We count how the public pages of this site are used, so we know which information people actually come here for. We do it ourselves, on our own server, and we have built it to answer that question and no other.
What is recorded
- The address of the page that was opened.
- Whether you arrived from a search engine, from social media, from another page on this site, or by typing the address — and the name of the website you came from, never the search you typed.
- Whether the device is a phone, a tablet or a computer.
- Which links are followed from a page — documents opened, short links used, and links leaving the site.
- The date and the hour, not the minute.
What is not recorded
- No IP addresses. Your address is used for a moment to work out a visitor count and is never written down.
- No names, accounts or member records. Nothing recorded here is connected to who you are.
- Nothing from the members-only area. What a signed-in member reads is not counted at all.
- No advertising or third-party trackers. Nothing on this site reports to Google, Meta or anyone else as you browse. No tracking cookies.
The forum video
The all-candidates forum recording is held on YouTube rather than here, because a three-hour video needs to adjust its quality for a slow connection and to carry captions, and our own server does neither. That means the player comes from Google, and Google will see your request for it — so nothing is requested until you press play. Open the forum page and nothing reaches Google; press play and it does, on the same terms as watching anything on YouTube. We use their no-cookie player address, which holds off on cookies until you actually watch.
How visitors are counted
To tell twenty visits by one person from one visit by twenty people, each visit is given a code worked out from your connection. That code is built with a secret that is thrown away and replaced every day, so the same person tomorrow produces a different code and there is no way to work backwards from a code to a person. It tells us how many people came. It cannot tell us who, or follow anyone from one day to the next.
How long it is kept
Individual records are deleted after 90 days. What remains is a daily count of views per page — no visitor codes, nothing about any single visit.
Asking not to be counted
If your browser sends a “Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control” signal, this site records nothing about your visit. Both are settings in your browser’s privacy preferences.
Who can see it
Only the Local President, through the members area. The figures are counts of pages and links — there is no per-person view to look at, because the data to build one is not collected.
Other information you give us
This note covers visit counting. Information you deliberately send us — a contact form, a grant application, a member account — is held because the union needs it to do its work, is seen only by the officers who need it, and is not part of anything described above.
Questions about any of this go to the Local President — contact us.