What is a Cookie?
A cookie is a small file that can be placed on your device that allows us to recognise and remember you. It is sent to your browser and stored on your computer’s hard drive or tablet or mobile device. When you visit our sites, we may collect information from you automatically through cookies or similar technology, such as a tag, pixel, or other web beacon.

How do we use cookies?

Keeping you signed in
Understanding how you use our site

What types of cookies do we use?

Essential - cookies that are essential to provide the services you have requested. For example, these include the cookies that make it possible for you to stay logged in to your Guardian account and post comments. If you set your browser to block these cookies, then these functions and services will not work for you. In particular, we won’t be able to save your preferences about cookies.
Performance - cookies which measure how often you visit our site and how you use them. We use this information to get a better sense of how our users engage with our journalism and to improve our sites and apps, so that users have a better experience. For example, we collect information about which of our pages are most frequently visited, and by which types of users. We also use third-party cookies to help with performance. For example, the Google Analytics cookie gives us information such as your journey between pages and whether you have downloaded anything (details of how to opt out of it are below).