What are cookies?

Cookies contain small textual information that are placed on your computer or other device for a variety of purposes; these range from enabling users to access particular parts of a website and enhancing users’ experience to obtaining information on site usage by users. Cookies are not generally used to identify you personally.

There are two types of cookies which we place on your device when you first visit our site: Essential cookies, in particular the site-operation cookies (which, for example, enable smooth use of our complaint and number-checker service), and non-essential cookies, i.e., Google Analytics cookies. Other essential cookies may need to be placed on your device when you choose to use certain parts of our website, such as logging in to our registration database and connecting to social media via our website. Further details of cookies we use are provided below under the type, purpose and intrusiveness of our cookies.

Providing us with your consent for cookies

The law requires that we provide you with information on the cookies we use and obtain your consent to place non-essential cookies on your device. By clicking on the “Accept all cookies” button when you first visit our website, you are giving us your consent to both essential and non-essential cookies being placed on your device. If you do not wish us to use non-essential cookies, you can turn these off easily by referring to the information provided in the “non-essential cookies (Google Analytics)” section below.  Please note that if you clear your cache or browser history at a later point, you may be required to provide us with your consent again before you can use our website by clicking on the “Accept cookies” button.

Setting Your Preferences - How to control and delete cookies 

We will not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you. However, you can disable all cookies by changing your browser settings. Please be aware that restricting or disabling cookies which are essential to the operation of our website may impact on the functionality of our website. You can restrict or disable cookies through your browser settings. The ‘Help’ function within your browser should tell you how.

Alternatively, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of browsers. You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your machine as well as more general information about cookies.

If you wish to view your cookie code, just click on a cookie to open it. You'll see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie. For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone, you will need to refer to your handset manual.

To opt-out of third parties collecting any data regarding your interaction on our website, please refer to their websites for further information.

The type, purpose and intrusiveness of our cookies:

Phone-paid Services Authority website (www.psauthority.org.uk)

Cookie name	Purpose	Expiration
ASP.NET_SessionId	An anonymised session cookie that is essential for the normal operation of the Phone-paid Services Authority website.	This cookie expires once the browser session ends.
CookieControl	This cookie is used by our cookie control and consent tool to remember the cookie preferences selected by the user.	This cookie expires after 3 months.
_RequestVerificationToken	This is an anonymised anti-forgery token which helps to protect our forms from CSRF attacks.	This cookie expires once the browsing session ends.
_GRECAPTCHA	This cookie is set by Google reCAPTCHA, which protects our forms from bots and spam. More information can be found in Google's privacy policy.	This cookie expires after 6 months.
_ga _gali _gat _gid	These are optional cookies used by Google Analytics to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to help us improve the services we offer.	These are persistent cookies expiring after 2 years. More information can be found on the Google Analytics website.