(Where the words 'BAY Centre', 'us' or 'we' are used it will mean the registered charity known as the 'Burnham Area Youth Centre', registration number 304500.)
A cookie is a small file that’s stored on your computer by a website. It contains the address of the website and codes that your browser sends back to the website each time you visit a webpage.
They were invented to overcome a limitation of websites. Websites have no ‘memory’ so the cookie provides a small bit of memory that the website can use. Cookies don’t usually contain personal information or anything dangerous; they’re usually innocuous and useful.
Cookies are most commonly used to track your website activity and your preferences.
They can be used to store login data for a website which allows you to view other websites then return to the original website which will ‘remember’ that you are logged in (Amazon uses cookies to remember what you’ve got in your basket).
They can be used for advertising purposes as a website can remember what adverts you have viewed (I’ve no doubt that we have all had adverts popping up on the internet about something we may have recently viewed).
Different types of cookies keep track of different activities. Session cookies are used only when you are navigating a website; once you leave the site, the session cookie disappears. Tracking cookies may be used to create long-term records of multiple visits to the same site. Authentication cookies track whether a user is logged in, and if so, under what name.
Strictly Necessary. These cookies are essential, as they enable you to move around the website and use its features, such as accessing logged in or secure areas.
◆ Performance. These cookies collect information about how you have used the website. This information can be collected to improve how the website works.
◆ Functionality. These cookies remember things like preferences.
◆ Targeting. These cookies are used for targeting adverts and services.
Almost all websites use cookies in some way or another, and every page you visit in those sites writes cookies to your computer and receives them back from it. You probably have hundreds of cookies saved on your computers.
We do, however, use third parties to deliver the website and content and they do use cookies.
◆ TSOhost. This is the the company that hosts our website for free. They set a cookie called ‘DYNSRV’ which allows them to load balance and manage server traffic demand. The cookie only lasts as long as you are viewing the website. No personal data is stored in this cookie.
◆ Cloudflare. This is a company that keeps copies of our website on their very large computers to speed up our website loading. They set a cookie called ‘_cfuid’ which allows them to send the website to your ‘trusted device’ even when it is used from an ‘untrusted’ router. The cookie lasts for 1 year. Click here for further information. No personal data is stored in this cookie.
◆ Google. The BAY Centre uses an embedded Google map on our ‘Find Us’ page. Google set a cookie called ‘nid’ which is used to remember your preferences when using the map. The cookie lasts for 1 day. No personal data is stored in this cookie. The BAY Centre also embeds Google Docs on some of our pages. Google set a cookie called ‘S’ which is used to remember your viewing preferences. The cookie lasts for 1 day. No personal data is stored in this cookie.
◆ Facebook We have a BAY Centre Facebook site and a Facebook 'feed' embedded into our website, www.bayc.uk, that both set a cookie called 'fr'. The cookie lasts for 3 months. No personal data is stored in this cookie. This cookie seems to store the id of the browser connected to it and is used for advertising purposes.
Please Note that if you set your browser to disable cookies, you may not be able to access certain parts of our website and other parts of our website may not work properly. It may also disable many sites that you currently use.
You can find out more information about cookie settings at third-party information sites, such as http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.
April 2018 Document initially published. The policy is one of a series of policy documents that replace all previous policy documents that existed in a variety of different formats, some electronic, some paper and some verbal.
