COOKIES AND HOW WE USE THEM

WHAT ARE COOKIES?

Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognises that cookie. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognise a user’s device and to target the content displayed to the user’s interests.

TYPES OF COOKIES

There are two broad types of cookies – ‘first party cookies’ and ‘third party cookies’:

First party cookies are cookies that are served directly by the website operator to your computer, and are often used to recognise your computer when it revisits that site and to remember your preferences as you browse the site. Basically, these are our cookies.

Third party cookies are served by a service provider on behalf of the website operator, and can be used by the service provider to recognise your computer when you visit other web sites. Third party cookies are most commonly used for web site analytics or advertising purposes.

In addition, cookies may be either ‘session cookies’ or ‘persistent cookies’. Your computer automatically removes session cookies once you close your browser. Persistent cookies will survive on your computer until an expiry date specified in the cookie itself, is reached. We use both session and persistent cookies.

CATEGORIES OF COOKIES WE USE

1. Strictly necessary cookies: These cookies are essential for the user to move around the website and to use its features, e.g. shopping baskets and e-billing.

2. Performance cookies: These cookies collect information about how the user makes use of the site, e.g. which pages the user visits most. These cookies do not collect information that identifies the user.

3. Functionality cookies: These cookies remember choices made by or attributes of the user and enhance the features and content you experience during your visit to our website, e.g. language, appeals visited or user’s location. This cookie is also used to remember a user’s preferences for a font size, or customisable parts of a web page.

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT USING COOKIES?

We may collect some, or all, of the information available from cookies when you visit our website, depending on how you use it. We monitor how people use our website so we can improve it. We collect this information anonymously.

However, you can choose to use our website anonymously without giving us any information. Please see ‘Changing your cookie preferences’ below.

• If you visit our website, we may use cookies to record information about:
• the areas of the website you visit;
• the amount of time you spend on the site;
• whether you are new to the site, or have visited it before;
• the country, region, city and/or borough associated with your IP address or device;
• how you came to our website – for example, through an email link or a search engine;
• the type of device and browser you use;
• how you use the website and the quality of your experience – for example we may track your bandwidth when viewing videos;
• how you interact with our donation and sign up forms – for example what you select as your communication preferences; and
• any error messages that you receive on the site

We use cookies to track how visitors come to our site. For example, we use marketing or referring tracking codes in internet addresses (URLs) to show us whether a visitor has come to our site via a link on a referring website or in a specific piece of marketing and to give us insight into the effectiveness of our marketing. Some of this information may be used by third party cookies to target you with relevant advertising (see below).

Although not through cookies, we do measure the success of the emails we send – so we know what subject lines and stories people liked the most. We receive this information anonymously; we don’t share this information.

Last updated: December 2023