Cookies
The
www.cheshireeast.gov.uk
website uses cookies to help us see which pages people are looking
at most, least and how they get to a page. Understanding this helps
us to improve our web site. We do not collect personal
information via cookies and we do not pass information to
advertisers.
EU Directive on Cookies
The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive)
Regulations 2003 recently came into effect. According to the
Information Commissioner's
Office (ICO), website owners are required to obtain
consent from visitors to their website before placing cookies on
their computers.
Recent guidance from the the
ICO
has stated that
"Implied consent is a valid form of consent and can be used in the
context of compliance with the revised rules on cookies."
By using our site, you are giving us your implied consent to set
cookies on your computer. Should you not wish to accept cookies
from us, you may need to change your
browser's configuration to prevent them from being set, or
arrange to opt out
(where possible).
This page explains more about what cookies are, why and how we
use them and it also gives information about how you can control
the use of cookies on your computer.
What is a cookie?
A cookie is string of text information that is placed on
your computer via your web browser. It can store information
that relates to your use of a website. This website, like most
others, uses cookies.
Cookies are often used for statistical recording
(telling us which pages were visited and when) and for
enabling you to set user preferences so that when you return
to our website, some of your preferences can be automatically
applied.
We do not use cookies to collect information about you that
would make you personally identifiable and we do not collect any
sensitive personal data via cookies. However, if you have
given us information about yourself on our site before,
we might be able to connect your personal information to
your cookie information. Furthermore, we do not show advertisements
on our site which are controlled by external parties.
Cookies can be either temporary or longer lasting. A session
cookie exists for the duration of your visit to the
website and is deleted when you leave it. A
persistent cookie has a set lifespan and will remain on your
computer for a specific length of time unless otherwise deleted by
you.
Cookies used on the Cheshire East site
Google Analytics
Like many websites, we use Google Analytics to
help us to identify the way in which our website is used so we
can try to improve it. The following cookies are set by Google
analytics:
- _utma
- _utmb
- _utmc
- _utmz
- _utma
These are all used to collect non-personal information about how
visitors use our site in terms of the numbers of visitors, the
pages that they visit and the website they came from.
Other cookies
The following cookies may also be set when you visit our
site:
- email -subscription - this sets a cookie which stores your
email address. You have to opt-in to use this feature.
- nmstat - This cookie is used to help record the
visitor’s use of the website (this is not a Google analytics
cookie but it performs a similar function). It is used to
collect statistics about site usage such as when the visitor last
visited the site. This information is then used to improve the user
experience on the website. This SiteAnalyze cookie contains a
randomly generated ID used to recognise the browser when a visitor
reads a page. The cookie contains no personal information and is
used only for web analytics.
- ASP.NET_SessionId - This cookie is used purely to track the
sequence of pages a visitor looks at during a visit to the site.
This information can be used to reduce user journeys, and enable
visitors to find relevant information quicker.
There are many applications on the Cheshire East website that
rely on cookies to process your information. By application, we are
referring to a part of the website that has a specific purpose
which involves you being asked to enter information. For example,
if you log in to your council tax account online.
Without cookies, many of these applications would not function
properly.
Social Media and third party Cookies
Where we link to external social media sites such as Facebook,
Twitter, Youtube or Flickr, these sites may set cookies when
you visit them. You will need to refer to their respective privacy
policies to see how this information is used.
If you click on links posted on Twitter by Cheshire East
Council, these may be shortened links that have been processed by
Bit.ly. Bit.ly provides us with anonymised statistics about these
links which can tell us how many times they have been clicked. This
can help us to assess the effectiveness of our use of social media.
Bit.ly do not have any access to any data collected on our
website.
- See Bit.ly's Privacy Policy for
more information (this also includes a link through which you can
opt-out of Bit.ly cookies)
Opting Out
You can prevent us from setting cookies by making changes to
your browser settings. For more information, please refer to your
browser's 'Help' function. If you do choose to restrict the setting
of cookies, this may stop the site from appearing to work properly
when you visit it.
It is possible to opt-out of allowing Google cookies to be set.
Visit the Google Opt-out page
to find out how to do this.
Another initiative for Firefox users is Mozilla's Do Not Track
initiative which aims to make it easier for users to opt out of
accepting cookies via their browser.
Further Reading
All personal data collected by Cheshire East is
handled in accordance with Data
Protection principles.
