Privacy Policy

Introduction

The Connacht Tribune has created this privacy statement to demonstrate our firm commitment to privacy. The following discloses the information gathering and dissemination practices of The Connacht Tribune.

A user can access our site and utilise a number of our services without providing any information at all. However, all users who may register for The Connacht Tribune services provide basic contact and demographic information. Our advertisers need this information to determine how effective their advertising investments are. The Connacht Tribune will not disclose a user’s personally identifiable information to any third party without the user’s express permission except where applicable for the purpose of supplying the service for which the user has registered.

We do not follow a user’s browsing path outside of our websites.

Information The Connacht Tribune collects:

Optional sign ups:

If users wish to utilise certain services located on specific sections of The Connacht Tribune, they must sign up. Services that currently require some form of sign up include:

• Participation in competitions / promotions / surveys;
• Subscribing to The Connacht Tribune’s Digital Editions;

The information collected when a user signs up for a service can include an email address and name. When signing up for a service, a user may also “opt-in ” to various email notifications or offers (see opt-in procedures below).

Polling:

The Connacht Tribune offers interactive polls so users can easily share their opinions with others and see what other users think about important issues. Their name, email address and country information is retained temporarily.

Cookies:

Certain sections of the site use cookies to maintain single user sessions as well as to aggregate broad demographic data as it relates to user behaviour. You also have choices with respect to cookies. By modifying your browser preferences, you have the choice to accept all cookies, to be notified when a cookie is set, or to reject all cookies. A cookie is a small piece of information sent by a web server to a web browser, which enables the server to collect information back from the browser. You can find out more about the use of cookies on: http://www.cookiecentral.com

“Email this story” service:

A user can electronically forward a summary of a news story to someone else by clicking the link at the bottom of a story. The user provides a valid email address for both the sender and the recipient in order to ensure that the service functions properly and to inform the recipient who sent the story. There is also an option to include a name which is only used for the email salutation. None of this information is used for any other purpose.

Information automatically logged:

We log your IP address, browser’s user agent, and referring address to help diagnose problems with our server, to administer our website and to identify unique users. Your IP address is also used to gather broad demographic information.

Auditing our traffic figures:

We also provide our log file data to ABC electronic auditing bureau on a regular basis to verify our traffic figures to the website. The information is used solely for auditing purposes.

Finally, the data may on occasion of abuse or harassment be used to find and locate individuals abusing the network system and or services of The Connacht Tribune. In these cases this data may be passed on to appropriate individuals, organisations or companies, if specifically requested.

Irish data protection commissioner:

Further information on your data privacy rights are available on the website of the Irish data protection commissioner. http://www.dataprivacy.ie

Advertisers:

The Connacht Tribune may perform statistical analyses of user behaviour in order to measure interest in the various areas of our site (for product development purposes) and to inform advertisers as to how many consumers have seen or “clicked” their advertising banners. We may also use demographic and preference information to allow advertising banners on our website to be targeted, in aggregate, to the readers for whom they are most pertinent. This means that readers may see advertising that is most likely to interest them, and advertisers send their messages to people who are most likely to be receptive, improving both the viewer’s experience and the effectiveness of the ads. In this statistical analyses and banner advertisement targeting, we will disclose information to third parties only in aggregate form. Personal information about you as an individual subscriber will not be provided to any third party without your consent.

We may use a third-party advertising company to serve ads when you visit our website. The third-party advertising company may also separately places or recognises a cookie file on your browser in the course of delivering advertisements to The Connacht Tribune.

Form submissions:

Certain online purchase options require users to give us financial information (such as their credit card numbers), and demographic information (such as their address etc). Financial information that is collected is used solely to bill the user for products and services.

Surveys & competitions:

From time-to-time our site requests information from users via surveys or competitions. Participation in these surveys or competitions is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Information requested may include contact information (such as name and delivery address), and demographic information (such as address, age and income level). Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site. No personal information will be retained for longer than is necessary or used for any undisclosed purpose.

Promotions and competitions that run on The Connacht Tribune may be sponsored by companies other than The Connacht Tribune or may be co-sponsored by The Connacht Tribune and another company.

The Connacht Tribune or its sponsors or business partners may with your expressed permission, from time to time, send you e-mails regarding its products and services.

Email:

Using the email addresses provided on registration, The Connacht Tribune may contact you regarding renewal of subscriptions to the Digital Edition service.

External links:

This site contains links to other sites. The Connacht Tribune is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites.

Security:

This site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100 per cent secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, The Connacht Tribune cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Special interest sites:

The Connacht Tribune may provide certain services in conjunction with third parties: These third parties have their own security and privacy policies. You are advised to review these separately.

Contacting the website:

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, or the security practices of this site, you can contact: info@ctribune.ie

Privacy and cookie policy

Data Protection: What information do we collect?This Privacy and Cookie Policy applies to the operations of this website Connacht Tribune operatedConnacht Tribune Limited, a company registered in the Republic of Ireland under number 3671 and having its registered office at 21 Liosban Business Park, Galway. Connacht Tribune Limited fully respect your right to privacy.

Our primary goal in collecting personal information is to provide you with the best and most useful content to help improve your online experience.

We collect certain kinds of information about our users for these reasons:

1. To provide personalised services unique to individual users.
2. To help us to monitor and improve the services we offer.
3. To sell advertising space on the site.
4. With user consent, to market services to individual users.
5. To provide paid services such as e paper subscriptions.

Visitors should be aware that each time they visit a website two general levels of information about their visit can be retained. The first level comprises statistical and other analytical information collected on an aggregate and non-individual specific basis of all browsers who visit the site, and the second is information that is personal or particular to a specific visitor who knowingly chooses to provide that information. It is policy of this website to respect and protect the privacy of our Customers and never wilfully disclose individually identifiable information about its Customers to any third party without first receiving that Customer’s permission.

We may, however, occasionally email you with information or queries about your registration or accounts, for instance to request permissions or advise you of changes.

No personally identifiable information is collected about you on this website, apart from information which you volunteer (for example by emailing us, using our online forms or by making an inquiry about content or services).

Throughout this website you may have an opportunity to send us information relating to you such as through the “contact us” pages or any other area where you may send e-mails, request brochures, enter contests or respond to any promotions. By choosing to participate in these, you will be providing us with some level of personal information relating to you. This information will only be used by The Connacht Tribune for:

• the purposes for which it was provided by you;
• verification purposes and statistical analysis;
• to provide you with details of products, services, contests, competitions or promotions being provided or run byThe Conancht Tribuneor any of its associated companies or any third party that we may select and which we may think would be of interest to you, in line with your request to receive this information.

What are Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of information, stored in simple text files, placed on your computer by a website. Cookies can be read by the website on your subsequent visits. The information stored in a cookie may relate to your browsing habits on the web page, or a unique identification number so that the website can ‘remember’ you on your return visit.

Generally speaking, cookies do not contain personal information from which you can be identified, unless you have furnished such information to the website. This website uses cookies to track usage and help improve features and services of the site.

Statistical and analytical information from cookies provides us with general and not individually specific information about the number of people who visit this website; the number of people who return to this site; the pages that they visit; where they were before they came to this site and the page in the site at which they exited. This information helps us monitor traffic on our website so that we can manage the site’s capacity and efficiency. It also helps us to understand which parts of this site are most popular, and generally to assess user behaviour and characteristics in order to measure interest in and use of the various areas of the site.

How we use Cookies

We collect information on our users through registration and the use of the website, through cookies, where you choose to disclose data in postings, and when you enter sales promotion and competitions.

We use cookies for a number of reasons:

1. To gather statistics. We track how many ‘unique users’ we have and how often they visit our websites. We track how often different pages of our website are visited and which countries our visitors come from. Accurate statistics enable us to sell advertising and continue to provide a top quality service to you.
2. To track advertising response The Connacht Tribune and its associated companies and third party advertisers generate statistical cookies to track ad impressions and click-through rates
3. Some cookies enable us to show you adverts that you might be more relevant to you, to control the number of times you see them, and measure how effective the ad campaign has been. We also utilise Google Remarketing in combination with Google Analytics to advertise online. Third-party vendors, including Google, show our advertisements on sites across the Internet. In addition, third-party vendors, including Google, use first-party cookies (such as Google Analytics cookie) and third-party cookies together to inform, optimise, and serve advertisements based on someone’s past visits to our website.
4. Flash cookies may be used to store user preferences for media player functionality and without them some video content may not render correctly.
5. Some cookies enable us to fulfil and manage your Digital Edition subscriptions. We use cookies here to enable you to access your e-paper account, sign up for new e-papers, review, manage and cancel your subscription.

By using the sites you are agreeing to the use of cookies as described.

Cookies we use

There are two types of cookie you may encounter when using this site;

FIRST PARTY COOKIES: these are our own cookies, controlled by us and used to provide information about usage of our site.

The following is a listing of the main cookies used on our site together with brief details of the information they store and for what purpose;

Site performance cookies: This type of cookie remembers your preferences/settings for tools found on the Connacht Tribune site.

Analytics cookies: Every time a user visits our website, web analytics software provided by a third party generates an anonymous analytics cookie. These cookies can tell us whether or not you have visited the site before. Your browser will tell us if you have these cookies, and if you don’t, we generate new ones. This allows us to track how many individual unique users we have, and how often they visit the site. Unless you are signed in to the Connacht Tribune site, these cookies cannot be used to identify individuals; they are used for statistical purposes only. If you are logged in, we will also know the details you gave to us for this, such as username and email address.

Registration cookies: When you register with The Connacht Tribune site, we generate cookies that signal whether you are signed in or not. Our servers use these cookies to work out which account you are signed in with, and if you are allowed access to a particular service. It also allows us to associate any comments you post with your username. If you have not selected ‘keep me signed in,’ your cookies get deleted when you either close your browser or shut down your computer. While you are signed into this site, we combine information from your registration cookies with analytics cookies, which we could use to identify which pages you have seen on The Connacht Tribune site.

Digital Edition subscription cookies:

Pagesuite Limited UK provide Digital Edition subscription, payment, identity management and analytics services to The Conancht Tribune, for the purpose of content monetisation. ( i.e. e-paper subscriptions )

The personal data we collect is to provide a seamless but secure purchasing environment. This data is not sold to third parties and Pagesuite maintains the highest standards of security.

The use of cookies is minimal and is only used for session management. Pagesuite y uses Pay-Pal to process credit card information. This data is not shared or accessible to third parties and is encrypted. Cookies are expired when the session is completed.

THIRD PARTY COOKIES: these are cookies found in other companies’ internet tools which we are using to enhance our site, for example Facebook or Twitter, have their own cookies, which are controlled by them.

A lot of the advertisements you see on this site are generated by third parties. Some of these third parties use their own anonymous cookies to track how many people have seen a particular ad, or to track how many people have seen it more than once. Visitors should be aware that The Conancht Tribune is unable to control the use of cookies or the resulting information by other third parties such as advertisers or parties hosting data. These cookies cannot be used to identify an individual; they can only be used for statistical purposes, for example, in providing you with advertisements that are more relevant to your interests.

The companies that generate these cookies have their own privacy policies and  The Conancht Tribune has no access to read or write these cookies, other than allowing them to be served, we have no role to play in these cookies at all (although we may use statistical information arising from these third party cookies and provided to us by third parties, to improve the targeting of advertisements to users of the website). These third party advertising cookies may be used by those third parties to anonymously target advertising to you on other websites, based on your visit to The Connacht Tribune site.

If you would like to disable “third party” cookies generated by advertisers or providers of targeted advertising services, you can turn them off by going to the third party’s website and getting them to generate a one-time “no thanks” cookie that will stop any further cookies being written to your machine.The following are links to the main third party advertising, analytics, survey and commenting platforms we use, each of which provides instructions on how to do this:

Advertising: 6 trackers

Site Analytics: 4 trackers

Digital Edition Subscription Management Trackers

Customer Functionality: 2 trackers

Essential: 2 trackers

Social media: 1 tracker

Facebook Connect

How to manage your cookies

Most browsers and devices offer settings that allow you to choose whether browser cookies are set and to turn-off and/or delete them. For more information about these controls, visit your browser or device’s help material. Certain parts of the Connacht Tribune services may not work properly if you have disabled browser cookie use and you might see more pop-ups and other intrusive advertising, as we won’t be able to limit what you see using cookies. You will, however, still be able to view editorial content.

Find out more about the use of cookies on http://www.cookiecentral.com

All modern browsers allow you to change your cookie settings. These settings will typically be found in the ‘options’ or ‘preferences’ menu of your browser. In order to understand these settings, the following links may be helpful, otherwise you should use the ‘Help’ option in your browser for more details.

If you are primarily concerned about third party cookies generated by advertisers, you can turn these off by going to http://www.youronlinechoices.com/ie/

You can also visit the trade body representing these advertising bodies for more information on how to opt out of these cookies:

http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp

Links to other websites

This website may provide links to third-party web sites for your convenience and information. If you access those links, you will leave this web site The Connacht Tribune is not responsible for the content of external internet sites. We encourage you to review the privacy statement of any company before submitting your personal information.

Stored Information

You may request at any time a copy of the personal information held about you and request its correction or deletion. To obtain a copy of this information, please send an email to info@ctribune.ie

Upon receipt of your request and within 40 days we will inform you about the type of personal information we hold about you, the purposes for which we hold it and the possible recipients or types of recipients.

Changes to this Statement

If there are updates to the details of this Privacy and Cookie Policy, we will post those changes and update the revision date at the top of this document, so you will always know what information we collect online, how we use it, and what choices you have.

Data Protection in Ireland

More information on data privacy rights is available directly from the website of the Irish Data Protection commissioner http://www.dataprotection.ie

Contacting Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement or you wish to make a complaint, please feel free to contact us through our info@ctribune.ie email or write to us at:

Connacht Tribune Data Controller
Connacht Tribune

15 Market Street

Galway