The Student Room Group cookie policy

The Student Room is part of The Student Room Group. Here's how it uses cookies and what they are.

1. What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files stored in your computer, tablet or mobile phone’s internet browser (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Safari). They are used by websites to improve services for you, to find out more information about the popularity of a website and for delivering more relevant advertising.

Cookies may be session cookies or persistent cookies. A session cookie will only last during your session on a website and will expire when the session ends, e.g. when you close your web browser. A persistent cookie will remain stored in the web browser until the expiry date, unless is it deleted by the user before that date.

2. How does The Student Room Group use cookies?

The Student Room Group uses cookies on the each of the following websites (hereafter referred to as "sites" throughout this policy):

  • TheStudentRoom.co.uk
  • TheUniGuide.co.uk

Cookies may be used on each site for a number of purposes:

a. Site preference and session cookies

We use cookies to remember some of your preferences. Examples include:

  • whether you want certain features to be active
  • what your settings are for certain features
  • whether you have completed certain actions, so we know not to prompt you again or remember the next time you do it
  • to record certain interactions on our sites, such as short-listing courses
  • to remember when your last visit to the site was and activity carried out during your visit
  • to keep you logged in to your member account for a period of time while you use the site, known as a "session"
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  • to keep you logged in to your member account until your next visit, so you don't have to log in again

b. Facebook, Google, Apple and Twitter cookies

Our sites have buttons across the sites to help you post our content to your Facebook and Twitter profiles. If you choose to use one or both of these buttons, Facebook or Twitter will use cookies for them to work.

When there is an option to register or login using Facebook, Google or Apple accounts, cookies for these services will be used to enable these features to work.

You can find out more in the FacebookGoogleApple and Twitter privacy notices.

c. Analytics and activity cookies

We use Google Analytics software to monitor the number of people visiting the website, which uses a cookie to collect this information.

Google Analytics only collects anonymous aggregate data, i.e. we cannot tell who you are or link data back to a specific username, and everyone’s data is shown as a whole, not individually. We use this only for statistical purposes to tell us information like how many people are new to the site or have visited before and which pages are the most popular.

We use cookies to segment visitors who use our site. This uses cookies to identify individuals within and across sessions. The information is used to identify the sizes of different segment and to personalise experiences on our sites, including content and ad; or to allow us to do testing of site features. (e.g. Permutive and Google Optimize).

We use other cookies to monitor site activity in order to manage and optimise resources and protect against malicious traffic (e.g. Cloudflare, New Relic).

d. Advertising cookies

Our sites are primarily funded by advertising. Often, we need to know whether you have seen an advert and the time since you last saw it. This is to stop you from seeing the same advert repeatedly.

To be able to do this cookies are used to say when a particular advert has been shown in your browser. The systems we currently use to do this are called Google Ad Manager, Google Video and Display 360 and Facebook and on their websites you can find out more information and change your settings for these cookies.

However, by opting out you will see less relevant advertising and are likely to see the same adverts more frequently.

Google Ad Manager / Video and Display 360 – info - opt out
Facebook – info – settings

e. Third party advertising cookies

A number of adverts shown across our sites are delivered by other third-party companies called networks. These companies use their own cookies for tracking the success of their adverts and for customisations to you. The Student Room Group does not have access to these cookies and nor do these companies have access to the cookies we use on our site. Third party advertising cookies cannot be linked to your personal data we process. You can turn off third party advertising cookies and manage other advertising settings by visiting the Your Online Choices control page or the NAI Consumer Opt-Out page.

f. Other third-party cookies

Sometimes we will use other third-party cookies to help improve the functionality of the site or to find out more information about our audience but in an anonymous way.

We may include cookies for services which obtain feedback from site visitors on how they use the sites or ask how they feel about the sites (e.g. MopinionHotjar).

Cookies will be set when viewing embedded videos (e.g. YouTube).

Occasionally we also use a service called Skimlinks which adds links to words on the site that you can click to buy products. Skimlinks uses a cookie to associate your purchase to The Student Room so that we earn a referral fee. You can read more information on this service and opt out of their cookie on the Skim Links opt out page.

3. Can I use your sites without cookies?

You can access our sites without using cookies, however you won’t be able to log in because this functionality requires cookies to remember who you are. You may also find certain features which rely on cookies do not work. Also, by turning cookies off you will see less relevant advertising and are likely to see the same adverts more often.

4. How do I manage my cookies?

Cookies are saved to the browser, so to turn off any cookie you will have to do so for each browser you use. Usually most people have concerns about the use of cookies by third party advertising companies. These cookies do not collect any personal information and are only used to tailor advertising to be more relevant for you. As mentioned above, you can turn off third party advertising cookies on the Your Online Choices control page.

Alternatively, you can turn off all cookie use within your browser by following the instructions on the below pages:

5. Where can I read more information?

You can read more information by visiting the ICO and Your Online Choices.