Cookies and third-party web services on our website

Published 30 April 2024

Our website may, or may allow third-party components and services to:

• store or access cookies on your device
• record some information about you or your device.

You have the right to know what cookies are used, the reasons they are used and what information is gathered. You also have the right to grant or withhold your consent to these activities, except where they are strictly necessary for the provision of our service.

Change my cookie preferences

What are cookies?

Cookies are unique identifiers assigned by websites in order to distinguish individual visitors, and are stored on your device as small text files. Most web browsers have settings that offer some control over cookies. To find out more about cookies, visit All About Cookies.

What are tracking pixels?

Our website and some of the third-party components and services it uses may use tracking pixels in a similar way to cookies. These cause your device to download a small file from our website or from a third-party service, which allows the service operator to record your visit. Statements about cookies in this policy should be understood as applying to tracking pixels unless otherwise stated.

Why do we use cookies and collect data?

Note:  This page only addresses the data collected as a by-product of visiting our website. For details of other types of data collection and processing the Development Office carries out, please see our Alumni, Donors and Supporters Privacy Notice.

In most cases where our website sets cookies or records information about visitors, the purpose is to facilitate the functioning of the site. We also actively collect and analyse anonymous information about how visitors use our website, to inform its future development and to understand how our audience responds to fundraising campaigns.

Where we have chosen to use third-party services on our site, the operators of these services may set cookies or collect information for their own purposes. Again, this is mainly for functional purposes, or to allow the operators of these services to monitor how they are being used. However, some of these third parties may also use this information for advertising purposes.

What cookies and third-party services do we use?

This is a summary of the components and services we use on our site that set cookies or gather information about you. A detailed list of cookies and third-party services is included in the appendix below.

Cookies and services by category

What if I do not consent?

If you do not consent, you will still be able to use our website, but components or services that engage in these activities will be turned off. For example, YouTube videos on our site would be disabled. 

However, you cannot opt out of components or services that are strictly necessary for our site to function. Components or services in this category will operate even if your consent is otherwise withheld.

What if I change my cookie preferences?

If you revoke your consent to cookies, our website will stop using any cookies already stored on your device. These cookies will not be automatically deleted from your device, but can usually be deleted manually.

Most web browsers have a function to delete stored cookies. If your web browser allows it, you can delete just the cookies relevant to our web domains, ox.ac.uk and www.development.ox.ac.uk

Email tracking technologies

Separately from our website, we use tracking pixels to monitor how recipients interact with emails that we send. We normally use this information in an anonymous and aggregated form to optimise future emails and for our own internal reporting. However, we can tie this information to an identifiable individual if we also hold their details in our Development and Alumni Relations System database; we might do this, for example, if an individual contacts us about a technical problem.

While we are not required to seek consent for this form of monitoring, you may opt out of our mailings by using the ‘unsubscribe’ links in the footers of our emails.

Changes to our Cookie Statement

Any changes we make to our Cookie Statement in the future will be posted on this page.

Contact

If you have any queries or concerns about the use of cookies on this website, please contact our Information Compliance Team by emailing data.protection@admin.ox.ac.uk or writing to:  Information Compliance Team, University of Oxford, University Offices, Wellington Square, Oxford, OX1 2JD.

You have the right to request the data held by our partner Usercentrics about your cookie consent settings for our website, or to request that this data be deleted. To do so, please contact our Information Compliance Team (above) quoting the identifier shown in the list of services in our cookie settings dialogue (‘ID to request consent data’).