Skip to main content

beta This is a new service – your feedback will help us to improve it.

Details about Cookies on Community Forums

This website puts small files (known as ‘cookies’) onto your computer to collect information about how you browse the site.

Cookies are used to:

  • measure how you use the website so it can be updated and improved based on your needs
  • remember the notifications you’ve seen so we do not show them to you again
  • remember you while you’re changing your GOV.UK email subscriptions

Find out more about how to manage cookies.

Analytics Cookies

We use Google Analytics software (Universal Analytics) to collect anonymised information about how you use GOV.UK. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements to the site and to government digital services.

We do not allow Google to use or share the data about how you use this site.

Google Analytics stores information about:

  • how you got to the site
  • the pages you visit on GOV.UK and how long you spend on them
  • what you click on while you’re visiting the site

Google Analytics sets the following cookies.

Name Purpose Expires
_ga These help us count how many people visit the website by tracking if you have visited before 2 years
_gid Used to distinguish users 24 hours
_gat Used to throttle request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed via Google Tag Manager, this cookie will be named _dc_gtm_[property-id]. 1 minute
AMP_TOKEN Contains a token that can be used to retrieve a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. Other possible values indicate opt-out, inflight request or an error retrieving a Client ID from AMP Client ID service. 30 seconds to 1 year
_gac_[property-id] Contains campaign related information for the user. If you have linked your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts, Google Ads website conversion tags will read this cookie unless you opt-out. 90 days

Essential Cookies

Name Purpose Expires
.AspNet.ApplicationCookie Used to identify user sessions. A user session starts when a user browses portal for the first time. And ends when the session is closed. When you close your browser
__RequestVerificationToken Used to ensure same destination for GET/POST methods. Used to prevent click jacking and phishing type attack vectors When you close your browser
ContextLanguageCode Stores the default language of the user accessing portal within a session and across webpages. The cookie is deleted after session closes. When you close your browser
ARRAffinity Added automatically by Azure websites and ensures that requests are load balanced between different sites. Doesn't store any of user information. When you close your browser
ARRAffinitySameSite Added automatically by Azure websites and ensures that requests are load balanced between different sites. Doesn't store any of user information. When you close your browser
ASP.NET_SessionId Used to maintain the session of a logged in user to avoid repeated sign-in. When you close your browser
Dynamics365PortalAnalytics Critical service cookie to analyze service usage anonymously and aggregated for statistical purpose. Circa 90 days
consentCookie Used to store cookie consent. Created when the user either accepts or rejects the cookie in the header or when the user changes their cookie preferences on the cookies page. Circa 30 days
isDSTObserved Stores a value to indicate if the current moment is in daylight saving time. When you close your browser
isDSTSupport Indicates whether a specified date and time falls in the range of daylight saving time. When you close your browser
timeZoneCode Stores the timezonecode field value of CRM timezonedefintion entity for the current timezone. When you close your browser
timezoneoffset Stores the timezone difference between UTC and Local Browser. When you close your browser
adxPreviewUnpublishedEntities Stores preview ON/OFF mode in classic CMS for portal administrators. When you close your browser
adx-notifcation Used in entity form actions to store alert message to be shown on redirection. When you close your browser