What are cookies?
A cookie is an alphanumeric text file that is sent from a website and stored on your computer's hard drive by your web browser. Cookies are essential for some websites to operate effectively but also to make your visit to a website a better experience, for example, by remembering who you are, so that when you visit again, it recognises you as a previous visitor.
We use anonymous analytic cookies to track visits to our sites and routes around areas of our sites. As with other statistics about visitors to our sites, this tracking is anonymous and aggregate and does not relate to any information we might hold about individuals. This is in order to better understand how our websites are used and to monitor how our advertisements perform to enhance the online experience of our visitors.
Types of cookies
There are two broad types of cookies – 'first party cookies' and 'third party cookies'.
First party cookies 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 are served by a service provider on behalf of the website operator and can be used by the service provider to recognise your computer when you visit other web sites. Third party cookies are most commonly used for web site analytics or advertising 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.
Categories of cookies used by Christian Aid
- Strictly necessary cookies: These cookies are essential for the user to move around the website and to use its features, e.g. shopping baskets and e-billing.
- Performance cookies: These cookies collect information about how the user makes use of the site, e.g. which pages the user visits most. These cookies do not collect information that identifies the user.
- 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.
- Targeting or advertising 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.
Third party cookies set by Christian Aid
We use DoubleClick cookies to measure the effectiveness of our online advertising. This enables us to ensure that any money we spend on digital marketing gives us a good return on investment.
DoubleClick cookies do two things: 1) they track anonymised conversion data so that we can measure advertising effectiveness and 2) they are used to serve advertising, enabling us to serve advertisements to or exclude people who have visited our website. The cookies also allow us to limit the number of times a person sees our advertisement.
DoubleClick cookies sometimes include a pixel from the advertising networks we work with. This allows us to target adverts effectively on their networks.
Google Analytics and Optimize 360
Google Analytics 360 is a web analytics service provided by Google inc. that enables us to measure how people use our website using cookies. We use this information to improve our website experience for website visitors and to measure the effectiveness of our online advertising. We can also use these cookies to serve relevant advertisements to people who have interacted with specific sections of the site, or to exclude those audiences from advertising.
Google Optimize allows us to test variants of web pages and see how they perform against an objective that we specify. Optimize monitors the results of our experiment and tells us which variant has the best performance.
Other third party cookies
If you share content from one of Christian Aid websites, a cookie may be used by the service you have chosen to use to share that content. Christian Aid does not control these cookies. You should check the relevant third party main website for more information. Christian Aid also uses digital tools to publish websites, for example Drupal. Christian Aid does not control any cookies used by the providers of these digital tools.
Our website may use SessionCam for analysis. SessionCam is a product that has been developed by SessionCam LTD. SessionCam may record mouse clicks, mouse movements, page scrolling and any text keyed into website forms. The information collected does not include bank details or any sensitive personal data. Data collected by SessionCam from Christian Aid website is for Christian Aid internal use only. The information collected is used to improve our website usability and is stored and used for aggregated and statistical reporting.
Cookies from advertisers
If you are concerned about cookies generated by advertisers, you can see which ones are being used on your machine and turn them off by visiting the Your Online Choices website. This website is supported by the Internet Advertising Bureau UK, the trade body for online and mobile advertisers.
You can also visit the Network Advertising Initiative opt out web page which will tell you which cookies are being used on your computer or device and opt out of them. Please note that separate devices have their own preferences, so you may need to change the settings on all desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile devices you use.
Cookies on Christian Aid Charity Gifts
This is not mandatory, and you can leave the website after making your purchases without registering for an account. You are also able to register for an account on Present Aid without making any purchases. If you do register your details, a cookie will be used so Christian Aid can identify the account holder on a future visit to the Christian Aid Charity Gifts website.
How to control and delete cookies
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 Christian Aid’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.christianaid.org.uk
- 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: