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Using our website - our privacy policy

When you use our website we collect information from you such as location data, cookies, or personal information you give us through completing online forms.

Webchat and email advice

If you use webchat, email advice or a form to request advice, find out more about how we use and store your information.

Cookies

We use data called cookies to get information about how you're using our website - for example, what pages you click on and what device you're using. This helps us improve your experience of our website.

Find out more how we collect and use cookies when you browse our website.

Your location

With your permission, we collect data on your location - to within 1 square kilometre. You can't be identified from this information - it's completely anonymous.

This helps us make sure people are getting the content that applies to where they live.

It also means we can see how demand for our content changes by location - for example, if a lot of people look at housing advice in one area of the country, we can target our services to meet that need or investigate why there are problems with housing in that area.

How we collect your location data

We'll collect your location data using Google Analytics. When you visit our website for the first time, a box will appear at the top left of your screen telling you that Citizens Advice would like to know your location. You can choose to block it, or allow your location to be shared with us.

We'll never collect your location data on pages about domestic abuse or violence, or on pages about immigration.

If you don't want Google Analytics to collect your data, you can opt out by downloading the opt-out plug in to your device.

Storing and sharing your location data

Your location data is stored in Google Analytics. You can check Google's privacy policy for more about how they handle your data.

We download your data from Google Analytics onto our secure internal systems. We'll use the data to create anonymised statistics about how people in different locations are using our website. We might share these with local Citizens Advice to help them identify what advice people are looking for in their area.

We keep location data for 38 months before deleting it.

If you used another feature on our site

We also collect information about you if you:

  • use the 'Email page' function on our web pages
  • are an adviser and gave us feedback using the feedback form
  • fill in template letters on our advice pages

If you used the 'Email page' function

We'll collect your name, email address and the email of the person you want to send the page to. We collect these details so you can email a link of the page to someone you know. We also collect and store the date and time you sent the email.

Your information is stored in our website content management system and can only be accessed by Citizens Advice IT staff.

We share your information with the Amazon AWS email server so they can send the email for you on our behalf. Your information won't be used for any other purpose and won't be shared with anyone else.

Your information is kept on our system indefinitely, unless you ask us to remove it.

If you used the feedback form

We don't collect your personal details when you fill in our feedback form, unless you're an adviser.

If you're an adviser

When you leave feedback on our website as an adviser, we ask for your contact details including name, email and phone number. It's optional - you can leave feedback anonymously if you want to.

We'll get your permission to collect your information this way by asking you to tick a box on our feedback form.

We use your feedback to improve our website. This might be things like correcting broken links or improving our online advice.

We use your contact details to get in touch about your feedback if we need to.
We only access your information for other reasons if we really need to - for example, to investigate complaints.

We don't share your personal information.

Your information is stored securely on our own internal systems. All volunteers and staff who access your data have had data protection training to make sure your information is handled sensitively and securely.

The feedback form itself is provided by our trusted research partner, Survey Monkey. We keep your details securely on their system.

We keep your feedback indefinitely, but we'll delete your personal details after 2 years - this includes your name, contact details and your local Citizens Advice.

If you used a template letter

The information you put in your letter isn't kept on our systems. As soon as you close the tool or web page, the information will be deleted from our systems.

Contact us about your data

You can contact us at any time and ask us:

  • what information we've stored about you
  • to change or update your details
  • to delete your details from our records

Send us a message at individualrights@citizensadvice.org.uk.

If you want to make a complaint

If you're not happy with how we've handled your data, you can make a complaint.