Your privacy

Who we are

This website is run by the King’s Union, the debating society at King’s College London. For anything about your information, email operations@kingsunion.org.uk.

Visitor statistics

To see which pages people find useful and how they find us, the site counts visits on our own system. We don’t use Google Analytics or any advertising or tracking service, and we don’t put cookies on your device for this.

When you view a page, we count:

• the page, and roughly how long it was on screen and how far down it was read;
• the website that linked you here (just its name, like instagram.com), or the poster or campaign link you used;
• your type of device, browser, operating system and screen size (for example “phone, Safari, iOS”);
• your country and city, worked out from your internet address, and your browser’s language;
• clicks on buttons that leave the page, such as ticket links and “Add to calendar”.

These are only stored as totals, such as “40 views of the Term Card today”. Your internet address is never stored. To count each visitor once per day, it is combined with your browser type and a random value that changes every day, then scrambled one way. The random value is deleted after two days, so the result can’t be traced back to you or used to follow you from one day to the next. So that we can tell how long a visit lasts, that scrambled code is kept with a page count for 30 minutes after your last page, then turned into totals and deleted. Cities with fewer than three visitors are never shown.

Totals are kept for 13 months, are only seen by the committee, and are never shared or sold. We rely on our legitimate interest in running and improving the website, and on the UK rules that allow simple statistics like these without a cookie banner as long as you’re told and can say no.

Your visits are not counted at all if your browser sends “Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control”, or if you switch it off here:

Forms

When you use a form (contact, Kingsway writer applications, motion suggestions, applying to speak, or ticket alerts), we keep what you send so the committee can reply or act on it. It is used only for that purpose, and deleted once it is no longer needed. Ticket alerts are sent only because you asked for them, and every alert has a link to unsubscribe in one click.

To make sure nothing is lost if something goes wrong, the website’s database (including form submissions) is backed up every night to private storage that only the committee can access. Backups are deleted after about a month.

Cookies and settings saved in your browser

• Voting: when you vote in a debate, a random code is saved so you can only vote once. It contains nothing about you.
• Motion upvotes: when you upvote a suggested motion, a random code is saved so each person counts once.
• Term Card view: if you switch between calendar and list, the site remembers your choice in your browser.
• Statistics opt-out: if you choose “Don’t count my visits”, that choice is saved in your browser.

These are only set when you use the feature, and are needed for it to work.

Who else handles it

The website is hosted by Vercel and its information is held in a database provider connected through Vercel. They process it only to run the site for us. Some of this may be handled outside the UK under approved safeguards.

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct or delete information you have sent us, or object to how we use it, by emailing operations@kingsunion.org.uk. Visitor statistics can’t be linked to you, so there is nothing about you in them to look up or delete. If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.