Cookie Policy
Use of cookies by the FCA
This cookie notice applies to the FCA Handbook website pages.
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your electronic device (such as a laptop, mobile or tablet). Cookies are widely used for a website’s functionality, or to make it operate more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.
We use the following types of cookies:
- Necessary cookies: Necessary cookies enable core functionality on our website such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions.
- Non-essential cookies: These are optional cookies for the visitor of our website. We only use these cookies to provide us with anonymous data. We rely upon your consent to allow us to do this.We use Analytical (or statistical) cookies to understand the usability of our website. This information is processed in a way which does not identify any individual and only used for statistical and analytical data. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, such as understanding the number of visitors to our website and its sections.
To understand how the FCA collects and processes personal data please refer to the FCA Handbook privacy policy.
The table below explains the cookies we use and why:
| Category | Cookie name | Purpose | Type | Expiry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ASP Identity cookie | .AspNet.ApplicationCookie | This cookie contains user Identity Claims and is encrypted using ASP.NET Identity middleware. The cookie is issued when the user logs into the website and will be sent upon subsequent requests. | Necessary | Expires after 24 hours or when the user signs out of the website |
| Content management cookies | __RequestVerificationToken | This is an anti-forgery cookie set by web applications built using ASP.NET MVC technologies.It is designed to stop unauthorised posting of content to a website, known as Cross-Site Request Forgery. It holds no information about the user and is destroyed on closing the browser. | Necessary | After browsing session |
| Content management cookies | ASP.NET_SessionId | When a user browses to the website, a unique session ID will be associated with the user to keep track of any information that is stored for that session.This information is stored on the Web Server and is identified via a GUID. The GUID is stored in the cookie (known as the ASP.NET_SessionID) and is essential for any ASP.NET website to function correctly.If nothing is stored in the session, no cookie will be sent to the browser, so this cookie will only be created when needed. | Necessary | This cookie will expire at the end of the session which is defined in the application configuration (normally around 20 minutes) |
| AWS web traffic management | AWSALB | This cookie generates the AWS ELB application load balancer and works with the cookie listed below. | Necessary | 7 days |
| AWS_web traffic management | AWSALBCORS | This cookie is managed by AWS and is used for load balancing. | Necessary | 7 days |
| Google Analytics | _ga | These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the website. The cookies collect information in a way that does not directly identify anyone, including the number of visitors to the website and blog, where visitors have come to the website from and the pages they visited. Read Google's overview of privacy and safeguarding data | Non-essential (Analytical) | Expires after 2 years |
| _gid | Non-essential (Analytical) | Expires after 24 hours | ||
| _gat | This cookie enables us to limit the amount of data recorded by Google on our site. | Non-essential (Analytical) | Expires after 1 hour | |
| Performance cookie | nmstat | This cookie enables us to distinguish users and is used to collect statistics about site usage, such as when the visitor last visited the site. | Non-essential (Analytical) | The longest expiry period is 1000 days |
Change your cookie settings
You can change your cookie settings at any time. You can block the cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. You may need to refresh your page for your settings to take effect.
Alternatively, most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.
You can find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers below:
To find information relating to other browsers, visit the browser developer's website.
To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites, visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout for more information.