This policy refers to cookies used on our Historic Environment Scotland (HES) domain www.historicenvironment.scot/ and subdomains www.blog.historicenvironment.scot/ and portal.historicenvironment.scot/.
Like many websites, the HES corporate domain and subdomains (the Service) use small files called cookies to help provide the best possible online experience for you.
Below, we explain what cookies are, what they do, how we use them, and how you can view or change your cookie preferences.
Who are we?
The HES website and subdomains are managed by Historic Environment Scotland, the lead public body established to investigate, care for and promote Scotland’s historic environment. We’re a non-departmental public body (NDPB) with charitable status.
We are committed to protecting your personal data and your privacy. Find out more about how we handle personal data in our privacy notice.
What are cookies?
Cookies are small pieces of text sent by your web browser on a website you visit. A cookie file is stored in your web browser and allows the Service or a third-party to recognise you.
Cookies can be either "persistent" or "session" based.
- Persistent cookies continue to exist after you finish your website visit. They are eventually deleted, often after 6 months or longer. They are used to help the Service recognise when you return to the site; these cookies will remember key information about you, such as your site preferences.
- Session cookies are deleted automatically soon after you finish your website visit, usually within 30 minutes. They are used to help the Service remember the status of your current visit, for example, a session ID might be stored to ensure you remain logged in.
You can remove cookies from your device at any time, and your device will automatically delete expired cookies.
First-party cookies entail a small text file that is stored on your computer when you visit a specific domain (website) and which cannot be shared with others. These cookies are set directly by the Service and only the Service can read them.
Cookies that do not originate from the Service are called ‘Third Party’ cookies. Such cookies are set by other digital services and are accessible by those services only. For example, if a webpage contains an embedded YouTube video, YouTube will set its own cookies to enable the video to work properly.
Some cookies are set by services for advertising purposes. For example, an advertising platform may set a cookie that recognises the online journey a user has taken across different websites. The advertising partner may set or read the cookies on other websites/services and link the users’ activity on this Service. Third-party cookies are not set by the Service itself.
How we use cookies
We categorise cookies based on how they are used; this section will help you make broad choices about which cookies you set.
Essential cookies
These cookies let you use all the different yet essential parts of the Service. Without them, the Service cannot be provided. Therefore, they are sometimes called “strictly necessary” cookies.
For example, we use essential cookies to:
- remember your preferences (for example, whether you have given your consent for cookies to be set),
- remember security settings that affect access to certain content, for example, whether you are logged in or for enabling consistent access to our web servers,
- enable certain essential services you need, such as a shopping cart.
Functional cookies
These cookies are used to provide functionality. For example, we use functional cookies to:
- enable embedded imagery and zoom functions,
- remember that you have visited the website before so that messages for new visitors are not repeated to you,
- remember certain preferences such as language or text size.
Performance cookies
These cookies help us ensure the website is working properly and they highlight when we need to fix issues or improve experiences.
While we do not collect data directly about each user’s age, gender, or interests, we use Google Signals to receive anonymised data that groups and summarises information about the users who visit our Services. This includes the categorisation of users’ ages, genders, and interests, which provides more context to our performance data.
Any performance cookies we use only collects anonymised data to protect your identity, so we cannot identify any individuals from this data. We do not collect any data on sex, political or religious beliefs, nationality, or postcodes through cookies.
You can manage what data Google stores about you, and whether it can collect or share that data at myadcenter.google.com/controls
Third-Party Personalised ad cookies
From time to time we may use advertising services to help reach users on our sites with offers and content. Furthermore, we offer some content on the website embedded from third-party platforms such as YouTube, Soundcloud and others. Where we embed content, we cannot control the cookies that are set by such embedded content, and thus we treat the categorisation of these for cookie consent purposes as though they will set marketing cookies.
Where we use personalised ad cookies, it is to understand your interests and show you relevant adverts based on your browsing habits.
We work with third-party advertising networks to display adverts (ads) for the products and services we offer. The personalised ad cookies we collect for the Service are outlined below under ‘The cookies we set’ and within the cookie banner. You can choose to accept or reject these cookies by indicating your preference at the bottom of this page or within the banner.
These advertising networks may also be able to track your browsing across different websites. Giving or declining your consent for personalised ads does not change the online advertising you will see in general. It will only determine whether you will view the personalised ads our advertising networks present to you following your use of this Service.
The marketing and remarketing cookie services we use are managed by third parties. Find below the privacy policies for the third-party cookie providers we use for the HES domain and subdomains:
- Google Adwords allows conversion tracking, optimisation and remarketing.
- Google DoubleClick allows conversion tracking, and optimization.
- Google YouTube allows advertising and personal recommendations, as well as security measures.
The third-party embedded content providers may set their own marketing cookies from other advertising services, and we cannot control or monitor what cookies they set. Where you view content from these services you accept that they may set these cookies. You can adjust your consent preferences for such third-party content at their own cookie policy functions. You can decline consent for marketing cookies on our services and our websites will continue to work for you without any embedded third-party content.
The cookies we set
Essential cookies
The following cookies can be found on historicenvironments.scot, blog.historicenvironment.scot and portal.historicenvironment.scot.
Load balancer
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
ARRAffinity, ARRAffinitySameSite |
A unique identifier. |
Used for load balancing to make sure the visitor page requests are routed to the same server in any browsing session. |
This expires at the end of your session. |
Fonts.net bot management
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
__cf_bm |
A random unique number or string of letters and numbers to identify your browser |
Used by third party fonts provider for anti-bot security (via Cloudflare) |
After 30 minutes |
The following cookies can be found on historicenvironments.scot and blog.historicenvironment.scot only.
Microsoft Application Insights
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
ai_session, ai_user |
A random unique number or string of letters and numbers to identify your browser |
We use Microsoft Application Insights software, which collects statistical usage and telemetry information for apps built on the Azure cloud platform. This is a unique anonymous session identifier cookie. |
The longest lasting cookie expires after 1 year, the other expires on the same day. |
ASP.NET
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
ASP.NET_SessionId
|
Session ID
|
Used to identify the users' session on the server. The session is an area on the server used to store session state in between HTTP requests. |
End of session. |
Consent preference cookie
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
.CookiePreferences
|
A string for each preference set |
Used to store information about a visitor's cookie preference settings |
After 1 year |
The following cookies can be found on Portal.historicenvironment.scot only
Oracle
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
ORA_WWV_APP_1505
|
Session IDs
|
This cookie is to store the user's usage history. |
End of Session
|
Performance cookies
Google Analytics is an example of a first party cookie used for performance. Other organisations can’t access your data or view cookies used by our website, and we do not sell your data to any third parties. We also do not allow Google to share our analytics data.
The following cookies can be found on historicenvironments.scot, blog.historicenvironment.scot and portal.historicenvironment.scot.
Google Analytics
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
_ga |
Browser ID |
Collects information about how you use this website |
After 2 years |
|
_gid |
User ID |
Used to distinguish users |
After 24 hours |
The following cookies can be found on historicenvironments.scot and blog.historicenvironment.scot only.
Google Analytics
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
_ga_LFVMXMFPCX |
Session |
Used to persist session state |
After 2 years |
The following cookies can be found on Portal.historicenvironment.scot only.
Google Analytics
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
_ga_JPK1NXP86B
|
Session ID |
This cookie is used to persist session state which means remembering data about the user. |
After 2 years |
|
_gat_UA-5021193-17 |
A numeric value |
The cookie is used to throttle request rate. |
After 1 minute |
Functional cookies
These cookies are used to provide functionality.
The following cookies can be found on historicenvironment.scot and blog.historicenvironment.scot.
ThingLink
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
AWSALBAPP-0, AWSALBAPP-1, AWSALBAPP-2, AWSALBAPP-3
|
Session ID
|
This cookie stores user's cookie preferences to avoid repeated consent prompts. |
End of session. |
Third-party cookies
These cookies are set to allow us and our partners to improve how we advertise to you. Declining consent to advertising cookies does not mean you will not see advertising, only that the advertising may be less relevant to you.
Google Advertising, and Google Marketing Platform
Cookies set by Google’s Marketing Platform will vary depending on the types of advertising you encounter. Not all of the cookies listed here might be set, even if you consent to marketing cookies.
How Google uses cookies for personalisation and advertising
The following cookies can be found on historicenvironment.scot only.
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
_gcl_dc |
Unique identifier for the ad click; Timestamp; Conversion data. |
This cookie is associated with Google’s advertising and measurement products, such as Google Ads and Analytics. This cookie is used to store ad click information, which helps to track and measure conversions. |
90 days |
|
DSID |
User ID |
This cookie is used by Google to identify a logged-in user on non-Google websites. It ensures that the user’s ad personalisation settings are respected, and it helps to manage and deliver personalised ads based on the user’s preferences. |
14 days |
|
Test_cookie |
Unique identifiers |
These cookies are used by DoubleClick to check if your browser supports cookies. |
After browser is closed |
| _gcl_au
|
Unique identifiers |
These cookies provide ad delivery or retargeting, specifically user actions on a website after viewing or clicking on an advert. |
After 90 days |
Meta/Facebook
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
_fbp |
Unique identifier; Timestamp; Browser and device details. |
This cookie is used by Facebook/Meta to deliver a series of ad products such as real-time bidding from third-parties. The cookie tracks user interactions and visits across websites where the Facebook Pixel is installed. |
Up to 90 days |
|
_fbc |
Click ID and Timestamp |
This cookie is used by Facebook to track clicks on ads and to link them to a specific website visit. |
Up to 2 years |
The following cookies can be found on historicenvironment.scot and blog.historicenvironment.scot.
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
|
Browsing behaviour
|
Advertising and personalised YouTube recommendations based on past views and searches |
After 6 months of last use
|
|
YSC
|
User ID
|
Ensures that requests within a browsing session are made by the user, and not by other sites. These cookies prevent malicious sites from acting on behalf of a user without that user’s knowledge. |
End of session
|
|
test_cookie |
Unique identifiers |
Google set a number of cookies on any page that includes a YouTube video. While we have no control over the cookies set by Google, they appear to include a mixture of pieces of information to measure the number and behaviour of YouTube users, including information that links your visits to our website with your Google account if you are signed in to one. Information about your use of our website, including your IP address, may be transmitted to Google and stored on servers in the United States. This cookie does not identify you personally unless you are logged into Google, in which case it is linked to your Google account. |
Up to 365 days |
|
_gcl_au |
User ID |
This cookie is used to store and track conversions from advertising shown on a website |
Up to 89 days |
As we use Google Signals, there are some related third-party cookies that may be set, depending on if you have consented to be tracked by Google.
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
IDE |
User ID |
Links your usage of this website to your advertising profile at Google |
After 390 days |
|
CONSENT |
User ID and consent record |
Stores whether or not you have given consent to Google advertising to track you – this should prevent you being tracked by Google if you have not consented. |
After 400 days |
|
NID |
User preference |
Used to store your advertising preferences from Google |
After 180 days |
Vimeo
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
vuid
|
Browsing behaviour
|
This cookie is to store the user's usage history |
After 399 Days
|
The following cookies can be found on blog.historicenvironment.scot only.
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
ig_did |
Browser ID
|
Provides Instagram with information on how our website is used. |
Up to 365 days
|
Sketchfab
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
OptanonConsent |
Cookie preference and consent. |
This cookie stores a user's state regarding their cookie choices. |
Up to 365 days |
|
aws-waf-token |
Session |
This cookie is used to identify and separate malicious clients (bots) from legitimate sessions. |
Up to 3 days |
Soundcloud
|
Name |
Data stored |
Purpose |
Expires |
|
OptanonConsent |
Cookie preference and consent |
This cookie stores a user’s state regarding their cookie choices. |
Up to 365 days |
|
__qca |
Browser and HTTP request |
This cookie is set by Quantcast, who present targeted advertising. |
Up to 13 months |
|
sc_session |
Unique session ID |
This cookie is a critical component in maintaining user sessions within a web application. |
Up to 6 days |
|
ajs_anonymous_id |
Anonymous ID |
This cookie is used to store data about the user’s last visit to the web application. |
Up to 365 days |
|
datadome |
Unique user and session ID |
This cookie is used to identify and separate malicious clients (bots) from legitimate sessions. |
Up to 365 days |
|
eupubconsent-v2 |
Cookie preference and consent |
This cookie is used to store data for remarketing purposes. |
Up to 365 days |
|
rubicon_last_sync |
User browser ID |
This cookie is used to sync cookie identifiers between different advertising systems and ensures users’ data is consistent across different platforms. |
Up to 5 hours |
Manage your cookie settings
On the HES domain and subdomains, we only use Performance, Functional, and Third-Party personalised Ad cookies after you have given your consent.
You can do this by selecting your preferences in the cookie banner or below. If you don’t give your permission, we will only collect basic, essential cookies.
You can also control your cookies in your web browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to manage and delete them within your browser, please use the following links:
- Edge cookies information
- Chrome cookies information
- Firefox cookies information
- Safari cookies information
To quickly manage third party cookies generated by advertisers, visit Your Online Choices.
We aren’t responsible for the information or the setting of cookies on these external websites.