Policy
This is our policy on the use of cookies on www.cybersecurity.gov.mt. We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time to reflect any changes in technology or legislation affecting the way we use cookies and how you, as a user, can manage them.
Our website, like many others, uses small files called cookies to help it function properly and offer you a fun, customized experience.
If you haven’t already read our Privacy Policy, we just want to reiterate, that we are required to obtain your consent for certain cookies.
We hope that this cookie policy will help you better understand what types of cookies we use and why we use them.
- What are cookies?
Cookies are small files which are stored by your browser on your computer, tablet or smartphone. Each cookie is designed to hold different types of data specific to a particular user (yourself) and the website (us). This allows us to deliver a better experience tailored to each of our users, whether it’s directly from our website or through one of our social media pages.
- What cookies do we use?
The cookies active on our website can be categories as follows. The first three being the most essential to the successful operation of our website. If you choose to prevent these cookies, you may not be able to use the site or its functionality, nor can we be certain that our site security controls will function properly during your visit.
- Strictly necessary
- Performance
- Functionality
- Targeting
Strictly necessary
These cookies let you move around the site and use essential features. These cookies do not collect data that can be used for marketing or remembering where you’ve been on the internet.
These are used to:
- Make sure you connect to the right service on our website when we make any changes to the way the site works.
- To route you to the specific areas you have requested when navigating through the site.
- Remember the information you have entered on contact forms.
Performance
These cookies collect information about how you use our site. These cookies do not collect data that could identify you and are only used to help us improve our site and how it works. They also help us understand our users’ interests and measure our effectiveness.
These are used for:
- Analytics – provide us with statistical data on how our site is used.
- Affiliates – lets our partners know how if our users visited their site or vice versa.
- Error and content management – helps us monitor errors and content usage to solve any issues and help optimize our content.
- Maintaining and testing designs – lets our web developers maintain the current site and possibly test for new designs.
Functionality
These cookies are used to provide our services and remember your settings to improve your visit.
These are used to:
- Remember if we’ve already asked you if you have read and understood our cookies.
- Remember your settings (if any).
Some of these cookies are managed for us by third parties. Where this is the case, we don’t permit the third party to use the cookies for any purpose other than those listed above.
Targeting
These cookies are linked to services by third parties and are placed through our site for our advertising service providers. They work by uniquely identifying your browser and device. These cookies are not necessary for the function of the site and can choose to not allow them.
These are used to:
- Link to our social media pages.
- Provide advertisers (directly or indirectly) with information on your visit.
- Provide data for audience research and segments.
If you want a full, detailed list of cookies please read Annex 1 below.
- Consent and withdrawal
If you choose to accept and consent to certain cookies, your browser will remember this for the next time. All cookies will expire periodically (depending on the cookie and type of data collected).
You may choose to withdraw consent at any time. You will need to do this by changing some of your browser settings.
To understand how to better do this, please visit www.cookiepedia.co.uk/how-to-manage-cookies or www.aboutcookies.org/how-to-delete-cookies/ .
- More information about cookies
If you would like to know more about cookies and how they work, we recommend you have a look at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/
Annex 1 – Site Cookies
| Provider | Name | Type | Purpose | Duration |
| Google Analytics | _ga | Performance | The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, camapign data and keep track of site usage for the site’s analytics report. | 2 years |
| _gid | Performance | The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. | 1 day | |
| Google Universal Analytics | _gat | Performance | This cookies is used to throttle the request rate to limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. | 1 minute |
| DoubleClick (Google) | NID | Targeting | This cookies is by DoubleClick (owned by Google) to help build a profile of the user’s interests and show the user relevant ads on the site. | 6 months |
| test_cookie | Strictly Necessary | Used to check if the user’s browser supports cookies. | 1 day | |
| cybersecurity.gov.mt | cookieconsent_status | Functionality | Enables the user to accept the cookie statement and remembers the accept/decline. | 1 year |
Annex 2 – Third-Party Cookies
| Provider | Name | Type | Purpose | Duration |
| gov.mt | randa2 | Strictly Necessary | Remember E-ID session. | Session |
| act | Functionality | This cookies is used to distinguish between 2 sessions for the same user. | Session | |
| c_user | Functionality | Contains the user ID for the logged in user. | 1 year / session. Depends if the user clicked the “Keep me logged in” checkbox of Facebook. | |
| datr | Functionality | Identifies the web-browser being used to log into Facebook. | 2 years | |
| dpr | Performance | Allows to measure how users move between devices, to build audiences for advertising campaigns. | 1 week | |
| fr | Targeting | Advertising cookie used to deliver, measure and improve the relevancy of ads. | 1 year | |
| locale | Functionality | Contains the display locale of the last logged in user. Set after user logs out. | 1 week | |
| presence | Functionality | Used by Facebook to contain the user’s chat state. | Session | |
| sb | Performance | Used by Facebook to improve friend suggestion. | 2 years | |
| spin | Targeting | Used by Facebook or advertising | 1 day | |
| wd | Functionality | This cookie stores the browser window dimensions and is used by Facebook to optimise the rendering of the page. | 1 week | |
| xs | Functinality | A Facebook cookie used to maintain a session. It works in conjunction with the c_user cookie to authenticate your identity to Facebook. | 1 year | |
| 1P_JAR | Targeting | This cookie is used by Google to gather website statistics, and track conversion rates. | Session | |
| ANID | Targeting | These cookies are used for ad personalization, and may be used by other third-party services, such as YouTube, to show you more relevant ads. | 1 year | |
| CGIC | Functionality | These cookies are used by Google to store user preferences and information when viewing pages with Google maps on them. | Session | |
| CONSENT | Functionality | Used by Google Advertising to provide relevant advertising. | 20 years | |
| NID | Functionality | This cookie contains a unique ID Google uses to remember your preferences and other information, such as your preferred language | 6 months | |
| SNID | Functionality | Set when the user views a page containing any one of a number of Google services (including ReCAPTCHA, etc) | 6 months |