What is a cookie and why we use them?
Cookies are small text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. These cookies are then sent back to the website on each visit, or to another website that recognises that cookie.
Cookies are useful because as they allow a website to recognise a user, and remember their preferences, in some cases allowing the sites to tailor the content displayed to the user’s to match interests.
You can find more information about cookies on the ICO website.
Types of cookie
There are two broad types of cookies:
- First-party cookies: these are cookies that are served directly by the website you are visiting to your computer and are often used to recognise the user when they revisit that site and to remember their preferences as you browse the site. Basically, these are our cookies.
- Third-party cookies: these are installed by parties other than the owner of the website a user visits. We use third-party cookies for functionality, performance/analytics, advertising and social media 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.
All cookies used on the Action website are completely anonymous. We are unable to see and do not collect any personal data - all we can tell is that ‘someone’ visited our site and visited a certain page(s), this is vital in helping us improve unpopular content, promote popular content and produce more of the content you like.
What cookies do we use?
The cookies we use can be split into three categories according to the functionality they provide:
Essential
These cookies are key to providing you with the website and its services. Without these cookies, services such as donation pages or secure shop purchases would not be possible. These cookies can also be used to remember a user's preferences for customisable parts of a web page.
Analytics
We use analytics cookies to analyse how the website is accessed, used and how it is performing in order to provide you with a better user experience and to maintain, operate and continually improve the website.
Experiments and testing: We also use cookies to run experiments and tests with new website functionality, structure and design. This allows us to access how new changes may affect performance and user experience before fully committing to updates.
Marketing
Advertising and Tracking Cookies: These cookies collect information about the users' browsing habits. This may also include your use of social media sites, e.g. Facebook, etc. or how you interact with our website which then shows you relevant content elsewhere on the internet. NB. These may also be used to choose the advertisements that are displayed to you on our website and other websites. These are completely anonymous.
Social Media Cookies: On some pages of our website, third parties that provide applications through our website may set their own cookies in order to track the success of their applications or customise applications for you. Some pages of our website may also contain embedded content. For example, Youtube may use cookies to access how popular our videos may be or how long visitors watch a specific video.
How do we use cookies?
While visiting our site we may collect info about your visit, including but not limited to:
- The page(s) of the website you view
- The time you spend on the site and/or pages
- What type of device you are using
- How you may have reached our website. For example, via a link on our Facebook page
- How long it takes for pages to load
We use this information to access how our visitors use our website in order to continually improve the quality of user experience.
This information allows us to determine how our supporters reach our website, for example, special codes in the URLs can show us where donations have come from, giving us insight into the effectiveness of our marketing activities so we can more effectively apply our resources.
All information collected is completely anonymous.
How can I control my cookies?
Action website
Our website uses a GDPR compliant cookie management tool to control the cookies we serve to you when visiting the site. You can manage your cookie preference by clicking the C icon in the bottom left-hand corner of your screen.
Note: this tool will not allow you to disable essential cookies as this will cause our website to break.
Browser controls
You can use your web browser to:
- delete all cookies;
- block all cookies;
- allow all cookies;
- block ‘third-party’ cookies (ie, cookies set by online services other than the one you are visiting);
- clear all cookies when you close the browser;
- open a ‘private browsing’ / ‘incognito’ session, which allows you to browse the web without recording your browsing history or storing local data such as cookies (you should, however, be aware of the limitations of this feature in a privacy context); and
- install add-ons and plugins that extend browser functionality.
Where to find information about controlling cookies
- Microsoft Edge cookies information
- Internet Explorer cookies information
- Chrome cookies information
- Firefox cookies information
- Safari cookies information – mobile devices and desktops
- Opera cookies information
Changes to this Cookie Policy
From time to time we may need to update our cookie policy to reflect changes in our practices and services. We recommend that you check this page to inform yourself of any changes.
Contact us
If you have any questions or comments about this cookie policy or any other enquiry please contact our webteam, we are always happy to hear what you think.