Most websites you visit will use cookies in order to improve your user experience by enabling that website to ‘remember’ you, either for the duration of your visit (using a ‘session cookie’) or for repeat visits (using a ‘persistent cookie’).

Cookies do lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently, storing your preferences, and generally improving your experience of a website.

Cookies make the interaction between you and the website faster and easier. If a website doesn’t use cookies, it will think you are a new visitor every time you move to a new page on the site – for example, when you enter your login details and move to another page it won’t recognise you and it won’t be able to keep you logged in.

Some websites will also use cookies to enable them to target their advertising or marketing messages based for example, on your location and/or browsing habits.

Cookies may be set by the website you are visiting (‘first party cookies’) or they may be set by other websites who run content on the page you are viewing (‘third party cookies’).

What is in a cookie?
A cookie is a simple text file that is stored on your computer or mobile device by a website’s server and only that server will be able to retrieve or read the contents of that cookie. Each cookie is unique to your web browser. It will contain some anonymous information such as a unique identifier and the site name and some digits and numbers. It allows a website to remember things like your preferences or what’s in your shopping basket.

What to do if you don’t want cookies to be set
Some people find the idea of a website storing information on their computer or mobile device a bit intrusive, particularly when this information is stored and used by a third party without them knowing. Although this is generally quite harmless you may not, for example, want to see advertising that has been targeted to your interests. If you prefer, it is possible to block some or all cookies, or even to delete cookies that have already been set; but you need to be aware that you might lose some functions of that website.

How we use cookies
We store two ‘persistent cookies’, one cookie to register that you have visited the site and one to record information about your visit – such as the web browser that you are using and which pages you are visiting. We use this information to ensure the site works for our different users’ browsers. These cookies are optional.

We store one ‘session cookie’ when you login to our site. This cookie is used to keep you logged in. This cookie is required. If you disable ‘session cookies’ for our site then you will not be able to login.

Cookies we store on your device
learning.myncfe.org.uk, myskillsforward.co.uk & mysf.co.uk (also including any other domains which point to the Skills Assessment platform such as learn.forskills.co.uk)
MOODLEID_ – used to remember your username
MoodleSession – used for authenticate
MoodleSessionTest – used for browser capability checks
_ga – Google analytics cookie, used for monitoring site usage
_gid – Google analytics cookie, used for monitoring site usage

Skills GO App (Google Play/Apple App Store)
io – Used for authentication
session – Used for authentication
session.sig – Used for authentication