Privacy, cookies, and third party services
Our use of your data, cookies, and external services: what you should know, and how to opt out if you want to.
Summary: We care a lot about our users’ privacy. We provide details below, and we try our hardest to look after the private data that we hold. Like many other websites, we sometimes use cookies and Google Analytics to help us make our websites better. These tools are very common and used by many other sites, but they do have privacy implications, and as a charity concerned with socially positive uses of the internet, we think it’s important to explain them in full. If you don’t want to share your browsing activities on Open Local sites with other companies, you can adjust your usage or install opt-out browser plugins.
Privacy
- Who gets to see my email address?
- If you submit a problem, we pass on your details, and details of the problem, to the council contact or contacts responsible for the area where you located the problem, or other relevant body (for example, in most of London we send reports via the central London Report-It service, who may also publish the public details of your report). Other than the council, who obviously get your email address, only people we authorise to view the FixMyStreet administration interface will be able to see your email address and they will never use it for anything other than to help administer FixMyStreet. Similarly with email addresses from updates. We will never give or sell your email address to anyone else, unless we are obliged to by law. Your name, given in the name field, will not be published anywhere unless you let us (if you give your name elsewhere, e.g. in the public details section, it will be publicly available).
- Will you send nasty, brutish spam to my email address?
- Never. We will email you if someone leaves an update on a problem you’ve reported, and send you a questionnaire email four weeks after you submit a problem, asking for a status update; we’ll only ever send you emails in relation to your problem or in relation to our services. You have the option to opt-out of email communications that are unrelated to FixMyStreet.
Cookies
To make our service easier or more useful, we sometimes place small data files on your computer or mobile phone, known as cookies; many websites do this. We use this information to, for example, remember you have logged in so you don't need to do that on every page, or to measure how people use the website so we can improve it and make sure it works properly. Below, we list the cookies and services that this site can use.
| Name | Typical Content | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| fixmystreet_app_session | A random unique identifier | When browser is closed, or four weeks if “Keep me signed in” is ticked |
Google’s Official Statement about Analytics Data
“This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States . Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.”
Credits
Bits of wording taken from the gov.uk cookies page (under the Open Government Licence).