Privacy and Cookies
The BBC is committed to protecting you and your family's personal information when you are using BBC services. We want our services to be safe and enjoyable environments for our audience. This Privacy Policy relates to our use of any personal information you provide to us online, via phone or text, by email, in letters or correspondence.
In order to provide you with the full range of BBC services, we sometimes need to collect information about you.
This Privacy Policy explains the following:
The BBC is committed to safeguarding your personal information. Whenever you provide such information, we are legally obliged to use your information in line with all laws concerning the protection of personal information, including the Data Protection Act 1998 (these laws are referred to collectively in this Privacy Policy as the "data protection laws").
The BBC websites contain hyperlinks to websites owned and operated by third parties. These third party websites have their own privacy policies, including cookies, and we urge you to review them. They will govern the use of personal information you submit or is collected by cookies whilst visiting these websites. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of such third party websites and your use of such websites is at your own risk.
When you participate in, access or sign up to any of the BBC's services, activities or online content, such as newsletters, competitions, live chats, message boards, telephone or text the BBC, vote, donate money to a BBC charity appeal, book tickets for a BBC event or create an account using the BBC's online registration system we may receive personal information about you. This can consist of information such as your name, email address, postal address, telephone or mobile number or date of birth, depending on the activity.
By submitting your details, you enable the BBC (and where applicable its contractors) to provide you with the services, activities or online content you select.
Please note that sometimes we will require you to provide additional personal information, and sometimes sensitive personal information (e.g. if you're sending in an application to be a contributor on a political party we may need to know your political leanings). When we do this we will provide further information as to why we are collecting your information and how we will use it.
The BBC also uses cookies (see paragraph 12 below for details) and collects IP addresses (an IP address is a number that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on the internet) from visitors to the BBC websites.
The BBC will use your personal information for a number of purposes including the following:
Where the BBC proposes using your personal information for any other uses we will ensure that we notify you first. You will also be given the opportunity to withhold or withdraw your consent for the use of your personal information for purposes other than those listed above.
The BBC may contact you:
Local pages will give you detailed information about how the BBC will contact you in relation to specific services, activities or online content.
The BBC won't contact you for marketing purposes, or promote new services, activities or online content to you unless you specifically agree to be contacted for these purposes.
We will keep your information confidential except where disclosure is required or permitted by law (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies) or as described in paragraph 7 below. Generally, we will only use your information within the BBC. However, sometimes the BBC uses third parties to process your information. The BBC requires these third parties to comply strictly with its instructions and the BBC requires that they do not use your personal information for their own business purposes, unless you have explicitly consented to the use of your personal information in this way.
Please note that if you are accessing the BBC from outside the UK and you make a comment or complaint regarding any element of advertising (see paragraph 11 for more details about this) the BBC may forward your correspondence to BBC Worldwide Ltd ("BBCW") only for the purposes of responding to you.
If you post or send offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content anywhere on or to the BBC websites or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on any BBC service, the BBC may use your personal information to stop such behaviour.
Where the BBC reasonably believes that you are or may be in breach of any of the laws of England and Wales (or the law of Scotland if you live there) (e.g. because content you have posted may be defamatory), the BBC may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your employer, school email/internet provider or law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour.
If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian's permission before you provide any personal information to the BBC. Users without this consent are not allowed to provide us with personal information.
We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with the BBC or the BBC's corporate retention schedule (a database that defines which documents should be kept and for how long). If you cancel your registration as a BBC website member and your account is deleted a red flag goes on the database and, while the BBC cannot use the personal information, it stays on the system for a period of one year for administration purposes before being deleted automatically.
Where you contribute material to the BBC we will generally only keep your content for as long as is reasonably required for the purpose(s) for which it was submitted. For example, we will only keep copies of entries to a photographic competition for the duration of the competition. However other projects (e.g. the People's War website) are likely to have a longer, or even permanent, duration.
The BBC, as a publicly funded organisation, also has an obligation to record snapshots of history which may include some User Generated Content i.e. content provided by the public. Therefore, some content submitted to, or shared with, the BBC may be retained for prolonged periods of time or potentially indefinitely in the BBC's Archive, which is true of News contributions which are published. There may also be rare instances where we will share your contribution with third parties in the interests of maintaining historical archives (e.g. contributions about people's experiences in the Second World War were given to the Imperial War Museum). Where possible, we will endeavour to inform you upfront or let you know at a later date where we are likely to keep content indefinitely or pass it onto an approved historical archive.
Under the Data Protection Act you have the right to request a copy of the personal information the BBC holds about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. (We charge £10 for information requests and require you to prove your identity with 2 pieces of approved identification). We will use reasonable efforts to supply, correct or delete personal information about you on our files.
Please address requests and questions about this or any other question about this Privacy Policy to the Data Protection Officer, Room 2252, White City Building, 201 Wood Lane, London W12 7TS (Email: dpa.officer@bbc.co.uk)
www.bbc.co.uk is published in the UK by the BBC. For international users accessing the website from outside the UK, the website is made available to you by the BBC's commercial subsidiary, BBC Worldwide Ltd. ("BBCW"), on a commercial basis (i.e. some of the pages you access will have advertising on them) under licence from the BBC. Please note that some pages are made available by the BBC World Service on a non-commercial basis (for example, the front page for different language services e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/index.shtml). However all personal information submitted by you to the website goes directly to the BBC and will be processed in accordance with this Privacy Policy (and any local terms that apply on websites). Where there is a conflict, the local terms will apply to the extent of the conflict.
You should note that BBCW place a number of cookies on www.bbc.co.uk and may collect information about international users from these - please see paragraph 12 for more information about cookies.
a. What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer or mobile phone (referred to here as a "device") browser from a website's computer and is stored on your device's hard drive. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser's preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a website to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other websites. Many websites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows.
On the BBC's websites, cookies record information about your online preferences and allow us to tailor the websites to your interests. Users have the opportunity to set their devices to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these means that certain personalised features cannot then be provided to that user and accordingly they may not be able to take full advantage of all of the website's features. Each browser is different, so check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences.
During the course of any visit to a BBC website, the pages you see, along with a cookie, are downloaded to your device. Many websites do this, because cookies enable website publishers to do useful things like find out whether the device (and probably its user) has visited the website before. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.
b. How does the BBC use cookies?
Information supplied by cookies can help us to analyse the profile of our visitors and help us to provide you with a better user experience. For example, if on a previous visit you went to our education pages, we might find this out from your cookie and highlight educational information on your second and subsequent visits.
The BBC in relation to international users) also use a number of independent measurement and research companies. They gather information regarding the visitors to BBC websites on our behalf using cookies, log file data and code which is embedded on our website. The BBC and BBCW use this type of information to help improve the services it provides to its users. All third parties are strictly required not to use any information for their own business or other purposes (see paragraph 6 above). Certain other areas of a BBC website use cookies for a specific reason - for example, to help an online game work effectively on your device. If this is the case, the local terms for that area of the website will make this clear and you should refer to those local terms for additional information.
c. Third Party Cookies on BBC pages
Please note that during your visits to BBC websites you may notice some cookies that are not related to the BBC or the BBC's contractors. When you visit a page with content embedded from, for example, YouTube or Flickr, you may be presented with cookies from these websites. The BBC does not control the dissemination of these cookies. You should check the third party websites for more information about these.
d. BBC cookies and how to reject cookies?
A list of the main cookies that the BBC websites set (and what each is used for) together with ways to minimise the number of cookies you receive can be found at the BBC's Cookie List and How To Reject Cookies.
This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time so you may wish to check it each time you submit personal information to the BBC. The date of the most recent revisions will appear on this page. If you do not agree to these changes, please do not continue to use BBC websites to submit personal information to the BBC. If material changes are made to the Privacy Policy we will notify you by placing a prominent notice on the website.
Some areas, such as TV Licensing and BBC charity appeals (such as Children in Need) have their own privacy policies which you should also read before submitting your personal information.
Go to the TV Licensing policy to see how the BBC uses your personal information for TV Licensing purposes.
If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy please contact:
The Data Protection Officer
Room 2252
White City Building
201 Wood Lane
London
W12 7TS
(Email: dpa.officer@bbc.co.uk).
Last updated: March 2010
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