This page contains information on what 'cookies' are, the cookies used by any of the Anglican Communion websites, how to switch cookies off in your browser, and some useful links for further reading on the subject

What are 'cookies'?

'Cookies' are small text files that are stored by the browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Safari) on your computer or mobile phone. Websites are able to read and write these files, allowing them store things such as personalisation details or user preferences. You can think of cookies as providing a "memory" for the website, enabling it to recognise a user and respond appropriately. Each web domain can only access cookies stored by that specific web domain, meaning that only the anglicancommunion.org and aco.org servers can access the cookies set by the anglicancommunion.org and aco.org domains. Most web pages contain elements from multiple web domains. Therefore when you visit anglicancommunion.org or aco.org, your browser may receive cookies from several sources.

How does the Anglican Communion Websites use cookies?

A visit to a page on any of the Anglican Communion websitesmay generate the following types of cookie:
Anonymous analytics cookies
Geotargetting cookies
Registration cookies
Third party cookies

Anonymous analytics cookies:

Every time a user visits our website, web analytics software provided by a third party generates an anonymous analytics cookie. These cookies can tell us whether or not you've visited the site before. Your browser will tell us if you have these cookies, and if you don't, we generate new ones. This allows us to track how many individual unique users we have, and how often they visit the site. These cookies cannot be used to identify individuals; they are used for statistical purposes only. This allows us, for example, to tell which pages are the most visited at any one time.

Geotargetting cookies

We also generate anonymous geotargetting cookies. These are used by software which tries to work out what country you are in from information supplied by your browser when it requests a web page. This cookie is completely anonymous, and is only used to help target content.

Registration cookies

When you register with shop.anglicancommunion.org, we generate cookies that represent whether you are signed in or not. Our servers use these cookies to work out which account you are signed in with, and if you are allowed access to a particular service. While you are signed into the site, we combine information from your registration cookies with the above mentioned web analytics cookies, which we could use to identify which pages you have seen as an individual.

Other third party cookies

On some pages, components supplied by third parties may also set their own anonymous cookies, for the purposes of tracking the success of their application, or customising the application for you. Because of how cookies work, we cannot access these cookies, nor can the third parties access the data in cookies used by the Anglican Communion websites.

How do I turn cookies off?

It is usually possible to stop your browser accepting cookies, or to stop it accepting cookies from a particular website. However, you may find that some aspects of the Anglican Communion websites stop working or work less well if you do this.

All modern browsers allow you to change your cookie settings. These settings will typically be found in the 'options' or 'preferences' menu of your browser. In order to understand these setttings, the following links may be helpful, otherwise you should use the 'Help' option in your browser for more details.

Cookie settings in Internet Explorer
Cookie settings in Firefox
Cookie settings in Chrome
Cookie settings in Safari

We do not recommend turning cookies off when visiting any on the Anglican Communion websites, as this will prevent you from registering, signing in, and using many of the services on the site.

If you are primarily concerned about third party cookies generated by advertisers, you can turn these off by going to the Internet Advertising Bureau's (IAB) consumer site.

You can also visit the trade body representing these advertising platforms for more information: Network Advertising Iniative
They have provided a one-stop place that gathers all of the opt-out controls. http://networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp

Useful links

If you would like to find out more about cookies and their use on the Internet, you may find the following links useful:
Microsoft Cookies guide
All About Cookies
The IAB has provided the following website to give information specifically about privacy issues around Internet advertising:
youronlinechoices.co.uk/uk
For further legal information about privacy issues, you may find these links useful:
Data Protection Act 1998
The Information Commissioner's Office