Cookies
We may store information about your visit using cookies (small files of letters and numbers which are sent by us to your computer or other access device when you visit our website) which we can access when you visit our corporate site in future. We do this for the following reasons:
- recognising your preferences so you don't need to re-enter them on every visit
- tracking progress through online applications
- monitoring site performance and content popularity
- remarketing: using third party technologies to advertise online and make ads more relevant to you.
In addition, some third-party services featured on our site may also use cookies for similar reasons.
By using our site, we assume that you're happy to use cookies but if desired, cookies can be disabled through your browser settings - please view your browser's options or help pages for more information. Please note, however, that by deleting our cookies or disabling future cookies you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our site.
We use first-party cookies to store user preferences and provide statistical analysis, while third-party services use cookies to store settings and provide additional functionality.
First-party cookies
Google Analytics
This is a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. which uses cookies to show us how visitors found and explored our website, and how we can enhance their experience. It provides us with information about the behaviour of our visitors e.g. how many visitors we've had, how long they stayed on the site etc. This service may set up to five cookies from our site, all of which contain anonymous data.
More information on the use of cookies for Google Analytics can be found at Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites and Safeguarding your data.
Other
Some of our pages are used for online services (such as making payments and submitting applications), which use 'session' cookies to login or progress through application stages, and are only present within the session. These cookies are strictly necessary to provide the service that the user has requested.
Third-party cookies
In addition to the cookies above, some third-party services we use also store cookies.
Some of our pages contain a Facebook share button, which sets a number of cookies if you are already logged into your account. For more information please see Facebook's Policy on Cookies, Pixels & Similar Technologies.
Advertising and remarketing
Heriot-Watt University uses third party technologies to advertise online and make ads more relevant. These third parties include media partners such as Google, Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), Snapchat, LinkedIn, IDP Connect and TEADS who make use of remarketing cookies – both first party (such as Google Adwords and Google Analytics) and third party (such as DoubleClick) – to serve more relevant ads to users based on such users' past visits to our website, whether those users are on our website or on other websites.
Remarketing cookies typically expire a maximum of 180 days from the time that the cookie is set or updated (whichever is the later).
Third-party services
To opt out of other third-party vendor's use of cookies, visit the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page or the Digital Advertising Alliance Consumer Choice page.
Analytics Cookies
| Name | Description | Retention Period |
|---|---|---|
| _ga | ID used to identify users | 1 years |
| _ga_* | Used to identify and track an individual user session. | 2 years |
| _gid | ID used to identify users for 24 hours | 24 hours |
| _gat | Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests when using Google Tag Manager | 58 seconds |
| _dc_gtm_ | Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests | 1 minute |
| AMP_TOKEN | Contains a token code that is used to read out a Client ID from the AMP Client ID Service. By matching this ID with that of Google Analytics, users can be matched when switching between AMP content and non-AMP content. | 1 year |
| _gat_* | Used to set and get tracking data | 1 hour |
| _gac_ | Contains information related to marketing campaigns of the user. These are shared with Google AdWords / Google Ads when the Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are linked together. | 90 days |
| __utma | ID used to identify users and sessions | 2 years |
| __utmt | Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests | 10 minutes |
| __utmb | Used to distinguish new sessions and visits. This cookie is set when the GA.js javascript library is loaded and there is no existing __utmb cookie. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to the Google Analytics server. | 30 minutes |
| __utmc | Used only with old Urchin versions of Google Analytics and not with GA.js. Was used to distinguish between new sessions and visits at the end of a session. | session |
| __utmz | Contains information about the traffic source or campaign that directed user to the website. The cookie is set when the GA.js javascript is loaded and updated when data is sent to the Google Anaytics server | 6 months |
| __utmv | Contains custom information set by the web developer through the _setCustomVar method in Google Analytics. This cookie is updated each time new data is sent to the Google Analytics server. | 2 years |
| __utmx | Used to determine whether a user is included in an A / B or Multivariate test. | 18 months |
| __utmxx | Used to determine when the A / B or Multivariate test in which the user participates ends | 18 months |
| FPAU | Assigns a specific ID to the visitor. This allows the website to determine the number of specific user-visits for analysis and statistics. | session |
| FPID | Registers statistical data on users' behaviour on the website. Used for internal analytics by the website operator. | 1 years |
| FPLC | This FPLC cookie is the cross-domain linker cookie hashed from the FPID cookie. It’s not HttpOnly, which means it can be read with JavaScript. It has a relatively short lifetime, just 20 hours. | 20 hours |
Marketing Cookies
| Name | Description | Retention Period |
|---|---|---|
| MR | Used to collect information for analytics purposes. | 7 days |
| MUID | Identifies unique web browsers visiting Microsoft sites. These cookies are used for advertising, site analytics, and other operational purposes. | 1 years |
| MUIDB | Identifies unique web browsers visiting Microsoft sites. These cookies are used for advertising, site analytics, and other operational purposes. | 1 year |
| MC1 | Identifies unique web browsers visiting Microsoft sites. These cookies are used for advertising, site analytics, and other operational purposes. | 1 year |
| MSFPC | Identifies unique web browsers visiting Microsoft sites. These cookies are used for advertising, site analytics, and other operational purposes. | 1 year |
| _uetsid | This cookie is used by Bing to determine what ads should be shown that may be relevant to the end user perusing the site. | 24 hours |
| _uetvid | This is a cookie utilised by Microsoft Bing Ads and is a tracking cookie. It allows us to engage with a user that has previously visited our website. | 1 years |
| ANON | Contains the A, a unique identifier derived from your Microsoft account, which is used for advertising, personalization, and operational purposes. It is also used to preserve your choice to opt out of interest-based advertising from Microsoft if you have chosen to associate the opt-out with your Microsoft account. | 1 year |
| ANONCHK | Used to store session ID for a users session to ensure that clicks from adverts on the Bing search engine are verified for reporting purposes and for personalisation | 10 minutes |
| CC | Contains a country code as determined from your IP address. | 1 year |
| PPAuth | Helps to authenticate you when you sign in with your Microsoft account. | 5 years |
| MSPAuth | Helps to authenticate you when you sign in with your Microsoft account. | 5 years |
| MSNRPSAuth | Helps to authenticate you when you sign in with your Microsoft account. | 5 years |
| KievRPSAuth | Helps to authenticate you when you sign in with your Microsoft account. | 5 years |
| WLSSC | Helps to authenticate you when you sign in with your Microsoft account. | 5 years |
| MSPProf | Helps to authenticate you when you sign in with your Microsoft account. | 5 years |
| MC0 | Detects whether cookies are enabled in the browser. | session |
| MS0 | Identifies a specific session. | session |
| NAP | Contains an encrypted version of your country, postal code, age, gender, language and occupation, if known, based on your Microsoft account profile. | 1 year |
| MH | Appears on co-branded sites where Microsoft is partnering with an advertiser. This cookie identifies the advertiser, so the right ad is selected. | session |
| childinfo | Contains information that Microsoft account uses within its pages in relation to child accounts. | 5 years |
| kcdob | Contains information that Microsoft account uses within its pages in relation to child accounts. | 5 years |
| kcrelid | Contains information that Microsoft account uses within its pages in relation to child accounts. | 5 years |
| kcru | Contains information that Microsoft account uses within its pages in relation to child accounts. | 5 years |
| pcfm | Contains information that Microsoft account uses within its pages in relation to child accounts. | 5 years |
| x-ms-gateway-slice | Identifies a gateway for load balancing. | Session |
| ToptOut | Records your decision not to receive interest-based advertising delivered by Microsoft. | 1 year |
| ACH01 | Maintains information about which ad and where the user clicked on the ad. | session |
| AADSSO | Microsoft Microsoft Online Authentication Cookie | session |
| brcap | Microsoft Microsoft Online Authentication Cookie | 1 years |
| SRM_B | Collected user data is specifically adapted to the user or device. The usercan also be followed outside of the loaded website, creating a picture of the visitor's behavior. | 1 years |
| _RwBf | This cookie helps us to track the effectiveness of advertising campaigns on the Bing advertising network. | 1 year |
| _HPVN | Analysis service that connects data from the Bing advertising network with actions performed on the website. | 1 year |
| _UR | This cookie is used by the Bing advertising network for advertising tracking purposes. | 1 year |
| OID | This cookie is used by the Bing advertising network for advertising tracking purposes. | 3 months |
| OIDI | This cookie is used by the Bing advertising network for advertising tracking purposes. | 3 months |
| OIDR | This cookie is used by the Bing advertising network for advertising tracking purposes. | 3 months |
| BCP | This cookie is used for advertisement tracking purposes. | 1 year |
| BFBUSR | This cookie is used for advertisement tracking purposes. | 1 year |
| BFB | This cookie is used for advertisement tracking purposes. | 1 year |
| ACL | This cookie is used for advertisement tracking purposes. | 3 months |
| ACLUSR | This cookie is used for advertisement tracking purposes. | 1 year |
| GPS | Registers a unique ID on mobile devices to enable tracking based on geographical GPS location. | 1 day |
| VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | Tries to estimate the users' bandwidth on pages with integrated YouTube videos. Also used for marketing | 6 months |
| PREF | This cookie stores your preferences and other information, in particular preferred language, how many search results you wish to be shown on your page, and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on. | 10 years |
| YSC | Registers a unique ID to keep statistics of what videos from YouTube the user has seen. | Session |
| DEVICE_INFO | Used to detect if the visitor has accepted the marketing category in the cookie banner. This cookie is necessary for GDPR-compliance of the website. | 180 days |
| LOGIN_INFO | This cookie is used to play YouTube videos embedded on the website. | 2 years |
| VISITOR_PRIVACY_METADATA | Youtube visitor privacy metadata cookie | 6 months |
| lidc | Used by the social networking service LinkedIn, for tracking the use of embedded services. | 24 hours |
| bcookie | Used by LinkedIn to track the use of embedded services. | 1 years |
| bscookie | Used by LinkedIn to track the use of embedded services. | 1 years |
| trkCode | This cookie is used by LinkedIn to support the functionality of adding a panel invite labeled 'Follow Us' | 1 year |
| trkInfo | This cookie is used by LinkedIn to support the functionality of adding a panel invite labeled 'Follow Us' | 1 year |
| li_oatml | Collects information about how visitors use our site. | 30 days |
| liap | Cookie used for Sign-in with Linkedin and/or to allow for the Linkedin follow feature. | 90 days |
| lissc | Pending | 1 year |
| spectroscopyId | These cookies are set by LinkedIn for advertising purposes, including: tracking visitors so that more relevant ads can be presented, allowing users to use the 'Apply with LinkedIn' or the 'Sign-in with LinkedIn' functions, collecting information about how visitors use the site, etc. | session |
| UserMatchHistory | These cookies are set by LinkedIn for advertising purposes, including: tracking visitors so that more relevant ads can be presented, allowing users to use the 'Apply with LinkedIn' or the 'Sign-in with LinkedIn' functions, collecting information about how visitors use the site, etc. | 30 days |
| lang | Used to remember a user's language setting | session |
| li_gc | Used to store guest consent to the use of cookies for non-essential purposes | 2 years |
| li_rm | Used as part of the LinkedIn Remember Me feature and is set when a user clicks Remember Me on the device to make it easier for him or her to sign in to that device | 1 year |
| AnalyticsSyncHistory | Used to store information about the time a sync with the lms_analytics cookie took place for users in the Designated Countries | 30 days |
| ln_or | Used to determine if Oribi analytics can be carried out on a specific domain | 1 day |
| li_sugr | Used to make a probabilistic match of a user's identity outside the Designated Countries | 3 months |
Cookie Policy for EU/UK
We comply with GDPR and UK Data Protection regulations, requiring us to obtain cookie consent.
Google Analytics Cookies
We use Google Analytics to collect user interaction data for site improvement.
Disclaimer
This policy is subject to updates and changes. Users are encouraged to regularly review our policy.
This scan was generated on 07/04/2026, 08:42.