Important Notice About Cookies

Last updated on March 18

BBC Studios (“BBCS”), a commercial subsidiary of the BBC, publishes a number of commercial websites and mobile apps (our “services”). Your trust is important to us and we are committed to being transparent about our data practices, protecting your data, and complying with privacy and data protection laws. This notice describes how “cookies” and other specialist web and app technologies are used to support our services and the options available to you.

Find out:

• How cookies are used on our services
• About our service providers and partners
• Your choices (managing cookies and opting out)
• How to contact us
• What cookies are

To learn more about how we treat other personal data please read our Privacy Policy.

HOW COOKIES (AND RELATED TECHNOLOGIES) ARE USED ON OUR SERVICES

Cookies are used on our services for the following purposes:

• As ‘Strictly Necessary’ to run the Service. Some cookies are necessary for the effective operation of the service. For example to enable you to navigate the service, to remember your cookie preferences, to keep our service secure and for system administration, such as preventing fraudulent or disruptive activity;

• To provide additional functionality that improves your experience or that you have requested. For example, to remember your preferences and settings.

• To analyse and improve performance of our services.  For example, to help us to know how many users we have, which parts of our sites are most popular, what browsers are used (so we can maximise compatibility), the country or region where our users are located, and the demographics and interests of our users. This enables us to understand better who is using our site, to ensure we are reaching our target demographic, and to improve and tailor our services accordingly. We might also use cookies to measure the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns (online and by email).

On services which contain advertising*, and through BBC Studios marketing shown to you elsewhere online, our advertising partners also use cookies to enable them and their advertisers to monitor the effectiveness of their ads (e.g. by using statistical analysis cookies), to prevent fraud and to limit the number of times they show you a particular ad.

• To provide social media functionality, referral links and third party embedded content.We sometimes provide sharing buttons to enable you to share content via social media or we use third parties to provide video content on the service. These companies may use cookies stored on your browser/device which are associated with your account with them or otherwise enable them to track your use of their services. Details of which are used on this service are provided in the next section. Please be aware that these companies are responsible for these cookies and their use of your data.

• To personalise advertising shown to you on the service, or BBC Studios marketing shown to you elsewhere online.Some of our services* carry advertising that helps us to pay for creating and delivering content to you.  This advertising may be personalised based on your web browsing and inferred interests.

We and our partners may use cookies, as well your IP address or network location, to know which pages on the service you visit and your city or region. This information is sometimes combined with other data collected about your browsing of other websites or from specialist data companies to derive what may interest you so that you can be placed in an interest segment, such as “travel” or “autos”.

We may also allow advertisers to use their own marketing data to target advertising campaigns on this service and as a result, you may see advertising based upon website content you have been viewing on another website. For example, a retailer might use information about the products you browsed on their website in order to tailor their advert to you on this website.

We are committed to following best practice in our use of online behavioural targeting technology and we at all times seek to comply with applicable regulatory frameworks, such as that of the European Digital Advertising Alliance. For more information about behavioural advertising, please visit www.youronlinechoices.com.

* Note that not all our websites contain advertising. Please refer to the list below to find out if this particular service uses advertising technologies.

OUR SERVICE PROVIDERS AND PARTNERS

We contract with specialist companies to provide services and functionality, including analytics and advertising.  Our main contracted providers for this particular service are detailed below, along with links to their privacy notices and cookie opt-out pages (where available). Some of these companies act as a data controller and are responsible for how your data is used and their handling of your data is subject to their privacy notice.  We take steps to ensure that their use of your data is fair and proportionate, for example by vetting their security and data practices.

YOUR CHOICES: MANAGING COOKIES AND “OPTING OUT”

You can opt out of cookies and tracking by our contracted service providers by using the opt-out links provided above.

Advertising Industry Opt-out Tools

You can use the Advertising Industry tools to opt out from advertising technologies used on this service and across the wider internet. In opting out, a cookie will be set to let advertisers know not to use your data for targeted advertising purposes; you will still see adverts they just won’t be personalised to your interests.

Managing cookies and local storage on your device

Web browser cookies: You can choose how web browser cookies are handled by your device via your browser settings including to refuse or delete all cookies. Each browser is different, so check the “Help” menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences or follow the instructions provided at: www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies, which provides information for the most common browsers.

Local Storage (Flash and HTML5): The most common browsers clear your locally stored data when you choose to delete/clear your cookies and web browsing data. Alternatively, you can manage your Flash cookie settings via the settings panel on the Adobe website.

The ‘Do Not Track’ function on your web browser

This is a feature offered by some browsers which, when enabled, sends a signal to request that your browsing is not tracked. However not all companies respond to such requests and we can’t control whether our partners will or not so we advise also using the options listed above.

Ad choices for mobile applications

If you are accessing BBCS services though the web browser on your mobile device, you should follow the instructions above. However, mobile applications use different technologies to recognise your device. To opt out of your app usage data being used to target advertising within apps you should follow the instructions below.

Apple iOS
1. Go to Settings > Privacy > Advertising.
2. Turn on Limit Ad Tracking.
Visit the Apple support page for more information.

Google Android
1. Go to Settings.
2. Select Google in the Accounts section.
3. Select Ads in the Privacy section.
4. Tick Opt out of interest based ads.
Visit the Google support page for more information.

Microsoft Windows
1. Go to Settings.
2. Tap on Privacy.
3. Tap on Advertising ID, and turn off Let apps use my advertising ID for experiences across apps
Visit the Microsoft support page for more information.

CONTACT US

If you have any questions or concerns about BBCS’s use of cookies and other tracking technologies please email us at: dataprotection@bbc.com.

EXPLAINER: WHAT ARE COOKIES?

Web Browser Cookies

A cookie is a small text file that is sent by a website or technology provider to your computer or mobile device where it is stored by your web browser. The cookie stores a unique identifier, a string of characters, which enables a website or technology provider to recognise your browser or device, for example when you revisit a page or site or click on a link or advert.

Cookies may be stored by the website you are visiting (a “first party cookie”) or by another organisation providing services to that website, such as an analytics company, advertising network or social media platform (a “third party cookie”). They will either be stored for the duration of your visit (a “session cookie”) or they will remain on your device for a fixed period (usually several months, or longer) to remember you across multiple browsing sessions (a “persistent cookie”).

Other types of local storage, such as Adobe Flash Cookies and HTML5 Storage

Many websites use local storage technologies that are similar to cookies but enable larger amounts of data to be stored. This means they can store information like your preferences, game data and viewing history on your device rather than on their own systems.

Tracking technologies, such as web beacons and page tags

Website publishers and technology providers use embedded code to record how you interact with them (recognising your browser/device via the unique ID stored in their cookie or the device Advertising ID). They are used to help website and app publishers to better analyse and improve their services and to target advertising based on your browsing behaviour and interests. For example, by knowing which web pages you visit or which elements of a page you viewed, when and for how long, whether you viewed and/or clicked on an advert on the site or whether you opened or clicked on marketing emails sent to you.

Tracking via Apps

Companies are unable to use cookies within Mobile Apps. Instead they use unique identifiers associated with your device, such as the device Advertising ID (a random and resettable ID on your device), and other data such as your geo-location or your network location. This data is used in the same way as cookies, e.g. to analyse and improve services and to serve marketing and advertising to you (if the App is funded by advertising).