Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognises such cookies. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognise your device.
The use of cookies and similar technologies is not limited to traditional websites and web browsers. Mobile applications which commonly communicate with websites and web services also can set cookies. Cookies do lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages smoothly and efficiently, remembering your preferences, and generally improve the user experience. They can also help to ensure that advertisements you see online are more relevant to you and your interests. The category of the cookies used on our website, dwp’s website, is set out below.
Strictly necessary cookies
These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around our website and to provide services and features on our website, such as delivering interactive services (i.e. online banking services, mobile application, etc.) and accessing secure areas of our website. Without these cookies, our website or some functions cannot properly operate, including some services you have asked for, and cannot be provided.
Performance cookies
These cookies collect information about how you use our website, for instance pages you visit on our website, pages you go to most often, and links you might click on. These cookies do not collect information that identifies you. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. We use this type of cookie to understand how you use our online services and website so as to improve how our website works and improve performance of our services.
Functionality cookies
These cookies help our website to remember information or choices you make (such as your username, language or the region you are in) and provide more personalized features (such as where a website may remember font sizes, or be able to provide you with ability to speak to customer services through a live chat). These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to font size, font type and other parts of web pages that you can customize. The information these cookies collect may be anonymised and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.
Targeting cookies or advertising cookies
These cookies are used to deliver advertisements more relevant to you and your interests and to limit the number of times you see general advertisements as well as help measure the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns. These cookies will be placed by advertising networks (e.g. Facebook, Google, etc.) with our permission and will remember how you have visited our website and information may be shared with other organizations such as advertisers. Quite often targeting or advertising cookies will be linked to website functionality provided by the other organizations. In the event that these cookies are used to collect, use or disclose your personal data, we will obtain your consent or proceed in accordance with personal data protection laws.
By using our website, you acknowledge that we will place these types of cookies for the above purposes. We may additionally collect, use or disclose your personal data forming part of such cookies, for the purposes set out in our Privacy Notice.
When we include links to third-party websites, please bear in mind that such third parties may have their own cookie policies. We recommend you read their policies before using their websites.