Cookies Policy

This Cookies Policy sets out the basis on which we, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, use cookies and similar technologies on or in relation to our website, https://www.uclhospitals.brc.nihr.ac.uk (our website). This Cookies Policy is effective from 25th May 2018.

'Essential' cookies are automatically placed on your computer or device when you access our website or take certain actions on our website. 'non-essential' cookies and other technologies are only placed on your computer or device if you have consented to us doing so. For information on the difference between essential and non-essential cookies, see the section below entitled About cookies.

For information on how you consent and how you can withdraw your consent to us placing non-essential cookies and other technologies on your computer or device, see the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies.

Contents

  • About cookies
  • List of cookies used
  • Essential cookies
  • Non-essential cookies
  • How to accept or reject cookies
  • Copyright

About cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small data files sent by a website’s server to a web browser, processor memory or hard drive and stored there. They can be used for a range of different purposes, such as customising a website for a particular user, helping a user navigate a website, improving that user’s website experience, and storing that user’s preferences and login information.

Essential and non-essential cookies

Cookies can be classified as either ‘essential’ or ‘non-essential’.

Essential cookies: these are cookies that are either:

  • used solely to carry out or facilitate the transmission of communications over a network; or
  • strictly necessary to provide an online service (e.g. our website or a service on our website) which you have requested.

Non-essential cookies: these are any cookies that do not fall within the definition of essential cookies, such as cookies used to analyse your behaviour on a website (‘analytical’ cookies) or cookies used to display advertisements to you (‘advertising’ cookies).

Session and persistent cookies

Cookies can be classified as either ‘session’ or ‘persistent’, depending on how long they last after they are placed on your browser.

Session cookies: session cookies last for as long as you keep your browser open. They expire when you close your browser.

Persistent cookies: persistent cookies expire at a fixed point in time or if you manually delete them from your browser, whichever occurs first.

First and third-party cookies

Cookies can be classified as ‘first party’ or ‘third party’.

First party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by our website domain.

Third party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by third party website domains.

If you require further information about cookies in general, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org

List of cookies used

We use the following cookies on or in relation to our website:

Name of Cookie Essential or Non-essential? Type of cookie First or Third party? Session or Persistent? Expiry Time Purpose
has_js Essential Functional First party Session End of browser session Registers whether the user has activated JavaScript in their browser
_gat Non-essential Functional First party Session End of browser session Used by Google Analytics to throttle request rate
_ga Non-essential Analytical First party Persistent 2 years Registers a unique ID to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the website
_gid Non-essential Analytical First party Session End of browser session Registers a unique ID to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the website
r/collect Non-essential Advertising Third party Session End of browser session Collects data to measure efficiency of viewed or clicked ads and shows targeted ads
_NID Non-essential Advertising Third party Persistent 6 months Registers a unique ID that identifies a returning user's device. The ID is used for targeted advertisements

Essential cookies

These are cookies which are strictly necessary for our website to be able to operate or to provide you with a service on our website which you have requested. We use the following essential cookies on our website:

  • a first party functional session cookie which registers whether the user has activated Javascript in their browser. This cookie is called: has_js. This cookie expires at the end of the browser session.

Legal basis for processing: we process information about you contained in or obtained from essential cookies in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation).
Legitimate interests: ensuring our site functions properly and providing you with online services you have requested.

How to opt out of essential cookies

Most browsers allow you to block all cookies, including essential cookies. Please note, however, that if you block all cookies, parts of our website and its functionality may not work or display properly.

You can delete existing cookies from your browser by clearing your browsing data and ensuring that the option to delete cookies is selected.

For more detailed information on how to accept and reject cookies, including guidance for specific browsers, please see the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Non-essential cookies

We use the following types of non-essential cookies on our website:

  • Functional cookies
  • Analytical (or performance) cookies
  • Targeting (or advertising) cookies

Functional cookies

These are cookies that are designed for purposes such as enhancing a website’s functionality. These are either not strictly essential for the website or functionality which you have requested to work or are cookies which serve non-essential purposes in addition to their essential purpose. We use the following functional cookies on our website:

  • a first party Google Analytics session cookie used to regulate the number of requests Google’s servers receive from users. This cookie is called ­_gat.

How to opt in or out from functional cookies

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Processing information about you contained in or obtained from functional cookies

Legal basis for processing: we process information about you contained in or obtained from functional cookies in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation). We will only process such personal information if you have consented to us placing cookies on your computer or device.
Legitimate interests: improving your website experience and providing or enhancing the website’s functionality.

For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of functional cookies, please see the section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: https://www.uclhospitals.brc.nihr.ac.uk/privacy-and-cookies

Analytical (or performance) cookies

Analytical (or performance) cookies track and gather data about what a user does on a website. These cookies are not essential for our website or its functionality to work. We use the following analytical cookies on our website:

  • Google Analytics cookies help us understand how you engage and interact with our website, including how you came to our website, which pages you visited, for how long and what you clicked on, your location (based on your IP address). The cookies we use are: _ga and_gid. The ­­­_ga cookie is a persistent cookie which lasts for two years and _gid is a session cookie. Google Analytics also uses a session cookie called _gat which is described in more detail in the section above entitled ‘functional cookies’.

More information

Google Analytics cookies are classified as first party cookies as they are set by our website domain, although Google collects and processes information from our use of Google Analytics. To find out more about how Google handles information collected from Google Analytics, see Google Analytics’ privacy policy, which is available here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245

For information on how Google uses data from cookies it uses, please visit www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/

How to opt in or out from analytical cookies

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

To opt out of Google Analytics tracking across all websites in general, you can do so here: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Processing information about you contained in or obtained from analytical cookies

Legal basis for processing: we process information about you contained in or obtained from analytical cookies in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation).
Legitimate interests: analysing how individuals use our website to help us improve our website and business. For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of analytical cookies, including profiling, please see the section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: https://www.uclhospitals.brc.nihr.ac.uk/privacy-and-cookies

Targeting (or advertising) cookies

Targeting (or advertising) cookies record information about your visit to and use of our website, for advertising purposes. We use the targeting cookies for the following purposes on our website:

  • a third-party session cookie which collects data to measure efficiency of viewed or clicked advertisements and shows targeted advertisements. This cookie is called: r/collect. This is a session cookie which expired at the end of the browser session.
  • a third party persistent cookie used by Google’s Adsense network which requires a unique ID that identifies a returning user’s device which is used to target advertisements to the user. This cookie is called NID and expires after 6 months.

How to opt in or out from advertising cookies

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Processing information about you contained in or obtained from advertising cookies

Legal basis for processing: consent (Article 6(1)(a) of the General Data Protection Regulation).
Consent: you give your consent to the purposes for which we process your information using advertising cookies by accepting the use of such cookies via our cookie control tool. For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of advertising cookies, including profiling and automated decision-making please see the section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: https://www.uclhospitals.brc.nihr.ac.uk/privacy-and-cookies

Third party cookies

Third parties use cookies to analyse your use of our website and/or to display advertisements (including third party advertisements) to you. Third party cookies used in relation to our website include:

  • a third-party session cookie which collects data to measure efficiency of viewed or clicked advertisements and shows targeted advertisements. This cookie is called: r/collect. This is a session cookie which expires at the end of each browser session.
  • a third-party persistent cookie used by Google’s Adsense network which requires a unique ID that identifies a returning user’s device which is used to target advertisements to the user. This cookie is called NID and expires after 6 months.

More information

For information about the cookies Google uses in relation to the above, see the ‘Advertising’ section on the Types of cookies used by Google page in Google’s cookies policy, which is available here: https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/types/

For information about how Google uses data from cookies for its own purposes, please visit the following link www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/

How to opt in or out from third party cookies

See the section below entitled How to accept or reject cookies

Processing information about you contained in or obtained from advertising cookies

Legal basis for processing: consent (Article 6(1)(a) of the General Data Protection Regulation).
Consent: you give your consent to the purposes for which we process your information using advertising cookies by accepting the use of such cookies via our cookie control tool. For further information on how we use the information gathered from our use of advertising cookies, including profiling and automated decision-making please see the section entitled Our use of automated decision making and profiling in our privacy policy, which is available here: https://www.uclhospitals.brc.nihr.ac.uk/privacy-and-cookies

How to accept or reject cookies

There are a number of different ways in which you can accept or reject some or all cookies. Some of the main methods of doing so are described below.

You are welcome to block the use of some or all of the cookies we use on our website. However, please be aware that doing so may impair our website and its functionality or may even render some or all of it unusable.

You should also be aware that clearing all cookies from your browser will also delete any cookies that are storing your preferences, for example, whether you have accepted cookies on a website or any cookies that are blocking other cookies.

You can find more detailed information about cookies and adjusting your browser settings by visiting www.allaboutcookies.org

Accepting or rejecting cookies

Browser settings

You can accept or reject some or all cookies (for example, blocking all third-party cookies) by adjusting your browser settings. If you do not know how to do this, the links below set out information about how to change your browser settings for some of the most commonly used web browsers:

Some browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox, allow you to change your settings to browse in ‘incognito’ mode, limiting the amount of data placed on your machine and automatically deleting any persistent cookies placed on your device when you finish your browsing session. There are also many third-party applications which you can add to your browser to block or manage cookies.

Existing cookies

To clear cookies that have previously been placed on your browser, you should select the option to clear your browsing history and ensure that the option to delete or clear cookies is included when you do so.

Google Adsettings

You can manage and opt out of personalisation of advertisements by Google by visiting Google’s ad settings page here https://adssettings.google.com/ and by:

  • unticking the button entitled ‘Also use Google Account activity and information to personalize ads on these websites and apps and store that data in your Google Account’; and
  • switching the ‘Ads Personalisation’ setting off (i.e. by ensuring the switch at the top of the page is set to the left/grey and not the right/blue).

Alternatively, you can install a free browser plugin here: https://support.google.com/ads/answer/7395996

Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on

You can opt out of Google Analytics tracking by installing the browser add-on which is available here: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Copyright

The copyright in this Cookies Policy is either owned by, or licensed to, us and is protected by copyright laws around the world and copyright protection software. All intellectual property rights in this document are reserved.