Cookie policy

Right now, for every young person we can support, there’s another we can’t. We want to offer every young person with cancer the support they need, when they need it - before, during, and after diagnosis; and we rely on the generosity and support of individuals like you to achieve our goals. We want you to know that we really value your support and we are committed to protecting your personal information, as well as being open and honest about how we collect, store and use personal data. We know that your personal information needs to be kept safe, and we never give or sell any personal data to other charities or organisations.

What are cookies?

Teenage Cancer Trust website uses cookies to improve your user experience. “Cookies” are small pieces of information that a website places on your computer’s hard drive while you’re viewing the Teenage Cancer Trust website (referred to from here on out as ‘our site’), which can be used at a later time by the website to identify particular devices and thereby remember your website preferences and log in details.

Most cookies won’t collect information that identifies you, and will instead collect more general information such as how users arrive at and use our websites, or a user’s general location. Cookies also help us run our site better and faster and they let you navigate between pages more efficiently.

We may use ‘session’ cookies (which expire once you close your web browser) and ‘persistent’ cookies (which stay on your computer until you delete them) to provide you with a more personal and interactive experience on our site. In plain English, this means we use cookies so that we can provide our services, understand how they are used, and for advertising/analytics purposes.

Also, Cookies that we set are called “first party cookies”, while cookies set by other parties are called “third party cookies”. Third party cookies enable features or functionality from such third parties to be provided on our site. The parties that set these third-party cookies can recognise your computer both when it visits the website in question and also when it visits certain other websites (see below…)

How we collect cookies

We collect your data automatically via cookies when you visit our website, in line with cookie settings in your browser and your customised cookie settings. We will also collect data from you when you contact us via the website.

We also use cookies to track your activity to help ensure you get the best possible experience when visiting our website.

We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns which does not identify any individual.

Cookie preferences

Manage cookie preferences

What type of cookies do we use?

The categories cookies and pixel tags used on our site are described in the table below.

Strictly Necessary and Functional Cookies

Description and purpose

These cookies are deemed essential because they enable user movement around our website and provide access to features such as your profile and purchases and other secure areas of the website. 

Strictly Necessary Cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing purposes and do not remember when you have been on the internet.

All strictly necessary cookies are deemed persistent, except for the session cookies set by Cloudflare and Drupal.

Strictly Necessary Cookies cannot be disabled. 

Marketing, Targeting and Advertising Cookies

These cookies record your visit to our site, the pages you have visited, and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests.

Doubleclick cookies collects how many times you have seen an ad and, for example, whether you need to see the UK or US version of the ad. It cannot find out any personal information about you, however, it does track IP addresses.

Google uses a cookie called ‘NID’ in their browser. When you visit a Google service, the browser sends this cookie with your request. It contains a unique ID where Google remembers your preferences and other information.

We also use a marketing database management program that deploy a cookie when a client interacts with a marketing communication, such as a marketing email or a marketing bases landing page on our website. This cookie collects personal data, such as your name, which pages you visit on our website and your history arriving at our website. Collected information is used to evaluate the effectiveness or our marketing campaigns or to provide better targeting for marketing. 

Analytics and Performance Cookies 

Description and purpose

These cookies collect information about how visitors use our sites, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from our site. These cookies don’t collect information that identifies a visitor.

Google Analytics cookies are used to register a random client identifier that is used to generate statistical data on how the visitor uses the site.

If you do decide to live without these cookies, certain functions of our site may not work.

We do not sell the personal information we gather through cookies etc. when you use of our site.

Google Analytics

Google Analytic cookies allows us to track and report on visitor data across our website, collecting anonymous data on visitors and behaviour to allow us to optimise and improve our web experience. These cookies collect anonymous, aggregated data and allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors to our website and see how they move around and use our website, enabling us to identify our most popular pages and content to improve our website and the experience we offer through it by, for example, ensuring that visitors can find what they are looking for as easily as possible.

For more information about how Google safeguards your data, click here. More information on the specifics regarding how Google Analytics cookies operate on websites, click here. 

You can prevent the use of Google Analytics relating to your use of our sites by downloading and installing a browser plugin available here.

Google’s ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics pertaining to your visits to our site are restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy.

Meta Pixel

We use the Meta pixel so we can collect data about how users interact with our website, campaigns and content. This information is sent to Meta so we can analyse the effectiveness of our communications, campaigns and marketing activity so that we use resources as effectively as possible.

The information that is collected will include things like whether you have made a donation, signed up to a challenge, expressed interest in an activity or clicked on an ad to view content on our site.

As part of this process the Meta pixel can track the following digital behaviours. 

  • Http Headers – Anything that is generally present in HTTP headers, a standard web protocol sent between any browser request and any server on the internet. This information may include data like IP addresses, information about the web browser, page location, document, referrer and person using the website.
  • Pixel-specific Data – Includes Pixel ID and the Facebook Cookie.
  • Button Click Data – Includes any buttons clicked by site visitors, the labels of those buttons and any pages visited as a result of the button clicks.
  • Optional Values – Teenage Cancer Trust can optionally choose to send additional information about the visit through Custom Data events. Example custom data events are donation value, page type and more.
  • Form Field Names – Includes website field names like email, address, quantity, etc., for when you purchase a product or service.
  • All of this information is being picked up by the pixel if it is available to capture, Any information collected is hashed (encrypted).

Similar technologies

Aside from cookies, we also use something called “pixel tags” — otherwise known as clear GIFs or web beacons. The TL;DR on pixel tags is this: they’re tiny graphic images with unique identifiers, similar to cookies, that are used to recognise when someone has visited our site or opened an email that we have sent them. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user’s computer hard drive, pixel tags are embedded invisibly in web pages. They can analyse web traffic patterns from one page within our site to another, communicate with cookies, and understand whether you came to our site from an online advertisement or post displayed on a third-party website.  We do not tie information gathered by pixel tags to our users’ personal information.  Among other uses, they enable us to compile statistics about usage of our sites, so that we can manage our content more effectively.

Switching off Cookies and similar technologies

If you decide at any time that you no longer wish to accept cookies from Teenage Cancer Trust’s site, then you can instruct your browser by changing its settings. Most browsers let you remove or reject cookies. Many browsers accept cookies by default until you change your settings. For more information about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set on your device and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org 

Please note that if you set your browser to disable cookies, our site may not work properly and you may experience some inconvenience in your use of our site. For example, we may not be able to recognise your computer or mobile device and you may need to log in every time you visit our sites.

Find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:

Opt-out options regarding targeted advertising

You can opt-out from receiving targeted advertising on websites through members of the Network Advertising Initiative by clicking here or the Digital Advertising Alliance by clicking here. Please note that we also may work with companies that offer their own opt-out mechanisms and may not participate in the opt-out mechanisms linked above.

European users can opt out of receiving targeted advertising on websites through members of the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance by clicking here, selecting the user’s country, and then clicking “Choices” (or similarly-titled link).

Third Party Cookies

You may notice on some pages of our websites that cookies have been set that are not related to Teenage Cancer Trust. When you visit a page with content embedded from, for example, YouTube or Facebook, these third-party service providers may set their own cookies on your device. These cookies are likely to be analytical / performance cookies or targeting cookies.

Teenage Cancer Trust does not control the use of these third-party cookies and cannot access them due to the way that cookies work, as cookies can only be accessed by the party who originally set them. Please check the third-party websites for more information about these cookies.

Changes to our Cookie Policy

We continuously review the content of our Cookie Policy to ensure it accurately reflects what we do with your information, or we may change the content to reflect changes in the law.

We recommend that you check this page at regular intervals to keep updated on our use of cookies.

This Cookie Policy was last updated in February 2024.