Reading Buses’ Use of Cookies

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small file that a website saves to your computer, phone or tablet.

  • A cookie will typically contain the name of the website from which the cookie has come, the 'lifetime' of the cookie, and a value, usually a randomly generated unique number.
  • We cannot identify you personally by using a cookie. Cookies store no personal data and are not used to gather personal information.

How we use cookies

  • Reading Open Data Service website (“the Website”) uses “cookies” to optimise your experience, by collecting statistics about your use of the Website, such as when you last visited, enabling favourites locations to be stored for your next visit the next time you use the website and to assist us in embedding elements such as maps.
  • Note that the Website does not collect (nor allow any third party to collect) or associate any data gathered to personal and sensitive information (“Personal Identifiable Data”) of users by means of cookies. However, some Personal Identifiable Data is collected by the service, by other means (via user registration). Please refer to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for more information on the use of Personal Identifiable Data.

Enabling or disabling cookies

  • When you use the Website, you will see a cookie pop-up welcome message. You have the choice to enable or disable the Website cookies.
  • We recommend that you allow all cookies set by this site as they help us provide you with a better service.
  • If you decide to delete or disable our cookies then you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our website.
  • Information about how to enable or disable cookies is available on the about cookies website.
  • Cookies used by the Website, do not infringe on your privacy or threaten your computer's security.

Changing cookie settings

We use a variety of cookies. You can decide which ones you want us to use.

Necessary Cookies

The Website needs to set some necessary cookies in order to function and cannot work without them.

Name Typical content Expires
XSRF-TOKEN This protects you from cross site request forgery attacks and is used to verify that you are the person actually making the requests to the application. 2hours
reading_open_data_service_session This is used to manage options you have selected on the site such as the bus stop that you are viewing. 2hours
Random Texts This is used to manage options you have selected on the site such as the bus stop that you are viewing. 2hours
cookie_settings This is used to store the cookie settings and provide a way for the site to know if and what you have consented to. Persistent

Google Analytics

The Website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google. Google Analytics collects first party cookies, which are text files placed on your computer to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour. This information is sent to Google and is used to evaluate how our website is being used. Google Analytics doesn't identify who you are, but it does track your movements on our websites. This enables Reading Buses to compile statistical reports. A full list of cookies used by Google Analytics and explanations on how these work are available on the Google code website.

Name Typical content Expires
_ga Registers a unique ID that is used to generate stats on how the visitor uses the website 2 years
_gat Used by Google Analytics to throttle request rate 1 day
_gid Registers a unique ID that is used to generate stats on how the visitor uses the website 1 day

You can opt out of Google Analytics cookies.

How to change cookie settings in the browser

Most web browsers allow you to control cookies through your browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set.

Find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:

To find information relating to other browsers, visit the browser developer's website.