Privacy policy

Short version

WBS will never sell information about you to anyone outside the University of Warwick. We will never share personal information outside the University, except:

  • where you have given your consent
    where we ask or notify you first
  • to protect someone's safety, or for legal reasons
    such as to comply with a legal request, or to prevent crime or civil dispute
  • to enable trusted third-parties to perform services on our behalf
    such as processing credit card payments, providing chat facilities, or web analytics

An introduction

This statement of policy practices applies to all providers and users of network products and services offered by Warwick Business School (WBS) on the sites:

and such other domain names that reference these same servers.

WBS also has group sites which contain information managed by individual members of WBS:

All authors of pages on group sites are encouraged to follow this privacy policy. However WBS does not endorse or monitor their content, and therefore any divergence from this policy will not be the responsibility of WBS. To clarify the privacy practice of authors on group sites, you should contact the individual page author directly.

WBS agrees to adhere to this privacy policy and to make it clear if any changes in our policy are made. This privacy statement may be updated from time to time so please check back periodically.

By using our products or services through web pages at, or linked to, this URL or our other sites subject to this policy, you agree to be bound by the WBS privacy policy and any other privacy, data collection, service terms or copyright statement applicable. In particular, there are separate Terms of Use for messaging/email services offered by WBS, which you might also wish to read.

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The scope of this privacy policy

WBS websites may contain links to other sites and may allow other sites to be linked with the WBS name. These other sites may also collect personally identifiable information about you.

While we shall endeavour to ensure that privacy policies at these sites match that at WBS, we cannot guarantee that they do so. Consequently, this privacy statement does not cover third party data collection practices and WBS cannot take responsibility for the practices of third parties.

If you feel that a site associated with a WBS site or using the WBS brand and/or logo does not follow an acceptable privacy policy, please contact us.

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The information WBS collects

We aim to provide information about WBS and our services to prospective customers. In order to tailor our services to the market and individual users, we may need to collect information from the many individual visitors to our site. The following kinds of information are collected:

Involuntary - anonymous

Information that can not be tied back to a specific individual. Collecting this information allows us to analyse the use of our website, and compare with others, so that we can improve it.

Examples of involuntary - anonymous information include:

  • The visitor's IP address
    which we can use to tell us a visitor's country/region of location, whether that computer has visited before, and what type of connection they have, eg. academic institution, or government
  • Referral data
    the page from which a visitor comes, if by clicking on another site's link
  • Browser and platform type
    eg. whether Firefox, Chrome or IE; what version; whether Macintosh, PC, or smartphone
  • Search terms used to arrive at a page.

Voluntary - personally identifiable

Information that tells us specifically who you are, such as your name and postal address. Wherever and whenever WBS collects personal information through registration, we stress the voluntary nature of the transaction and include a link to this privacy statement.

WBS might collect voluntary - personally identifiable information that has been provided in several ways, including when you:

  • Register for a product or service
  • Request further information or documentation.

You might choose to register for a product or service on one of the WBS websites. If you do, you will be asked to provide personal details and contact information. While not all of this information is required, the more information you give and the more accurate it is, the better we are able to target our services to different categories of users and improve the usefulness of our site. Once registered you may be given a WBS Personal ID and be able to take fuller advantage of product and service offerings on the website, including personalisation services.

You might be asked for personal information and contact details at other times, such as when you request further information or mail-outs of brochures. We will also ask for information when you make a purchase or use a credit card to pay for any service advertised and offered on a WBS website.

We will not collect your email address for re-use if you choose to contact us. However, we might keep a record of that correspondence. Any information provided is used solely to respond to the email, or to follow up with directly requested or subsequently available related information.

If you do choose to register on the WBS websites but not to provide some elements of the requested information, we shall endeavour to satisfy the requested transaction. We may, however, not be able to do so or to offer a personalised service that depends on this information.

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How WBS uses cookies

Like many websites, we use cookie technology to collect additional website usage data and to improve our services. A cookie is a small data file that is transferred to your computer's hard disk. We do not require cookies for many parts of our services such as simple browsing of information. However, we may require cookies for transactional, personalised, or password-protected areas. We may use both session cookies and persistent cookies to better understand how you interact with our websites, and to monitor aggregate usage by our visitors. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies. You can instruct your browser, by editing its options, to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the websites you visit. You can find instructions for many browsers here. If you set your browser to refuse cookies, please be aware that there may be functionality that does not work.

Read more about how we use cookies.

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The organisations using the information collected

Information that is collected during registration may be managed within WBS or the University of Warwick. We may pass information to other organisations in order for them to provide contracted services to WBS. These organisations are also bound by this privacy policy.

WBS may form relationships with other services and content providers. These services may also require registration to make them function properly. You will recognise these sites by 'joint branding', identified by the relevant organisational logos. Other third-party relationships may be 'private label' relationships where a product or service partner provides WBS with technology, services and/or content under WBS branding.

Whenever you provide registration information on joint branded or private label sites, that data may be shared with the partners. You should make every effort to read the individual privacy policies of the partners, and make an informed decision on your own whether or not to continue based upon these sites' privacy practices and your own discretion. You may opt-out of sharing your information with such partners by choosing not to use that service or content.

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How WBS uses the information collected

Any information that we collect will be accessible only to those responsible for the running of the websites and the operation of associated services, unless specifically stated otherwise.

WBS may use the information obtained in several ways, including:

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How to access, edit or delete your personal information

Please contact us if you would like to access, edit or delete the personal information in your user profile. To delete cookies, please read your web browser help information.

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The opt-out policy for WBS websites

The WBS websites offer you the ability to opt out of receiving information on WBS site updates and new services. This is done at the point of initial collection of information and during the editing or updating process.

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The procedures in place to protect your information

WBS has security measures in place to attempt to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of your user data under our control. Only authorised employees have access to the information you provide us and there are strict rules on WBS employees who have access either to the databases that store user information or to the servers that host our services.

We cannot guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration to data will not occur. However, we make every effort to prevent such occurrences. We use a secure web server, which features encryption and secure transmission by way of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), to collect particularly sensitive information. Since data may pass through many computers across the Internet on its way to WBS, we cannot vouch for the security of any information sent through insecure connections.

You are ultimately responsible for the security of any WBS Personal ID and password you may be given. Please take care when using and storing them. We recommend that you do not divulge your password to anyone. You should also exit/quit from your browser at the end of each computer session to ensure that others cannot access your personal information and correspondence, especially if you share a computer with someone else or are using a computer in a public place, like a library or Internet café.

When you communicate with others online, you should be aware that, when disclosing personal information on a web page, in a newsgroup, chat room or forum, that information may be collected and used by others to send that person unsolicited email from other parties outside of WBS. Some of the email you receive may be useful to you, but some may not. To curtail unsolicited email, WBS may block certain email addresses and domains from sending email to email addresses at our domains.

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Who to contact about this statement

Questions regarding this statement should be directed to:

Information Design Manager
Warwick Business School
University of Warwick
Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK

w Send privacy feedback
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Changes to this statement

10 February 2003
This section detailing changes was added, and the internal links moved to the start of the page. The scope of the policy was made explicit, with particular reference to the users.wbs site.
5 September 2004
This page was revised to conform to XHTML web standards, with style and minor contact address changes. Some background information on cookies was moved to a separate page. No changes to policy or practice. Abbreviated version added to the top.
6 June 2007
Add statement to explicitly permit data-sharing within the University, and with organisations who are fulfilling services for us, such as for credit card transactions. Edit short version to make this clear. Update cookie policy to highlight voluntary personally-identifiable uses, such as for remembering logins. Update domain names used by WBS. Typographic changes.
16 May 2011
Make third-party services clearer still in short version. Update domain names in use. Typographic and formatting changes. Simplify cookie and advice paragraphs (which were informational rather than policy).
31 May 2011
Re-word cookie paragraph in light of legal changes to Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.