About Cookies

To use the shopping cart system and secure on-line ordering on the Labcenter Electronics site, you must have your browser set to accept 'cookies'.

A "cookie" is a small amount of information (typically a few hundred bytes) that is returned as part of a web page and which your web browser saves to your hard disk. Whenever you revisit that website and request either that page or another page in the same location, your browser automatically returns the text to the web server along with the request for the page.

There is some concern that cookies can access and read other areas of your hard drive, or that personal information about you can be read by the web site. It is important to note that the return of a cookie to a website is done by your browser: it is your browser that detects that you are requesting a page for which it has a cookie and it is your browser that sends the cookie along with the request to the web site. Web sites do not themselves have access to your cookies - they cannot check what cookies are on your disk or what is in them.

Further, your web browser will send only the information that is in the cookie (the information originally generated by the web site) back to the web site that generated it. It will not send any other information nor will it send a cookie generated by one site to any other site.

Nearly all e-commerce sites (ours included) allow you to add items to a shopping cart as you browse the site. In general such e-commerce sites use a cookie to keep track of what is currently in your shopping cart. When you add an item to your shopping cart the web site sends back a cookie with the details in it. When ever you add further items to your cart or when you finally go to the checkout your web browser automatically forwards the cookie to the web site so that it always knows what is in your basket. Even where the contents of the shopping cart are recorded by the web site, the web site still uses a cookie in order to assign each customer a unique ID so that it knows which shopping cart goes with which customer.

The Labcenter Electronics web site generates three cookies:

  • A cookie is used by the e-commerce system to keep track of the items in your shopping cart. The cookie is set to expire (be automatically deleted by your web browser) after twenty-four hours.

  • After placing an on-line order the details you enter as your customer details (including your name, company, address, telephone number and e-mail address) are stored in a cookie. Your credit card details are never stored in a cookie.

    The cookie is set to expire after about ten years and so remains on your computer for this time unless your browser needs the space for other cookies.

  • After placing an on-line order your Labcenter Electronics customer number is stored in a cookie.

    The cookie is set to expire after about ten years and so remains on your computer for this time unless your browser needs the space for other cookies.

The following sections explain how to enable cookies in various browsers:

Enabling Cookies with Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher:

  1. Start Internet Explorer
  2. From the Tools menu, choose Internet Options.
  3. Click the Security tab.
  4. From the list of zones at the top of the dialogue box choose the zone that the Labcenter Electronics web site is located in.
    If you are not sure which zone to choose, choose the Internet zone. This is the zone that the site will be in by default.
  5. Click the Custom Level button.
  6. Scroll down to the Cookies section
    In the Allow cookies that are stored on your computer section select Enable or Prompt button. The second option will prompt you whenever a website tries to write a cookie to your machine. This will allow you to accept or decline the cookie. If you decide to choose this option make sure that you select OK whenever navigating our site you are prompted to accept a cookie.
  7. Select OK.
  8. Internet Explorer should ask you Are you sure you want to change the Internet settings for this zone? Click Yes.
  9. Select OK to close the Internet Options dialogue box.
    You should now be able to add items to the shopping cart. If you still find yourself unable to place items in the shopping cart please try closing down Internet Explorer and restarting it.

For more information, go to http://www.microsoft.com/info/cookies.htm

UK