Cookies

This site sets three cookies, all its own. fh_session holds a random identifier for your signed-in session and nothing else, and it is the only reason the site knows who you are as you move from page to page; signing out deletes it, at your end and at ours. fh_pending exists only between typing your password and typing the code from your authenticator app: it says which account is half way in, is signed so it cannot be forged, and expires after five minutes. fh_device is set only if you ask this browser to be remembered when you type that code: it holds a random token, lasts thirty days, and means this browser is not asked for a code again in that time. Changing your password, turning the second step off, or signing this device out ends it at our end whatever your browser is still holding.

All three are marked httpOnly, so no script running on the page can read them, and sameSite=lax, so they are not sent with a form another website submits to this one, or with anything another website loads from it in the background — only when you follow a link here yourself. Over https they are marked secure as well.

Videos, if you press play

Your adviser may add learning videos hosted by YouTube, Vimeo or Google Drive. Nothing from those companies loads until you press play on one. When you do, their player is loaded inside the page — YouTube’s privacy-enhanced version, and Vimeo’s with tracking turned off — and it is theirs: it may set its own cookies and tells them your address, as any video they serve would. If you would rather it did not, do not press play.

What we do not set

There is no analytics cookie and no advertising cookie. Nothing here counts which pages you open or how long you spend on them, and no other company is given a way to. The site keeps nothing else in your browser either — no local storage, no session storage, no fingerprinting.

Why there is nothing to click

A cookie that is strictly necessary to provide a service you asked for is exempt from consent under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. All three of ours are — the third is part of signing in rather than a preference — and a video player is loaded only because you pressed play on it. Consent is required for the cookies that follow people around, and this site sets none of them — so a banner here would be asking you to agree to something that is not happening. If that ever changes, this page changes with it and the banner arrives at the same time.

The rest of it

What happens to the documents you upload, where your records are kept and who can technically read them is a bigger question than cookies, and it is answered in full here.