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Cookies, LearnGaelic and your privacy

As part of our drive to be compliant with the new EU directive on cookies, we list on this page all the cookies used by the LearnGaelic site, and their purpose.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files left on your computer by many websites. They are generally used so that sites can remember you as you move around on the internet. For instance, when you add books to your basket on Amazon, a cookie is used to make sure those are the books you end up buying when you move to the check-out. Some cookies, however, are used by sites in ways which may affect your privacy. They may (for example) allow you to be tracked across the internet and use information about your browsing habits to show you certain targeted adverts.

LearnGaelic makes very sparing use of cookies (and certainly does not track your visits to any other websites).

Essential cookies

Essential cookies are cookies needed by the site to allow it to function. LearnGaelic uses three such cookies. If you are using cookie-blocking software we do not recommend you block these cookies.

We set what are called session-tracking cookie (JSESSIONID). These just let the web server know it is the same person viewing different pages within LearnGaelic, meaning it can be more efficient with what data it sends down the line to you.

We also set a cookie that helps us with our load-balancing technology (AWSELB): this means that even if one of our servers breaks you should still be able to view and use the site. Neither of these cookies is used to identify you personally in any way, and they do not store any data about you or your browsing habits.

The map of courses uses a cookie (LG_PREFERRED_LOCATION) to remember which default map view you have chosen. It has no other function.

Non-essential cookies

LearnGaelic also uses some cookies that are not essential to the site's functioning. If you are using cookie-blocking software you may block these cookies, although some minor functionality may be affected.

These cookies come from third-party websites or services: Google Analytics, Twitter and Facebook.

Google Analytics is widely used by many sites. LearnGaelic uses it to find out how many people come to the site each week, what pages they visit, and (just as importantly) don't visit. It is done anonymously: we have no way of identifying who you are, what you're called, where you live (although we do get an indication of which countries our users come from) or any other "personal" data. All the Google Analytics cookies have "__utm" at the start of their names.

Since we embed content from Twitter and Facebook within our site, you may also have cookies from these two companies set on your computer as a result of visiting LearnGaelic. These cookies are governed by the policies of Twitter and Facebook, and they pass no information about your online activities to LearnGaelic. They can easily be identified by the domains from which they originate.

More info

For any questions or concerns you may have about our use of cookies, please email the LearnGaelic webmaster. You may also refuse non-essential cookies at any time by clicking on the Privacy settings link (found at the bottom right of most pages within the site) and updating your preferences.