• Home
  • Cookies Policy

Cookies policy
Find out how we use cookies on our website

Last updated 28th July 2022

Who are we?

This Cookies Policy explains how the British Red Cross incorporated by Royal Charter 1908; registered as a charity in England and Wales (220949), Scotland (SC037738), Jersey (430) and the Isle of Man (0752); and Britcross Ltd registered as a company in England and Wales (00932598) (collectively ‘British Red Cross’) uses cookies and similar technologies on our websites. Please review this Cookie Policy to learn more about which of our websites use cookies, the types of cookies we use, why we use them and how you can manage the use of cookies.

You should read this Cookies Policy alongside our Privacy Notice and our Terms and Conditions.

If you would like further information on our use of cookies and similar technologies, please contact us at [email protected].

1. What is a cookie?

Cookies are small text files which save information about you when you use a website. If you agree to them, they are stored on your device. Cookies can make using a website easier because they remember information like what you put in your shopping basket or what you last searched for.

Cookies are used by website owners to provide you with a positive browsing experience, and to help make improvements.

Our site uses cookies to:

  • Make our site work
  • Collect data on how users navigate our site, which helps us to improve it
  • Allow you to share our content on social networks
  • Help us provide relevant advertising to those who may be interested in it.

We do not use cookies to:

  • Collect any personal data
  • Pass personal data to third parties.

In this Cookies Policy, we use ‘cookies’ as shorthand for any technology that stores information on your device, or gains access to information on your device (for example pixels and Javascript tracking tags).

For more information on cookies, please see the Information Commissioner’s Office information on cookies

2. What cookies do we use and why?

We have split the cookies used on our site into four categories:

  • Strictly necessary cookies
  • Functional cookies
  • Performance cookies
  • Targeting cookies

Each of these categories is explained in section 5 below.

Our websites use both 'first-party' and 'third-party' cookies.

First-party cookies are set and collected by our websites and are only used by our websites when you visit them.

'Third-party' cookies are set and collected on our websites by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages, e.g., cookies set by embedded Youtube videos or Facebook advertising. The British Red Cross does not control how third parties use these cookies, so we suggest you check their website to see how they're using them or block the cookies. To understand more about these third-party cookies and their privacy policies, please visit their websites directly.

We use some other technologies similar to cookies to store data on a user’s device. It is important you know about them so you can make informed choices about whether to allow their use on your device. The most common ones include:

  • Web Storage, also known as Document Object Model (DOM) storage. Our website(s) use the browser's "SessionStorage" and "LocalStorage" to store data. "SessionStorage" is stored temporarily, but the “LocalStorage” is persistent. You may erase them by deleting your browser's history.
  • Web Beacons are small digital image files hosted on some of our website’s pages that register when a browser visits the page. This allows us to know when a user has viewed a web page. You can prevent their use by switching off cookies in your browser. There are also browser add-ons and extensions that specifically block web beacons. To avoid web beacons in emails, you can turn off images in your email service.

3. How do I manage my cookie settings?

You can change which cookies we set at any time by visiting the preference centre found via the “Manage Cookies” link in the website footer, adjusting the sliders to 'On' or 'Off’ and clicking 'Confirm My Choices'.

Some cookies are essential cookies which cannot be turned off using the slider. These cookies are 'Strictly necessary'. If you choose not to accept our cookies, then we will only store these 'Strictly necessary' cookies.

Most internet browsers automatically accept cookies unless you change your browser settings. If you wish to restrict, block or delete the cookies which are set by any websites, you can generally do this through your browser settings. The ‘Help’ menu in the toolbar of most web browsers will tell you how to do this, including how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, and how to disable cookies altogether.

Please find below links describing how to do this on some popular browsers.

Some third parties may allow you to manage their cookies independently, through the platforms that control them e.g., Facebook. Please refer to the list of other third-party cookies in the table below and their respective policy pages for further information.

To delete or review cookies that are on your device, you will need to go into the settings of your browser and review them. For more information about cookies, including how to set your internet browser to reject cookies, please go to http://www.allaboutcookies.org.

4. Changes to this policy

We may update how we use cookies (and this policy) from time to time. So please check regularly to keep up to date with any changes.

5. The cookies we use

There is more information about the individual cookies we use below. This includes the purposes for which we use them and how long they remain on your device. This is a list of all the cookies that may be set.

A. Strictly necessary cookies

  • Strictly necessary cookies are essential for our websites to function. For example:
    • Remembering privacy settings
    • Remembering items added to a shopping basket.
  • They do not store any information that we can use to identify you
  • You cannot switch off these cookies using the Manage Cookies feature. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of our websites will not then work.
Cookie Name Purpose
ASP.NET ASP.NET_SessionId Used to store a unique identifier for your session, providing a mechanism for persisting information between web pages. This cookie is deleted when you close your browser.
ASP.NET ASP.NET_AutId Used to store a unique identifier for your session, providing a mechanism for persisting information between web pages. This cookie is deleted when you close your browser.

B. Functional cookies

  • Functional cookies enhance your experience of using our websites. For example:
    • Remembering your preferences e.g., if you have already done a pop-up survey
    • Using embedded functionality e.g., interactive maps, embedded videos.
  • These cookies may be first-party cookies set by us, or third-party cookies set by service providers we use
  • If you switch these cookies off, then some or all of these website services may not function properly.
Cookie Name Purpose
Cookies RememberMeCookie Stores whether or not the visitor has ticked the ’Remember Me’ option when they log in or register.
Cookies CookiesDirective Records that the visitor confirmed they have read the cookie banner so that it does not appear again. This doesn’t store any other information.
Login and application SavedVacanciesCookie Stores the vacancy ID which is used for keeping a list of saved jobs. It will only store a vacancy ID if the visitor clicks on ’save job’.
Login and application UsernameCookie This enables the site to remember the visitor’s login name if ’Remember me’ is ticked.
Time zone LocalTimezoneVariable Used to store the visitor’s time zone so dates and times are translated to their location. This doesn’t store any other information.
Language CultureSystemCodeID Only used for multi lingual sites to store the visitor’s culture and set formatting of currency, dates etc. No personal information stored.
Language CultureSystemLanguageID Only used for multilingual sites to store the visitor’s culture and set formatting of currency, dates etc. No personal information stored.

C. Performance cookies

  • Performance cookies allow us to measure and improve the performance of our websites. For example, they:
    • Collect information about how visitors use the website, to inform decisions around website design (e.g., prioritising the more popular fundraising appeals)
    • Collect information about how visitors arrived at our website, so we can invest cost-effectively in marketing activities (e.g., seeing how many donors came from an advert in a newspaper to decide if we should put an advert in that newspaper again)
    • Allow us to test different versions of our website to see which designs work better for our website users (e.g., changing the words on a button to see if more people click on it).
  • These cookies may be first-party cookies set by us, or third-party cookies set by service providers we use
  • If you switch these cookies off, then we will not be able to use your information to monitor and improve our websites.
Cookie Name Purpose
Google Analytics _ga Used to distinguish users.
Google Analytics _gat_UA-203531-17 Used to throttle request rate.
Google Analytics _gid Used to distinguish users.
HotJar _hjid Used to persist the random user ID, which is set when a user first lands on a page with the Hotjar script, unique to that site on the browser.

D. Targeting cookies

  • Targeting cookies are used to display relevant advertising to you on our websites, and on other websites and social media platforms. These cookies:
    • Collect information about your browsing habits, so we can show you targeted adverts about us on other websites you visit via our carefully selected third-party suppliers
    • Help us to make our adverts more effective and cost-efficient
    • Help us to find other people with similar interests to yours
    • Allow you to share social media content with family, friends and your network.
  • Targeting cookies do not collect and store personal data, such as your name or email address
  • Only digital identifiers and behavioural information (e.g., if you donated) would be used for this purpose
  • These cookies may be first-party cookies set by us, or third-party cookies set by service providers we use
  • If you switch these cookies off, then the content you see on our websites may be less targeted. You may still see our adverts on other websites