Cookies on the BU website

Necessary cookies are limited to functionality that supports your use of the site. These are the only type of cookie for which we do not collect your consent, i.e. which you cannot choose to switch off through the cookie control tool on the website.  You can still use browser controls to remove and further restrict cookie functions, but this may limit the proper function of part of our website.  You can also choose not to engage with add-on website services such as Live Chat or Unibuddy. 

For example, when you use our Course Search facility, we use a cookie that remembers which course you were looking at when you selected 'Apply Online'. This then pre-selects that course on the application form to make the application process simpler for you. This cookie expires after three hours. The BU online application system also automatically issues your computer with a cookie which enables the web page to display properly in your browser.  

We use Google Analytics cookies to see which pages are being looked at, for how long, from what referral source (what content you were looking at before – Email, Social Media etc) and to better understand where you complete specific actions (Open Day bookings, Prospectus requests etc) as part of your website visit today. We look at this aggregated data at a high level to help us analyse web data and improve our website - we only use this information for statistical analysis and content improvements. 

Like all Google Analytics accounts, ours uses a cookie to identify your geographical location to the nearest town/city, through processing your IP address.  As explained above, cookies can be regarded as collecting personal data if they identify your IP address/location; however we do not consider that this cookie collects personal data for BU: your location is collected only to the nearest town/city, the data we see is aggregated data which we cannot use to determine any individual’s identity And your IP address is not visible to staff at BU at any time.  We do not use cookies or data from cookies to take any steps to identify individual.  

You may also find it useful to read information on “Why am I seeing digital adverts from BU” in our Student Recruitment & Admissions Privacy Notice.  

We also use Hotjar, a third-party piece of software which provides us with: 

• Heat maps – these are visual representations of how website visitors have interacted with web pages, for example how far down the page they get and what links they interact with. This is aggregated data from thousands of page views, and cannot be used to identify individuals; 

• Session Recordings – Hotjar records information such as mouse movements and clicks and displays these as session recordings that our web team can watch back. These recordings are anonymised and cannot be linked to any individuals, including by concealing any information entered into a form. They’re used to help us better understand points of friction in our online experience and what we can do to improve the site experience for visitors. 

When we send emails to you this is often through a platform called DotDigital which might place its own cookies. These are used to monitor how many people open the emails we send and to track which links you used to reach us. You can find dotMailer's privacy policy on the dotMailer website.  Details of how to manage your preferences for email communications from BU are set out in our Student Recruitment & Admissions and General Enquiries & Public Events privacy notices. 

Our website uses various advertising features such as remarketing pixels to provide advertising services and features on a range of digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube. This includes presenting BU marketing material to you on other platforms based on the content you viewed during your visit to our website.  

To do this our website, and third party vendors (including Google) use the Google Analytics cookie and other first-party and third party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) together to determine, target and evaluate the advertising you see, based on the pages you interact with on our website.  

The cookies are also used together to generate reports for BU on advertising viewing, ad services and related visitor interactions within our website. In addition, if you have consented to marketing cookies, our analytics activity (see b) will also be able to use data aggregated from Google’s Internet-based advertising or third-party audience data (such as age, gender and interests). 

You will only see these adverts as a combined effect of agreeing to use of marketing cookies on our website and your advertising preferences/settings with the different platforms on which the advertising is shown.  You will see advertising tailored to the page you have interacted with on the BU website – for example details of our Health & Social Care degree Open Days if you’ve visited the course page for our Paramedic Science course. We do not collect or process any personally identifiable data as part of this process.