Introduction

FutureLearn website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and allows us to improve our site. This document will inform you about how and why we use cookies. You’ll also find out which cookies we use and learn about third parties that place cookies on our website.

What is a cookie?

Cookies are small text files that are stored on your device and help us make your experience better and more efficient. They help us recognise your device and browser, and store information we consider important for improving our services.

Types of cookies

Session Cookies and Persistent Cookies

• Session cookies are stored temporarily in the memory of your devices while you’re visiting the website and are erased once you close your browser.
• Persistent Cookies are stored for a predetermined amount of time, which varies from cookie to cookie. It’s longer than the session cookies; however, they also expire after a few months. They aid us in understanding whether you have previously visited our website or similar sites in the past.

First Party and Third Party Cookies

• First Party cookies are set directly by the website or by any of the subdomains of the website.
• Third Party cookies are set by websites not managed by us, such as our subprocessors or other technology partners.

How do we use cookies?

• Options for logging in that will authenticate you on the website, keep your login session active, and remember how you prefer to store your login information;
• Tabbed information that keeps track of the tab or specific part of the website you’re looking at;
• Regional content to deliver material specific to a region and keep track of time zone settings;
• Language preferences to choose and remember the language in which material is shown;
• The capability of the device to deliver various content depending on the browser device being used.

What cookies do we use?

Essential cookies
We may store cookies on your device if they are necessary to enable us to offer and provide our services. They’re also required for you to navigate through the website and web application and benefit from all the available functions. These cookies cannot be switched off and are set for very basic options on the website, such as logging in, forms and setting preferences, such as time zone or languages.

Analytical cookies
These cookies are placed to aid us in understanding how you interact with the available options on the website, which parts you use the most, and how you engage with our services. This helps us generate statistics on how the website is used and how much time you spend on it. These statistics will ultimately help us to improve our website and any services we offer on it.

Personalisation cookies
Personalisation cookies are a type of cookie used to personalise the user’s experience on a website or application. They’re designed to collect and store information about the user’s behaviour, preferences, and interests to provide a more tailored and relevant experience.

Marketing cookies
These cookies track your online activity to help advertisers deliver more relevant advertising or to limit how many times you see an ad. These cookies can share that information with other organisations or advertisers. These are persistent cookies and almost always of third-party provenance.

How to block cookies

You may stop or restrict the placement of cookies and other tracking technologies, such as pixel tags. You do this by blocking them on your device or by removing them and adjusting preferences on your browser. This may vary from device to device and from browser to browser. Please see the links below for guidance on how to modify your web browser’s settings on the most popular browsers:

Microsoft Edge

Internet Explorer

Mozilla Firefox

Google Chrome

Apple Safari

Opera

Netscape

Once you correctly block cookies on your browser, parts of the website may become unavailable to you or may otherwise not function properly.

How to opt out of third-party cookies and targeted ads

To opt out of tracking analytics placed by Google, you can opt out by using this form. This works for all websites that use Google’s services to track and gather analytics data.

To understand and responsibly manage cookies that enable interested-based ads we strongly recommend that you go to the website of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) or to the website of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI).

To learn more, please visit https://youradchoices.com/. Many of our third-party service providers that serve interest-based advertisements to you across our services are members of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), or they follow the DAA’s Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising. You can choose to opt out directly from these third parties by visiting their opt-out pages on the NAI website (http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/ ) and DAA website (http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ ). However, please note that if you “opt out” you will keep seeing links and online advertisements; however, they’ll not be specifically targeted to you or tailored to your interests.

Changes to this Policy

More details on how we and/or other companies use cookies is available at www.cookiesandyou.com .

If you have any queries regarding this Cookie Policy please contact us, we’ll be happy to answer any questions you have about this Cookie Policy.