Privacy and Cookie Notice
This information below relates to our main corporate website at
www.northumberland.gov.uk.
Privacy notice
- Our website doesn't automatically gather or store
any information that would personally identify you.
- If you choose to give us personal information by
completing our web forms online, you can be sure that we and,
where applicable, our partners will do all we can to keep your
information safe.
- We will only ever disclose someone's information if there is a
very good legal reason to do so, in keeping with our registration
under the Data
Protection Act 1998.
- We will never sell your information to third parties like
marketing companies.
When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful
and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet,
this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on
your device, for example, computer or mobile phone. These
include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to
identify you personally.
You can visit our site and use the majority of its services
without telling us who you are or giving us any person-identifying
information.
The Council does not use cookies for the general running of the
site. However, cookies may be used on some interactive pages
to provide additional functionality or when it is absolutely
necessary to maintain the unique identification of your browser
while you use those pages.
From 26 May 2011 a new European Union
directive requires us to gain the consent of our
users to download cookies on to their machines. There are
various methods we could use to gain users consent. For example, we
could use pop-ups; prompting users to tick a box to
confirm they give permission for us to download cookies on their
machine. Alternatively, we could use an online form that all users
must complete before using the website. We consider both of these
solutions as obtrusive. We want our users find
information and services quickly. Therefore, we have taken the
decision to promote how we use cookies on our website instead. This
will enable users to make an informed decision whether they want to
disable this feature.
An audit of the cookies we use is published below.
Cookies we use
We have conducted an audit of the cookies that are downloaded on
to users’ machines when using Northumberland County Council
websites:
This document was last updated on Thursday 24th May
2012
Cookie questions answered
This guide answers some of the most frequently asked questions
about cookies and provides information on how you can manage your
privacy settings.
How
do cookies work?
When you visit a site that uses cookies for the first time, a
cookie is downloaded onto your PC. The next time you visit that
site, your PC checks to see if it has a cookie that is relevant
(that is, one containing the site name) and sends the information
contained in that cookie back to the site.
The site then ’knows’ that you have been there before, and in
some cases, tailors what pops up on screen to take account of that
fact.
Some cookies might record how long you spend on each page on a
site, what links you click, even your preferences for page layouts
and colour schemes. They can also be used to store data on what is
in your ‘shopping cart’, adding items as you click.
Are cookies viruses?
No. Cookies are not viruses, trojans, spyware or worms or any
other kind of malware.
Are cookies programs?
No. cookies are not programs. They can’t install things you
don’t want on your computer.
Can cookies see what’s on my
computer?
No. Cookies can’t see what’s on your computer. Nor can they
collect any other information from your computer, nor snoop on your
files.
Can cookies I’ve got be seen by other
people?
No. A cookie can only be read by the site that gave you the
cookie in the first place. Of course you can see your own cookies,
as described below.
What is inside of a cookie?
A cookie contains seven main pieces of information:
Domain: The
domain of the website sets the cookie. A cookie can ONLY be read by
the site that set it.
Name: The name of the cookie.
Value: The identifying information the cookie
is carrying. This is normally an encrypted string of letters and
numbers that is only meaningful to the website that set the
cookie.
Enquiry: How long the cookie lasts for. If this
is not set, the cookie will disappear when you close your browser
(session cookies). Otherwise it will delete itself on the date set
in the expiry field.
Path: This is not always used, but can be set
so that the cookie is only sent when the user is in a particular
part of the website. For example if the domain is set to acme.com
and the path is set to /accounts, the cookie will only be used when
the user is in the acme.com/accounts part of the site.
Secure: This attribution can be used to tell
the browser to only use the cookie when the HTTP protocol is being
used. i.e if this attribute is set, the cookie won’t be accessible
via non-HTTP methods, such as JavaScript.
Can I control the cookies I
get?
Yes. You can control what cookies you get, and which cookies you
keep, and whether or not information about your browsing activity
is collected. This next section tells you how to control your
preferences.
All the different tools and techniques described below will not
all be appropriate for everyone. It is however important to
understand that there is a range of options and tools available,
and it’s up to you to decide which if any of them to use.
Please note, any settings you change will not just
affect our cookies. The changes will apply to all websites you
visit.
How can I see and manage the cookies in my
browser?
Virtually all modern browsers allow you to see what cookies
you’ve got, and to delete them individually or delete all of
them.
Many browsers can also be set to ask consent for each individual
cookie before it is set. It allows you control over what cookies
you get, but it can slow down your browsing if you have to check
each and every cookie.
Most browsers also give you the right to block 3rd party cookie
which are mostly behavioural advertising cookies.
Some browsers let you block cookies from particular sites. So
for example if you are happy to get cookies from a site you trust,
but you don’t want to get cookies from a site you don’t
particularly trust, you can set up your browser to black list the
site you don’t trust and refuse any cookies it tries to give
you.
Most browsers will let you delete all cookies when you close
your browser. You should be aware that any preferences including
any opt outs you have set will be lost if you do this.
Finally, you can tell your browser to block all cookies from
being set. You should be aware that if you do choose this option
many sites will not work as smoothly as you are used to, and some
functionality that is reliant on cookies to enable services you
want to use will not work at all.
The links below take you to the help sections for the major
browsers. These will tell you how you can manage your cookies:
Can I opt out of
your external tracking cookies?
We also uses third party applications that use
cookies. The links below are to the manufactures web pages that
allow you to opt out of tracking cookies, or be made fully
aware of what they will use them for:
