Learn more about cookies and why they're used on our website.
What is a cookie?
Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognises that cookie.
Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognise a user’s device and to target the content displayed to the user’s interests.
You can find more information about cookies at All About Cookies and Your Choices Online.
Types of cookie
There are two broad types of cookies:
- First party cookies: these are cookies that are served directly by the website operator to your computer and are often used to recognise your computer when it revisits that site and to remember your 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. Plan International UK and third parties use third party cookies for functionality, to track 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.
Wherever it is practical to do so, we use anonymous cookies. These are cookies that allow us to understand your use of our website but without capturing any information that could be used to identify you as an individual – such as an 'Internet Protocol (IP) Address'.
Where a cookie does capture information, such as IP address, that can identify you; and where the cookie is not essential for you to be able to use our website, we ask for your consent before placing the cookie on your device.
Some cookies are essential for the effective functioning of the website. We are unable you to offer you the option to opt-out from these cookies due to this essential nature.
What categories of cookies do we use?
- Essential Website Cookies: these cookies are essential to provide you with the website and its services. Without these cookies, services such as transactional pages and secure login accounts would not be possible.
- Functionality Cookies: these cookies remember choices made by or attributes of the user and enhance the features and content you experience during your visit to our website, e.g. language, appeals visited or user’s location. This cookie is also used to remember a user's preferences for a font size, or customisable parts of a web page.
- Analytics and Performance Cookies: we use performance/analytics cookies to analyse how the website is accessed, used, or is performing in order to provide you with a better user experience and to maintain, operate and continually improve the website. These cookies do not collect information that identifies the user.
- 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.
- 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.
How do we use cookies?
We may collect some, or all, of the information available from cookies when you visit our website, depending on how you use it. We monitor how people use our website, so we can improve it. We collect this information anonymously.
However, you can choose to use our website anonymously without giving us any information. Please see ‘Changing your cookie preferences’ below.
If you visit our website, we may use cookies to record information about:
- the areas of the website you visit
- the amount of time you spend on the site
- whether you are new to the site, or have visited it before
- the country, region, city and/or borough associated with your IP address or device
- how you came to our website – for example, through an email link or a search engine
- the type of device and browser you use
- how you use the website and the quality of your experience – for example we may track your bandwidth when viewing videos
- how you interact with our donation and sign up forms – for example what you select as your communication preferences
- any error messages that you receive on the site
We use cookies to track how visitors come to our site. For example, we use marketing or referring tracking codes in internet addresses (URLs) to show us whether a visitor has come to our site via a link on a referring website or in a specific piece of marketing and to give us insight into the effectiveness of our marketing.
Although not through cookies, we do measure the success of the emails we send – so we know what subject lines and stories people liked the most. We receive this information anonymously; we don’t share this information.
Changes to this Cookie Notice
We will occasionally update this Cookie Notice to reflect changes in our practices and services. We recommend that you check this page from time to time to inform yourself of any changes in this Cookie Notice or any of our other policies. This version was last updated on 12th September 2023.
Cookies that have been set in the past
If you have disabled one or more Cookies, we may still use information collected from cookies prior to your disabled preference being set, however, we will stop using the disabled cookie to collect any further information.
Changing your cookie preferences
The 'Help' menu in the toolbar of most web browsers will tell you how to change your browser's cookie settings, including how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, and how to disable cookies altogether. Below is some helpful guidance about how to make these changes.
How to disable cookies
If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer and you wish to block Plan International UK’s website cookies, you can perform the following:
- On your browser tools menu, select 'Internet Options'
- Click on the 'Privacy' tab and then on the 'Sites' button
- Type into the 'Address of website' field: www.plan-uk.org
- Click on the 'Block' button
- Click on the OK button
Find out more information about blocking or deleting cookies using Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Other browsers:
Find out more detailed information on disabling cookies on the All About Cookies website.
Contact us
If you have any questions or comments about this cookie notice, or privacy matters generally, please contact our Supporter Engagement Team via email, telephone or mail:
Supporter Engagement Team
- Telephone: 0300 777 9779
- Email: supporterquestions@plan-uk.org
- Post: Supporter Engagement Team, Plan International UK, Finsgate, 5-7 Cranwood Street, London, EC1V 9LH
Alternatively, you can contact our Data Protection Officer using the contact details given above or on dataprotectionofficer@plan-uk.org
You may also wish to review our full Privacy Notice.
Last updated: 12 September 2023