Privacy Statement - Internet Use
If you are a member of the public and decide to access the
Council’s website, please be assured that we do not capture and/or
store any personal information about you but merely log your
internet enabler’s IP address because this is automatically
recognized by the Council’s web server. IP addresses are not linked
to any personal data, so unless you are formally contacting us by
email or completing an on-line form you will retain your
anonymity.
When you email us or complete one of our
on-line forms we will record your email address and any other
information you provide voluntarily to us. Your data is treated
confidentially and will be used only for the purpose or purposes
for which you have provided it. Furthermore, unless the Council are
required to disclose it by law or are permitted to do so, your data
will not be passed to any third parties or shared with other
departments for the Council for any other purposes unless you have
indicated or have previously indicated that you have no objection
to us doing so. However, please be aware that if you post
offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content information on
the Council’s website we may use your personal information to stop
such behaviour continuing. If we reasonably believe that you are or
may be in breach of the law, we may use your personal information
to inform relevant third parties about your behaviour and the
content you have posted. If you are 16 or under you will need to
get your parent’s or guardian’s consent before providing personal
information to us.
Any personal information you provide will be
retained by the Council only for as long as it is reasonably
necessary for the relevant purpose for which you provided it or for
as long as is necessary and reasonable in the circumstances and
also to enable the Council fulfil any statutory or regulatory
requirements.
Please see below the Council policy on
cookies.
This statement may be updated from time to
time.
Cookies
A cookie is a small text file that some websites send to your
computer’s hard drive every time you visit them. The main purpose
of the cookies is to prepare a customized Web experience for users.
When you enter a Web site, you may be asked to provide certain
information such as your name and interests. This information can
be packaged into a cookie and sent to your Web browser which stores
it for later use.
Bedford Borough Council’s website relies on cookies to: give
insight into how useful our website is to our users, so that it can
be updated and improved based on your needs; and to remember the
notifications you’ve seen so that we don’t show them to you again.
Our cookies cannot read other data off your hard disk or read
cookie files created by other sites. We do not use cookies for
collecting personal user information.
Cookies on the Bedford Borough Website
Bedford Borough council uses Google Analytics to see
how visitors use the sites so that we can make the site more
focused on their needs. To do this, the site will collect anonymous
details of visitor behaviour patterns and usage statistics,
whenever users visit any of the Council’s webpages. The
information gathered helps the council to improve our online
services, and is not used to determine the identity of our
visitors.
The cookies used on the Bedford Borough website are as
follows
Cookie
|
Name
|
Further Information
|
|
Google Analytics
|
_utma
_utmb
_utmc
_utmd
_utmv
_utmz
_ga
|
These cookies are used to track visits to the
Council’s websites. The cookies collect information in an anonymous
form, including the number of visitors to the site, the pages that
were visited, the length of time spent on a page and what you click
on whilst visiting the site.
|
|
SiteImprove Analytics
|
Nmstat
|
This cookie is used to register whether or not
a visitor is a returning user. The cookie contains an ID
number.
|
|
SiteImprove Analytics
|
ASP.Net_SessionID
|
This cookie is used to track a visitor’s
current session while they are on the website. The cookie expires
30 minutes after they leave the website.
|
|
Discussion Forum Cookies
|
panelstate_ActiveDiscussions
panelstate_Information
panelstate_categoryPanel7
panelstate_categoryPanel13
panelstate_ProfileLast10Posts
panelstate_ProfileLast10Posts
|
These cookies are required to enable visitors
to participate in threaded online discussions via the Council’s
forum facility.
Contribution to discussions requires a user
account, and these cookies are used to allow authenticated users to
access certain functionality.
|
|
Stay Connected
|
stay_connected_signup
|
This cookie is use to track if users have
signed up to the Stay Connected bulletins.
|
|
AddThis
|
__atuvc
|
This cookie is created and read by the AddThis
social sharing site JavaScript on the client side in order to make
sure the user sees the updated count if they share a page and
return to it before our share count cache is updated.
No data from that cookie is sent back to AddThis and removing it
when disabling cookies would cause unexpected behaviour for
users.
|
What if I disable cookies on the Bedford Borough website?
You can adjust your computer to accept all, some or
alternatively, not to accept any cookies at all. However,
disabling or even partially disabling cookies on the Council’s
website may have an impact on your web experience, and possibly
restrict or even preclude the Council from being able to contact
and assist you in certain circumstances.
How can I enable / disable / delete cookies?
The majority of browsers (i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox,
Google Chrome, Apple Safari, etc) allow for universal privacy
setting which are applied to all websites visited, when using that
browser. Differing browsers offer differing ways to manage
cookies, which is done via the browsers privacy settings. The
help function within your browser should be able to assist you with
this. Further information about cookies, including how to see
what cookies have been set as well as how to manage them, can be
found by visiting https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/cookies/
