Every Square Mile

Privacy & Cookies Policy

The following statement explains our policy regarding the personal information we collect about you.

Introduction
Use and Storage of your personal information
Access to your personal information
Visitor Information
What is a cookie?
How to find and control your cookies
How to see your cookie code
List of everysquaremile.co.uk cookies

1. Introduction

This policy covers the BBC's use of personal information that the BBC collects when you use everysquaremile.co.uk.

When contributing content to everysquaremile.co.uk, you will be asked to submit personal information about yourself (e.g. name, postcode and email address). By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable the BBC and its service providers to provide you with the services you select. Whenever you provide such personal information, we will treat that information in accordance with this policy. When using your personal information the BBC will act in accordance with current legislation and aim to meet current Internet best practice.

The policy also gives you information about cookies; BBC and third parties' use of cookies; and how you may reject such cookies.

2. Use and storage of your personal information

When you supply any personal information to everysquaremile.co.uk (e.g. to register to contribute content) we have legal obligations towards you in the way we use that data. We must collect the information fairly, that is, we must explain how we will use it, why we are requesting the information and tell you if we want to pass the information on to anyone else.

everysquaremile.co.uk is currently a trial service. If, as we hope, it is a successful then we intend to roll the website out nationally which will mean that your content will remain on everysquaremile.co.uk, and your corresponding personal information will be held on our systems, for the duration of the website. Please be aware that this could be for a significant period of time.

During the trial (and for the duration of the website if rolled our nationally after the trial), everysquaremile.co.uk will be archived periodically by the British Library. This archiving process will capture all publicly accessible content on the site. The only personal information that will be captured is the screen name you select when you join the site.

Personal information, or content that you have marked as not being for public access, will NOT be archived. Should the BBC decide to discontinue everysquaremile.co.uk at the end of the trial, the British Library will maintain the everysquaremile.co.uk archive and make it available for viewing by members of the public. The content on the site will no longer be editable and you will not be able to log in.

In general, any information you provide to the BBC will only be used within the BBC and by its agents and service providers. Your information will be disclosed where we are obliged or permitted by law. Also, if you post or send offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content anywhere on or to everysquaremile.co.uk or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on everysquaremile.co.uk, the BBC can use whatever information that is available to it about you (including your Internet Protocol address which is automatically logged by our web server when using everysquaremile.co.uk) to stop such behaviour. This may involve informing relevant third parties such as your employer, school e-mail/Internet provider and law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour. We will ensure that all personal information supplied is held securely, in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

Your information may be used to allow the BBC to contact you for administration or verification purposes in relation to your contribution. This means that the BBC may contact you for a number of purposes related to the everysquaremile.co.uk website. For example, we may wish to provide you with password reminders or notify you that the particular service has been suspended for maintenance. If you have opted in when registering with everysquaremile.co.uk the BBC may also from time to time contact you in relation to particular projects. We will not however contact you for promotional purposes, such as notifying you of improvements to the service or new services on everysquaremile.co.uk, unless you sign up specifically to receive such promotional information at a later time.

3. Access to your personal information

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.)

Please address requests to the Data Protection Officer, MC3 D1, Media Village, 201 Wood Lane, London, W12 7TQ (Email: dpa.officer@bbc.co.uk).

4. Visitor Information

During the course of any visit to everysquaremile.co.uk, the pages you see, along with a short text file called a 'cookie', are downloaded to your computer. Many websites do this, because cookies enable website publishers to do useful things like find out whether the computer (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.

Information supplied by cookies can help us to provide you with a better online user experience and assist us to analyse the profile of our visitors. For example: if on a visit you logged in to the website, we might find this out from your cookie and automatically log you in on subsequent visits.

5. What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier that is sent to your browser from a website's computer and stored on your computer'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 web site to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites.

Many sites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows.

Cookies record information about your online preferences. Users have the opportunity to set their computers to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these, of course, means that certain personalised services cannot then be provided to that user and accordingly you may not be able to take full advantage of all of the everysquaremile.co.uk features. Each browser is different, so check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences.

If you have set your computer to reject cookies you can still browse everysquaremile.co.uk anonymously until such time as you wish to register for everysquaremile.co.uk services. For further information on cookies please visit http://www.aboutcookies.org.

6. How to find and control your cookies

If you're using Internet Explorer 6.0 or 7.0:

Choose Tools, then
Internet Options
Click the Privacy tab
Click on Custom Level
Click on the 'Advanced' button
Check the 'override automatic cookie handing' box and select Accept, Block or Prompt for action as appropriate.

If you're using Firefox 2.0:

Choose Tools, then
Options
Click the Privacy icon

If you're using Firefox 1.0 or 1.5:

Choose Tools, then
Options
Click the Privacy icon
Click the Cookies tab

If you're using Opera 8.0 or 9.0:

Choose Tools, then
Preferences
Advanced
Cookies

If you're using Opera 7.0:

Choose File, then
Preferences
Privacy

If you're using Netscape 6.0:

Choose Edit, then
Preferences
Click on Advanced
Click on Cookies

If you're using Internet Explorer 5.0 or 5.5:

Choose Tools, then
Internet Options
Click the Security tab
Click on Custom Level
Scroll down to the sixth option to see how cookies are handled by IE5 and change to Accept, Disable, or Prompt for action as appropriate.

If you're using Internet Explorer 4.0:

Choose View, then
Internet Options
Click the Advanced tab
Scroll down to the yellow exclamation icon under Security and choose one of the three options to regulate your use of cookies.

If you're using Internet Explorer 3.0:

Choose View, then
Options
Click on Advanced
Click on the button that says Warn before Accepting Cookies.

If you're using Netscape Communicator 4.0:

Choose Edit, then
Preferences
Click on Advanced
Set your options in the box that says Cookies.

7. How to see your cookie code

Just click on a cookie to open it. You'll see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie.

8. everysquaremile.co.uk cookies

This is a list of the cookies that everysquaremile.co.uk sets, and what each is used for:

BBC-ESM-UID cookie - A permanent session cookie to uniquely identify registered users and their visits to the site, so that when they return to the site it will know who they are and they won't have to log in to see the personalised homepage. Any data resulting from use of this cookie will only be used in aggregate.

BBCMediaselector cookie - Used to store your user preferences for audio-video content from everysquaremile.co.uk eg. format (Real player or Windows Media player) and quality (narrowband or broadband).