Cookie use on the Debate Hub

This page explains how we (KMi, The Open University) use cookies on this website.

Cookies explained

A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer or mobile phone browser from a website's computer and is stored on your computer's or mobile phone's hard drive. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser's preferences allow it, which the site can then access when you visit it again to track online traffic flows, for example. A website cannot access cookies sent by other websites.

How we use cookies

We use cookies to make sure our website work effectively and to improve your user experiences on them. Information supplied by cookies can help us work out how you use our site; for example, which pages you look at. We also use cookies to understand how you interact with our site.

Types of cookie

Three types of cookie may be used during your visit to our website:

Session or temporary cookies that are deleted after each visit.
Persistent cookies that are valid across visits. They help our website remember you as a user each time you use the same computer to revisit us.
Third-party cookies that used by external content from other third-party websites within our website.

Cookie categories

We have listed cookies used on this websites based on the International Chamber of Commerce guide for cookie categories:

Strictly necessary - these cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around our site and use their features, such as accessing secure areas of the website.
Performance - these cookies collect information about how visitors use our website in order to improve it. For example, they tell us which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from any of our pages. All of the information that these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous - it does not identify individual visitors.
Functionality - these cookies allow our website to remember choices you make and provide enhanced, more personal features. These cookies cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.

Cookies you may see if you browse our site without signing in

Cookie Name	Nature and Purpose	Category	Expires
PHPSESSID	This cookie is a 'session cookie' which tells us that you are actively visiting our site.	Strictly Necessary	Persistent - 2 Months

Cookies we use to track visits to our site

We use Google Analytics GA4 for tracking analytics on the use of our site. These cookies allow us to understand how often users visit our site, how long they spend there, and the pages they interact with. Google Analytics collects information anonymously.

Type	Cookie Name	Nature and Purpose	Category	Expires
Google Analytics	_ga	This cookie is used by Google to distinguish users on a domain	Performance	2 Years
Google Analytics	_ga_container-id	This cookie is used by Google to persist session state.	Performance	2 years
Google Analytics	_gid	This cookie is used by Google to distinguish users.	Performance	24 hours

Cookies you may see if you browse our site signed in

Please note that if you set your browser to disable cookies, you will not be able to sign in to secure areas of our website. Without these cookies, services you've asked for can't be provided.

Cookie Name	Nature and Purpose	Category	Expires
debatehub	This cookie is used to identify a logged in user.	Strictly Necessary	Persistent

Disabling cookies

You can block or remove cookies yourself by altering the settings of your browser to block cookies or to send a warning notice before a cookie is stored on your computer.

You can find information on disabling cookies at www.allaboutcookies.org.