We are obliged by the EU Privacy and Communications Directive (2011) and the General Data Protection Regulations (2018) to inform you that this website uses cookies, but what does this actually mean in practice?
What is a cookie?
Cookies are small text files placed on your computer by a website itself and sometimes its affiliates (usually advertisers) which may collect information about you and how you use the website or may assist the functionality of that site – for example, they make the online shopping baskets work! Rest assured, however, that cookies used on the Phoenix Choir website do not collect ANY personally identifiable information about you, but like most websites we’re keen to know which parts of our site interest our visitors and which don’t, so we ANONYMOUSLY collect some relevant information as detailed later on this page and aggregate it for statistical analysis. So, let us put your mind at rest first:-
What we DO NOT collect
We do NOT collect your name, address, location (except for country and, if available, city*), or ANY other information that would identify you personally. Also, we do NOT carry advertising material for third parties so there are NO third party cookies at all on our site and we do NOT track your web browsing elsewhere on the internet.
What we collect ANONYMOUSLY
- The web pages on our site that are viewed, to help us to understand what interests our visitors.
- The files that are downloaded from our site, again to help us to understand what interests our visitors.
- Return visits, to ensure that our site is useful.
- The date and time of any visit, to enable us to establish busy periods.
- Any external links on our site that are used (e.g. “thebooth.co.uk” to buy concert tickets).
- The originating site of any visits which are referred from another website which has a direct link to ours (e.g. “www.nationalassociationofchoirs.org.uk”, “choirs.org.uk”).
- The Web Search Engines that are used to find us (e.g. Google, Bing, AltaVista etc) and what was entered into the search engine, to ensure that we are visible on the internet.
- The countries and cities (but not addresses)* from which our site is viewed, to help us to understand our audience.
- Web Browser and Plugins that are used (e.g. MS Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome etc) to ensure that our site works with them.
- The Operating System and Hardware platform that are used (e.g. MS Windows, Apple macOS, Google Android on a mobile phone, iOS on an iPhone etc) again to ensure that our site works with them.
Additional cookies in the Members’ Area do not collect any information at all and are used solely to facilitate the functioning of that part of the website.
*The Country and City data is extracted from publicly available databases by using the computer’s electronic internet address (IP Address) which is in the format nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn, eg 85.123.234.123. All computers on the internet need an IP address to function in the internet at all. This address is usually dynamic, ie it changes regularly, without you even being aware of it! To protect your privacy we only collect the first 3 groups of the address but not the last quarter, eg 85.123.234.nnn. This enables us to identify the country and, sometimes, the city where the viewing computer is located, but combined with the dynamic nature of the address this also protects you by preventing us from identifying your precise physical location.
So, to stress again, WE DO NOT COLLECT ANY PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION.