Cookie and privacy policy
Nationwide Building Society will only collect, process and store information about you that
- we have openly collected from you or
- we have openly collected from you with your consent
- in addition to this we do log your IP address which is automatically recognised by our Web Server
We will only collect information that is relevant to providing our online service.
We will keep your information while you have a relationship with us and for any retention period that we are legally required to meet.
If, to provide this service, we need to transfer your information to another company, we will tell you.
When you sign on to our Internet Bank, all information, including messages, are protected by encryption while in transit across the Internet.
If you use standard e-mail for communication with Nationwide, information will not be protected in the same way and you should be aware that Nationwide cannot guarantee that it remains confidential whilst in transit.
All e-mail sent to Nationwide will be monitored and checked to ensure our systems operate effectively.
This privacy policy only covers the Nationwide branded websites. Links within this site to external websites are not covered by this policy. Please note that any changes that Nationwide makes to this policy will be communicated electronically on the home page of this site and not by individual written communication.
How Nationwide uses your information.
Cookies
A cookie is a small piece of data sent by our computer to yours so that information can be recalled.
A cookie is stored by your web browser in a text file on your computer with the word 'cookie' in its name. Each time your web browser requests a page from our web server, the cookie's message is sent back. Only Nationwide's web server may read the contents of a cookie you accept from us.
Nationwide uses cookies in the following ways:
- one of our security measures to ensure your Internet Banking session is secure. This is a non-persistent cookie while you are signed on to the Internet Bank
- to store your Customer Number so that you don't have to type it in each time you sign on to the Internet Bank
You are offered this cookie on the Internet Banking sign on page.
- to track how users reach our site and the path they take through it to help us to improve our service to you
When we use a cookie for this purpose, we do not record any information that will uniquely identify you. We put together the information from a very large number of users of our website to give us an overall picture of how people visit our site.
- from time to time we use a third party company to monitor and analyse traffic to, from and within our website. Cookies may be used as part of this process
Again no information will be recorded that uniquely identifies you.
- from time to time we may wish to record personal information about you using cookies
You may choose to set your browser to not accept any cookies. Please be aware that in doing this, our Internet Bank will not operate correctly.
Find out more about how Nationwide keeps your account secure on our Security site.
Definitions
Browser or Web Browser
There are many web browsers but the most common ones are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.
Web browsers are used to locate and display web pages.
IP (Internet Protocol)
All networks connected to the Internet speak IP, the technical standard which allows data to be transmitted between two devices. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) is responsible for making sure messages get from one computer to another and that the messages are understood.
IP Address
When you are connected to the Internet you have an IP address. It may look something like this - 198.184.98.9.
If you are a dial-up customer using an analogue modem or ISDN, your IP address will usually change each time you connect to the Internet. This means that you cannot be uniquely identified by your IP address.
Web Server
The computer which sends web pages to your computer.