What are Cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that is downloaded onto ‘terminal equipment’ (e.g. a computer or smartphone) when the user accesses a website. It allows the website to recognise that user’s device and store some information about the user’s preferences or past actions.

 

How are Cookies used?

In general, cookies are used to retain user preferences, store information for things like shopping carts, and provide anonymised tracking data to third party applications like Google Analytics. As a rule, cookies will make your browsing experience better. However, you may prefer to disable cookies on this site and on others. The most effective way to do this is to disable cookies in your browser.

 

What are session and persistent Cookies?

Session Cookies expire at the end of a browser session (e.g. when the user exits the Post Office – Holiday Money Online website/customer journey) whereas persistent Cookies can be stored for longer on your device in-between sessions helping you to remember your preferences or actions across a site. Users can delete previously set persistent cookies manually or configure the browser settings to delete cookies at a set interval.

 

What are essential and optional Cookies?

Cookies can be classified as either ‘essential’ or ‘non-essential’.

Essential cookies: these are cookies that are either:

• used solely to carry out or facilitate the transmission of communications over a network; or
• strictly necessary to provide an online service (e.g. our website or a service on our website) which you have requested.

Non-essential cookies: these are any cookies that do not fall within the definition of essential cookies, such as cookies used to analyse your behaviour on a website (‘analytical’ cookies) or cookies used to display advertisements to you (‘advertising’ cookies).

 

What are ‘first party’ and ‘third party’ Cookies?

Whether a cookie is ‘first’ or ‘third’ party refers to the website or domain placing the cookie. First-party cookies are set directly by the website the user is visiting, i.e. the URL displayed in the browser’s address bar.

Third-party cookies are set by a domain other than the one the user is visiting. This typically occurs when the website incorporates elements from other sites, such as images, social media plugins or advertising. When the browser or other software fetches these elements from the other sites, they can set cookies as well.

 

What are similar technologies?

Functions usually performed by a cookie can be achieved by other means. This could include, for example, using certain characteristics to identify devices so that visits to a website can be analysed e.g. scripts, tracking pixels, plugins, HTML5 local storage, Local Shared Objects, device fingerprinting techniques and use of any APIs (internal and/or external).

 

Our use of Cookies

First Rate uses Cookies for the following reasons:

• To improve the performance of our websites by understanding which parts work well, and which don’t.
• To enable us to collect information about how you and other people use our website.
• To improve your experience on our websites, for example we use Cookies to remember the products you’ve put in your basket and to personalise your experience.

 

Change your settings

We’ve made it easy for you to block cookies according to their function. Please note that functional cookies are essential for certain sections of our website to work, like the branch finder. Change your cookie settings

 

 

What Cookies do we use?

 

Strictly necessary Cookies. These are Cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They are necessary for the safety, security and integrity of the site. For example they help support the structure of the pages that are displayed to you, help to improve navigation and allow you to return to pages you have previously visited. This type of Cookie only lasts for the duration of the time you are visiting the website. When you leave the website they are deleted automatically.

Performance Cookies or analytical Cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. The data is aggregated and anonymised, which means we cannot identify you as an individual.

Functionality Cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region). These Cookies will remain on your device until you choose to clear it. If you choose to do this, you will need to enter your details each time you visit the site.

Blocking or restricting Cookies. You can stop Cookies being used on your device by activating the setting on your browser (e.g. Google Chrome, Safari, Mozilla Fire Fox) that allows you to block the deployment of all or some Cookies. Please visit whatarecookies.com to find out how. Please note, if you use your browser settings to block Cookies you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

 

Below is the list of cookies First Rate uses.

 

Medallia

The Digital Experience Analytics (DXA) collection script cookie and browser storage sets cookies on visitors’ browsers and remembers visitors to a property.

da_sid   is a DXA session ID

Duration: 30 minutes

da_lid is a DXA lead ID

Duration: 1 year

da_intState is a Details about all integration states

Duration:30 minutes

 

 

Adobe Experience Cloud

everest_g_v2

Created after a user clicks an advertisement. Used to map the current and subsequent clicks with other events on our website.

Duration: 2 years

 

Tealium

 

utag_main

Performance cookies

These monitor how our website performs on your devices, including its availability, downtime and loading speeds.

 

Google Analytics

Google Analytics helps us analyse how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. Google has developed the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on which gives you more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. The add-on communicates with the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics. Used to analyse visitor browsing behaviour, e.g. how many people get a quote after clicking on our adverts in Google’s search results. The longest lasting cookie expires 2 years after your last visit to the website. Others expire after 1 year, 6 months, 90 days, 24 hours, 1 minute, or when you close your browser.

 

ga

_gid

_ga<container-id>

gat

gac<property-id>

__utma

__utmt

__utmb

__utmc

__utmz

__utmv

 

 

 

Adobe Analytics

 

These cookies help our foreign currency provider First Rate to collect and analyse visitor information such as browser usage, new visitor numbers, response to marketing activity and shopping times. That information helps us to improve the website and make our marketing campaigns relevant. The data stored by these cookies never show any confidential information.

 

s_vi

s_campaignm

s_fid

gpv_pn

s_cc

s_ev8

s_intcmp

s_kwcid

s_ppv

s_ppvl

s_sq

s_ptc

 

Duration: The longest lasting cookie expires 5 years after your last visit to the website. Others expire after 2 years, 30 days and the moment you close your browser.

 

Webtrends Optimize

This cookie is used by the website’s operator in context with multi-variate testing. This is a tool used to combine or change content on the website. This allows the website to find the best variation/edition of the site.  A HTTP Cookie preserves users states across page requests.

JSESSIONID         ots.webtrends-optimize.com

Duration: Session

 

Below is the cookies Post Office use

 

Addthis  addthisedge.com|addthis.com

First Source        https://ilev-po-webchat.firstsource.com                [ilev-po-webchat.firstsource.com]

Office Forms       forms.office.com

Bing       .bing.com

Full Story             \.fullstory\.com

Google Analytics               google-analytics.com

Google Tag Manager (Google Analytics)  \.googletagmanager\.com

Maxymiser          (cg-global\.maxymiser\.com|maxymiser\.net)

Nuance .digital.nuance.com                       

Optimizely           (cdn\.optimizely\.com|(optimizely|microsoft)\.com)

Pinterest              s\.pinimg.com|ct\.pinterest.com

Qualtrics              .qualtrics.com

Quantum Metric              \.quantummetric\.com

Adalyser               c(1|5).adalyser.com

Affiliate Window               .zenaps\.com|.awin1\.com|.dwin1\.com|.sciencebehindecommerce\.com

Amazon AdSystem           aax-eu\.amazon-adsystem.com\.com

DoubleClick         .doubleclick.net

Facebook            .(\.facebook)\.(com|net)

Google Ad Service            .googleadservices\.com\|.adservice.google\.co|.googleads.

Google Tag Manager (DoubleClick)           \.googletagmanager\.com

Kenshoo              \.xg4ken\.com

LinkedIn               .linkedin.com|\.licdn.com

Quantcast           \.quantserve\.com|\.quantcount\.com

Tiktok    \.tiktok\.com

TradeDesk           adsrvr.org

Twitter  (^t\.co|\.twitter\.com)$

Xandr Adnxs       \.adnxs\.com

Adobe (activitymap\.adobe\.com|www\.adobetag\.com|cm\.everesttech\.net|postoffice\.marketing\.adobe\.com)

Adobe (demdex)               ((dpm|postoffice)\.demdex\.net)

Adobe (First Rate)           firstrate.112.2o7.net

Adobe Analytics (smetrics\.travelmoneyonline\.co\.uk|(metric|metrics)\.postoffice\.co\.uk|rmgpostofficecoukprod\.112\.2o7\.net)

Adobe Target     \.tt\.omtrdc\.net

Amazon AWS     s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com

Appdynamics    (cdn\.appdynamics\.com|col\.eum-appdynamics\.com)

AWS Map           s3\.eu-west-2\.amazonaws\.com              /linney-post-office-rate-of-sale/index.html

Cheq     (obseu|euob)\.herbgreencolumn\.com

Data Tables        cdn\.datatables\.ne         \/v\/dt\/.*\/datatables\.min\.js

Ensighten            (nexus|nexus-test|manage|manage-api|ens-activatesandbox\.activate)\.ensighten\.com

FRES      (metrics|m|widgets|postoffice2|postoffice)\.travelmoneyonline\.co\.uk

Google  translate.googleusercontent.com

Google Content Delivery Service              (www|ssl|csi|maps)\.gstatic\.com

Google Maps     (maps.googleapis.com|geo(0|1|2|3)\.ggpht\.com)

Google Maps     (googleapis|gstatic)\.com

Google reCAPTCHA         www.google.com [google.com]

/recaptcha/api.js, /recaptcha/api2/anchor, /recaptcha/api2/webworker.js, /recaptcha/api2/bframe

Google Translate             translate\.(google|googleusercontent).(co\.uk|com)

gstatic.com        .gstatic.com

GTM      www.googletagservices.com [googletagservices.com]

Magnolia            (magnolia\.(cdp|ra-cdp|hf-cdp|ipt-cdp|prd\.cdp)\.internal)

ParcelForce        ^apps\.parcelforce\.com$            ^\/sso\/

Post Office       ((postoffice|www\.postofficeflexiloan|www\.postofficemoney)\.(co\.uk|com)|ci-dev-postoffice\.cdp\.internal|postoffice\.insure-systems\.co\.uk|postoffice\.creditcardservicing\.com|postoffice\.secure\.force\.com|budgetcalcpostoffice\.tso\.co\.uk)

Post Office (TI)  postoffice-strandedtraveller.collinsontech.com

Royal Mail          royalmail.com

SafeSpaces         safespaces\.azurewebsites\.net

Smart Delay iFrame        demo-postoffice-widget\.lower\.smartdelay\.com

Travel Money    \.travelmoneyonline\.co\.uk

Vimeo   (^|\.)vimeo\.com

WU        (westernunionuat\.112\.2o7\.net|westernunionnewglobal\.112\.2o7\.net)

YouTube             (ytimg|youtube|youtube-nocookie)\.com

 

Contact us

If you have a question about any aspect of this policy please call us on 0345 8500 900

Last updated: January 2024