Privacy and Cookies

Like many website owners, we use Matomo (a website analytics programme) to collect anonymous analytics data for the purposes of audience measurement and the evaluation of our website performance.

The anonymous data we do collect is to help us understand more about what our visitors are looking for, in particular which resources are most popular, which resources are least popular, and how people find us. The information we receive will allow us to make improvements to our site helping to ensure your visit is useful and enjoyable.

You can find out more about Matomo here: https://matomo.org/privacy/?menu

Cookies we collect

Necessary Cookies

Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.

• Cookie Control – This cookie used to store your cookie preferences and is stored for 90 days
• MATOMO_SESSID – A nonce* to help prevent CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) security issues when using the opt-out feature. This is stored for 14 days
• wordpress_test_cookie – Cookie set by WordPress to check if the cookies are enabled on the browser to provide appropriate user experience to the users. This is stored for the duration of the session only
• wordpress_logged_in_ – Cookie set by WordPress for logged in users to store user information, in use for our Ambassador login and site editors. This is stored for the duration of the session only
• VISITOR_PRIVACY_METADATA – Used by YouTube to store the user’s privacy and consent settings for embedded videos. It helps ensure that user privacy choices (like consent for personalised ads or tracking) are respected when watching embedded YouTube content. This is stored for 90 days

* A nonce is a random or non-repeating value that is included in data exchanged by a protocol, usually for the purpose of guaranteeing the transmittal of live data rather than replayed data, thus detecting and protecting against replay attacks.

Marketing cookies (optional)

These cookies allow YouTube to store your settings and customise the user experience.

• __Secure-ROLLOUT_TOKEN – Used by YouTube to manage feature rollout and experimentation. It helps Google control which new features or interface changes are shown to users as part of testing and staged rollouts, ensuring consistent experience for a given user during an experiment. This is stored for 180 days
• VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE – Tries to estimate the users’ bandwidth on pages with integrated YouTube videos. Also used for marketing. This is stored for 6 months
• YSC – Registers a unique ID to keep statistics of what videos from YouTube the user has seen. This is stored for the duration of the session only
• __Secure-YEC – The cookie is used to store the user’s video player preferences using embedded YouTube video. This is stored for 13 months

If you have any questions about data collection please contact saps@botanic.cam.ac.uk

If you do not wish to have any anonymous data shared with us, you can opt-out. Please see below.