The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations is the membership organisation for Scotland's charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises. Charity registered in Scotland SC003558. Registered office Caledonian Exchange, 19A Canning Street, Edinburgh EH3 8EG.
Cookies Policy
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we may store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer or device. They cannot be used to identify you personally.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of SCVO services. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse the SCVO services and also allows us to improve SCVO services.
Cookies are used to improve services for you through, for example:
- enabling a service to recognise your device so you don’t have to give the same information several times during one task;
- recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don’t need to do it for every web page requested; and
- measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there’s enough capacity to ensure they are fast
Types of cookies used
SCVO uses the following types of cookies:
- Site cookies – this allows us to link the actions of a user during a browser session so that we are able to store certain information whilst the user is browsing SCVO services.
- Google Analytics cookies – Google Analytics sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to SCVO services and volumes of usage.
- Linkedin cookies – these cookies allow usage to be tracked from social sharing links.
- Meta (Facebook) cookies – these cookies allow usage to be tracked from social sharing links.
- Hotjar cookies – Hotjar sets cookies to track visitor behaviour on the SCVO website, including click and scroll locations.
- ActiveCampaign cookies - ActiveCampaign is email campaign software we use to manage bulletin newsletters, the cookies allow usage to be tracked from email links.
- Mapbox cookies - Mapbox is a system we use for embedding maps on certain pages where we need to show an address location, the cookie is used to track usage information.
You can find more detailed information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the tables below:
Required cookies
Site cookies
| Name | Purpose | Expiry |
|---|---|---|
| scvo_account | To provide My SCVO account services | 1 month |
| cookie_consent | A Boolean value used to remember if the user has dismissed the privacy information banner | No expiry |
Optional cookies
Google Analytics cookies
We use Google Analytics to collect information about how you use SCVO services.
We store information about:
- the pages you visit and how long you spend on each page
- how you got to our services
- what you click on while you're visiting our sites
We do not:
- collect information that can be used to identify you; for example, we never receive your name or address
- make any attempt to find out the identities of people visiting the site
- allow the tools that we use to find out the identities of people visiting the site
- sell, trade or give your details to third parties, unless we are required to do it by law
All information we get through cookies and analytics will be treated in confidence.
We anonymise the last 3 digits of all user IP addresses for Google Analytics, so that we can ensure that you are protected (you can read more about how this works here). We can only see a general overview of which regions and cities you may come from, not where individuals access from.
Find out more about security and privacy in Google Analytics.
You can opt out of Google Analytics cookies.
| Name | Purpose | Expiry |
|---|---|---|
| _ga | This is used to understand and differentiate between different users. | 13 Months |
| _ga_<container-id> | Used to persist session state. Container ID is the identifier for the Google Analytics account being used. | 13 Months |
| _gid | _gid has a different ID for each page set on, and a timestamp. This assists with plotting user journeys. | 24 Hours |
LinkedIn cookies
| Name | Purpose | Expiry |
|---|---|---|
| Conversion | Help advertisers determine how many times people who click on their ads end up purchasing their products or performing a particular action (e.g. submitting a form, watching a video, downloading a PDF, etc). These cookies allow LinkedIn and the advertiser to determine that you clicked the ad and later visited the advertiser's site. Conversion cookies are not used by LinkedIn for personalised ad targeting and persist for a limited time only. | No expiry |
| JSESSIONID | General purpose platform session cookie. It is used to maintain an anonymous user session by the server. | Until end of session |
| lang | This cookie is used to set default locale/language. | Until end of session |
| lidc | This cookie is used for routing from Share buttons and ad tags | 1 day |
| bcookie | This cookie is used by LinkedIn for identifying the Browser ID. It is set from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags. | 1 year |
| bscookie | This cookie is used by LinkedIn to recognize a secure Browser ID. | 1 year |
| UserMatchHistory | This cookie is used by LinkedIn Ads to help measure advertising performance. More information can be found in their cookie policy. | No expiry |
| visit | This cookie is used by LinkedIn as part of their embedded services on the Websites. More information can be found in their cookie policy. | No expiry |
Meta (Facebook) cookies
Facebook pixel allows the website visitors’ behaviour to be tracked once they have been redirected to the provider’s website by clicking on a Facebook ad. This allows the efficacy of Facebook ads to be evaluated for statistical and market research purposes and future advertising measures to be optimised.
A randomly generated user ID and the time of the first visit are also recorded. This ID allows Facebook to recognise returning users on this website and compile data from previous visits.
| Name | Purpose | Expiry |
|---|---|---|
| c_user; xs | We use these cookies to authenticate you and keep you logged in as you navigate between Facebook Pages. | 365 days |
| sb; dbln | These cookies help us to identify your browser securely. | 2 years |
| datr | This is a unique identifier for your browser that, amongst other things, helps us protect you from fraud. This cookie also helps us to identify browsers used by malicious actors and to prevent cyber security attacks. | 2 years |
| csrf | This cookie helps us to keep your account secure. | Session |
| fr | Depending on your choices, this cookie is used to deliver, measure and improve the relevancy of ads. | 90 days |
| _fbp; _fbc | These cookies identify browsers for businesses using our Meta Products for the purposes of providing advertising and site analytics services. | Session |
| oo | This cookie helps store your advertising preferences. | 5 years |
| presence | This cookie supports your use of Messenger chat windows. | 30 days |
| dpr; wd | These cookies help deliver an optimal experience for your device's screen. | 7 days |
Hotjar cookies
We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes a device's IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf.
For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.
| Name | Purpose | Expiry |
|---|---|---|
| _hjClosedSurveyInvites | Hotjar cookie. This cookie is set once a visitor interacts with a Survey invitation modal popup. It is used to ensure that the same invite does not re-appear if it has already been shown. | 365 days |
| _hjDonePolls | Hotjar cookie. This cookie is set once a visitor completes a poll using the Feedback Poll widget. It is used to ensure that the same poll does not re-appear if it has already been filled in. | 365 days |
| _hjMinimizedPolls | Hotjar cookie. This cookie is set once a visitor minimizes a Feedback Poll widget. It is used to ensure that the widget stays minimizes when the visitor navigates through your site. | 365 days |
| _hjDoneTestersWidgets | Hotjar cookie. This cookie is set once a visitor submits their information in the Recruit User Testers widget. It is used to ensure that the same form does not re-appear if it has already been filled in. | 365 days |
| _hjIncludedInSample | Hotjar cookie. This session cookie is set to let Hotjar know whether that visitor is included in the sample which is used to generate funnels. | 365 days |
| _hjShownFeedbackMessage | This cookie is set when a visitor minimizes or completes Incoming Feedback. This is done so that the Incoming Feedback will load as minimized immediately if they navigate to another page where it is set to show. | 365 days |
| _hjid | Hotjar cookie. This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the Hotjar User ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. | 365 days |
| _hjRecordingLastActivity | This should be found in sessionStorage (as opposed to cookies). This gets updated when a visitor recording starts and when data is sent through the WebSocket (the visitor performs an action that Hotjar records). | Session |
| hjTLDTest | When the Hotjar script executes we try to determine the most generic cookie path we should use, instead of the page hostname. This is done so that cookies can be shared across subdomains (where applicable). To determine this, we try to store the _hjTLDTest cookie for different URL substring alternatives until it fails. After this check, the cookie is removed. | Session |
| _hjUserAttributesHash | User Attributes sent through the Hotjar Identify API are cached for the duration of the session in order to know when an attribute has changed and needs to be updated. | Session |
| _hjCachedUserAttributes | This cookie stores User Attributes which are sent through the Hotjar Identify API, whenever the user is not in the sample. These attributes will only be saved if the user interacts with a Hotjar Feedback tool. | Session |
| _hjLocalStorageTest | This cookie is used to check if the Hotjar Tracking Script can use local storage. If it can, a value of 1 is set in this cookie. The data stored in_hjLocalStorageTest has no expiration time, but it is deleted immediately after creating it so the expected storage time is under 100ms. | N/A |
| _hjptid | This cookie is set for logged in users of Hotjar, who have Admin Team Member permissions. It is used during pricing experiments to show the Admin consistent pricing across the site. | Session |
| _hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress | The cookie is set so Hotjar can track the beginning of the user's journey for a total session count. It does not contain any identifiable information. | 30 minutes |
ActiveCampaign
We use ActiveCampaign for email campaign and bulletin usage tracking.
For further details, please see find out more about ActiveCampaign cookies.
| Name | Purpose | Expiry |
|---|---|---|
| ac_enable_tracking | This cookie is associated with Active Campaign and is set to confirm that tracking has been enabled for the website. Tracking is used to create reports of our web traffic and improve the user experience of the website | 365 days |
Mapbox
We use Mapbox to embed customised maps on our pages where we need to show a physical location for an event. This service sets a cookie to record general usage.
For further details, please see this page about Mapbox cookies.
| Name | Purpose | Expiry |
|---|---|---|
| session | This is used to record service usage. | 13 Months |