vivid or Calm.Cookie: CMSCsrfCookie
Expiry: session end
Purpose: Stores a security token that the system uses to validate all form data submitted via POST requests. Helps to protect against cross-site request forgery.
Analytics cookies
If you additionally allow analytics cookies, these may be set, depending on what site areas and features you use.
Cookie: Source
Expiry: 50 years
Purpose: Stores the channel from which the visitor arrived as part of a campaign (for example, email, Facebook, X, and so on). Based on the utm_source query string parameter.
Type: AnalyticsCookie: Campaign
Expiry: 50 years
Purpose: Stores the name of the campaign assigned to the visitor.
Type: AnalyticsCookie: Content
Expiry: 50 years
Purpose: Stores the specific content item through which the visitor arrived as part of a campaign. Based on the utm_content query string parameter.
Type: AnalyticsCookie: TrackedCampaigns
Expiry: 20 minutes
Purpose: Stores all the campaigns which should be tracked within a JavaScript snippet.
Type: AnalyticsCookie: UrlReferrer
Expiry: 1 day
Purpose: Stores the URL referrer from which the user arrives on the website.
Type: AnalyticsCookie: CurrentContact
Expiry: 50 years
Purpose: Stores the GUID of the contact related to the current site visitor. Used to track activities on the website.
Type: AnalyticsCookie: CMSAB<ABtestname>
Expiry: 2 months
Purpose: For A/B testing different possible versions of pages. Used to track conversions and maintain consistent page content for each visitor. Stores data including the identifier of the page variant assigned to the visitor, the list of performed conversions, and an indicator of whether the visitor is included in A/B testing.
Type: AnalyticsCookie: CMSShoppingCart
Expiry: 1 year
Purpose: Stores a GUID reference to the user's shopping cart. Allows the system to recover the shopping cart for customers who are not signed in, even after it is cleared from the site cache (for example if we have to restart the site systems).
Type: AnalyticsCookie: CMSUserPage
Expiry: 20 minutes
Purpose: Stores the IDs (DocumentID, NodeID) of the last visited page. Used for logging landing and exit page web analytics and activities.
Type: AnalyticsCookie: CMSLandingPageLoaded
Expiry: 20 minutes
Purpose: Indicates that the landing page has already been visited and the Landing page activity is not logged again for the current visitor. Expires after 20 minutes and the expiration period of the key is renewed every time the website is accessed again.
Type: Analytics
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Shared cookies for Google AnalyticsCookie name: __utma
Type: Performance
Description of its use: Code representing our website, a code representing your device (mobile or computer) and how many times you have visited our website.Cookie name: __utmb
Type: Performance
Description of its use: "session keep alive" just tracks the time you have spent on the last page you opened, if you keep browsing pages this keeps renewing its expiry 30 minutes into the future.Cookie name: __utmc
Type: Performance
Description of its use: "session start" stores the time you entered the site.Cookie name: __utmt
Type: Performance
Description of its use: Helps to categorise the requests made to the site.Cookie name: __utmz
Type: Performance
Description of its use: "Campaign code" lets us know how you first found our website, f you searched for us using Google, what search terms you used, and if you clicked on a sponsored result.
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community.autism.org.ukCookie name: .te.dpr
Type: Necessary
Description of its use: used to set the screen proportions so that a page displays properly.Cookie name: .te.w
Type: Necessary
Description of its use: used to set the screen width so that a page displays properly.Cookie name: AuthorizationCookie
Type: Necessary
Description of its use: Used to maintain sign-ins to the online community.
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Bookings for our training and conferences are on a platform provided by Aventri. You can find more details about its cookies in the Aventri, Inc Cookie Policy.Cookie name: AWSALB
Type: Necessary
Description of its use: lets several Aventri servers share processing load in order to provide better performance.Cookie name: PHPSESSID
Type: Necessary
Description of its use: uses an anonymous identifier to remember key settings as you navigate web page.Cookie name: regtoken
Type: Necessary
Description of its use: keeps track of your information while you are registering for an event.Cookie name: selectedlanguage
Type: Necessary
Description of its use: records your choice of language (or the default where no choice is offered).
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Engaging NetworksEngaging Networks provide our online campaign actions using the domain https://www.engagingnetworks.net.
These cookies will only be set if you visit the Engaging Networks site. Please see their Cookie Policy for full details.
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Some third party sites host, on our behalf, the services described below. You may also use these services in connection with other sites that you visit. As a result, these sites set their own cookies, which are not controlled by our cookie preferences.Payment facilities
In our shop, including for membership, for donations and for other payments, we use third party payment facilities. You make these payments on the following payment provider sites, where the provider's cookie policy will apply. Since these 'third party' cookies are controlled by the relevant site owner/provider, cookie preferences that you set on our site will not affect them.
Paypal (online payments using credit cards or your own Paypal account)
Please see Paypal's cookie policy.
RSM2000 (direct debits)
Cookie name: SessionID
Type: Necessary
Description of its use: uses a randomly-generated key to maintain the function of the website as you navigate web pages.
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We also use the services of third party suppliers who set cookies when you visit our website. These cookies are mainly used for reporting and advertising purposes, so that we can improve the way we communicate with our supporters.Each of these suppliers is responsible for the cookies that they place onto your device, has its own policy to highlight their use, and will typically provide similar services on many of the sites that you visit. If you wish to opt out of your data being collected by these suppliers, please visit their respective sites below to get details on how to do this.
Hotjar
We use Hotjar on the National Autistic Society website in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimise our service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (for example, how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and do not like, and so on) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behavior and their devices. This includes a device's IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf. For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.
FacebookFacebook is a social media platform we use to communicate with our supporters through both unpaid posts and paid advertising. We use cookies to measure the effectiveness of paid advertising on Facebook to ensure the money we spend is used effectively. They also enable us to serve adverts with content that may be of interest based on previous pages users have visited. To find out more about Facebook advertising and how to opt out, please visit Facebook's help page.
Google Ads
Google Ads is an online advertising service developed by Google, which we use to run search, display and video adverts, within the Google network. We use cookies to measure the effectiveness of paid advertising on Google Ads to ensure the money we spend is used effectively. They also enable us to serve personalised adverts to audiences with content that may be of interest based on previous pages users have visited on our website. To find out how to opt out of being served personalised adverts, please visit Google's Ad Center support page.
We also use Google Ads to run adverts that may appear to audiences who may not have previously visited our website. To find out how to opt out of being served other adverts, please visit Google's Ad Center support page.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service provided by Google inc. that enables us to measure how people use our website using cookies. We use this information to improve our website experience for website visitors and to measure the effectiveness of our online advertising. We can also use these cookies to serve relevant advertisements to people who have interacted with specific sections of the site, or to exclude those audiences from advertising.
For website visitors who have explicitly opted in to Google’s data privacy policy, Google will associate your IP address with other data held by Google in order to identify you across multiple devices. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. You may also stop the transmission of information generated by the cookies about your use of the website and of your IP address to Google, by downloading and installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
SmartSurvey
SmartSurvey allow site owners to invite visitors to give feedback. We use their services occasionally, either for site feedback, or to allow visitors to give views relating to our campaigning activities.
Last updated: September 2021