Most online platforms use cookies. They act as a website's digital memory, making sites work better and feel more useful on repeat visits, and do serve a number of important functions, including to remember a user and their previous interactions with a website, and to keep track of their preferences, enabling essential functions like login sessions, shopping carts, language settings, and personalised content but they can also allow sites to track usage for analytics or targeted ads.
Cookies are stored on your device and contain personal data as an IP address, a username, a unique identifier, or an email address. Advertising IDs, user IDs, and other tracking IDs may also be contained in cookies.
Cookies can be used to trace users’ activity online (including to make a profile of each user and provide them with tailored ads). They can be used, for example, to keep track of items in an online shopping cart or to keep track of information when you input details into an online application form.
In the 2025 survey, respondents were asked if they had changed the settings in their internet browser to prevent or limit cookies on any of their devices, and did they use software that limits the ability to track their online activities.
Note: The data presented in this release relates to individuals aged 16 years and over who used the internet in the three months prior to completing the survey.
At an overall level, almost four in ten (37%) males limited the tracking of their movements online by using anti-tracking software that limits the ability of cookies to track their activities online, compared with just over one in five (22%) females.
Males (48%) were slightly more likely than females (43%) to change their browser settings to prevent or limit cookies. Analysis by sex and age group shows that younger males aged 16 to 29 years were most likely to take this preventative measure (53%) compared with 23% of older males aged 75 years and over.
Almost one-quarter (23%) of older internet users aged 75 years and over were likely to take such preventative measures as changing the settings in their browser to prevent or limit cookies or using anti-tracking software that limits the ability of cookies to track their activities online.
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