This Cookie Policy should be read in conjunction with our Privacy Statement, Data Privacy Notice and Terms and Conditions.
“We” and “our” and “us” means Bank of Ireland and Bank of Ireland Group plc, Bank of Ireland and Bank of Ireland Group. Please see our Data Privacy Notice for more information on how the Bank of Ireland Group processes personal data.
What is a cookie?
Cookies are small pieces of information, stored in simple text files, placed on your computer, mobile or tablet device when you visit a website. Cookies are used to monitor website traffic and enhance your experience of our website (for example by keeping track of your preferences and recognizing return visitors). 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.
Accepting or Rejecting Cookies
Users can set their browsers to accept or reject all, or certain, cookies. If you would like more information how to manage cookies, please see the section below headed, ‘How to manage and disable cookies’.
Visitors can use most of Bank of Ireland Group’s websites with no loss of functionality if cookies are disabled from the web browser. However, if you choose to reject cookies, you may not be able to use or access certain of our online or mobile services. Bank of Ireland Digital Banking 365 Online, Mobile and Tablet apps, (which for the purposes of this Cookies Statement also include Business On Line and any other Bank of Ireland digital banking channel) requires the use of certain functional cookies in order for the service to function properly. If you choose to block cookies, you may not be able to use or access certain of our online or mobile services.
How does Bank of Ireland Group use cookies?
Improve Our Websites: We use cookies to improve your customer experience of our products, service and online applications. We use cookies to collect information about visitors’ use of the website, for example:
- number of people who visit the website;
- date, time and duration of visits;
- number of pages viewed;
- amount of time spent on the website;
- popular sections of the website;
- connection speed;
- operating system details;
- device information;
- IP addresses.
The information enables us to understand how the site is used and in turn helps to provide visitors with a better experience. Bank of Ireland Group will not attempt to personally identify visitors from their IP addresses.
Advertisements and promotional information: Advertisements and promotional information are displayed on Bank of Ireland Group’s websites. These are presented to all users. Cookies may be used to present specific marketing or advertising messages to you, using targeting cookies (see below for more information about targeting cookies). For example, we may collect information that you provide such as where you enter details into our website for the purpose of making calculations on lending products or for other reasons. Where you do so, we may combine this information with Targeting Cookies to represent this information to you and advertising that is relevant to you. We describe more about how our Targeting Cookies work below.
Subject to your device settings and consents, we may also collect information about your location and whether or not you are a user of Bank of Ireland Digital Banking. This information is anonymous and no attempt is or will be made to identify visitors.
Security: Cookies do not in any way compromise the security of your computer.
What types of cookies does Bank of Ireland Group use?
Bank of Ireland Group uses the following cookie types:
| Cookie type | |
|---|---|
| Necessary | These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around websites and use the websites’ features, such as accessing secure websites or secure areas of websites. Without these cookies, services you have asked for, like online banking and mobile banking, cannot be provided. |
| Functionality | These cookies allow Bank of Ireland Group’s websites to remember choices you make (such as your preferred language) and provide enhanced, more personal features. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of web pages that you can customise. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. Other examples include cookies that keep track of your progress when filling online application forms. |
| Performance | These cookies collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies don’t collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. Bank of Ireland Group uses first-party analytics cookies for this purpose. |
| Targeting Cookies | Targeting cookies remember individual websites you have visited and help Bank of Ireland Group to present relevant and targeted online advertising to you. Targeting cookies may be placed on your machine when you visit a Bank of Ireland Group website page. When targeting cookies have been placed on your device, they can be recognised by subsequent websites you visit, and this allows those sites to present targeted Bank of Ireland Group and third party advertising to you. While targeting cookies can track your visits around different websites and identify if you are a user of Bank of Ireland Digital Banking, the information collected is anonymous. |
| Cookie name | Cookie purpose |
|---|---|
| “unam” cookie | This cookie is set as part of the ShareThis service and monitors “click-stream” activity, e.g. web pages viewed and navigated, and time spent on pages. |
| “ga “_ cookie | This cookie is a Google Analytics persistent cookie which is used to distinguish unique users. |
| “gat” session cookie | This cookie is used to throttle request rate. These are third party cookies that are placed on your device to allow us to use the Google Analytics service and ShareThis service. These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our website. We use this information to compile reports and to help us improve the website. |
| “uset” and “stid” cookies | These cookies are set as part of the ShareThis service and monitor “click-stream” activity, e.g. web pages viewed, navigation from page to page, time spent on each page etc. The ShareThis service only personally identifies you if you have separately signed up with ShareThis for a ShareThis account and have given them your consent. |
| “”JESSIONID” cookie | JSESSIONID is the unique ID of the http session generated by the server and is a cookie placed on your device by us. It lasts until the end of the session. |
| “cookie Status_sitename” | CookieStatus is set if you accept the cookie policy on the website. It removes the policy overlay. This is a cookie placed on your device by us. This cookie lasts for a maximum of 10 days. |
Please take note of the following information with regard to the Google third party cookies used on our website:
Google Universal Analytics
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. Google Analytics uses cookies in order to evaluate your use of Bank of Ireland Group’s website. Browsers do not share cookies across domains.
How Google Analytics Works
Google do not collect or store personal information. Google Analytics prohibits the tracking or collection of personal information or association of personal information with web analytics information. Google Analytics does not report the actual IP address information to Google Analytics customers.
What Google Analytic features are enabled by Bank of Ireland Group:
The following Google Analytics Advertising features are enabled in respect of Bank of Ireland’s use of Google Analytics:
User ID -This allows Bank of Ireland Group to associate multiple sessions (and any activity within those sessions) with a unique ID, in this case an ID derived from online interactions with Bank of Ireland Group. When the unique ID and any related engagement data is sent to Google Analytics, all activity is attributed to one anonymous user who is not personally identifiable in the reports.
With the unique ID, Bank of Ireland Group can get a more accurate user count, analyse the signed-in user experience, and get access to the new cross device reports.
In addition with a unique ID, Bank of Ireland Group can present more relevant Bank of Ireland Group and third party advertising to a user as the unique ID can indicate if an anonymous user is an existing user of Bank of Ireland Group on line services without removing the anonymity of that user.
While Google Analytic cookies are targeting cookies which use a unique ID and can track your visits around different websites, the information collected is anonymous and you will not be personally identifiable to either Google or Bank of Ireland Group.
Demographics and interests reporting – Understand how Bank of Ireland Group’s site audience breaks down by age, gender, and interests.
Google analytics data sharing settings enabled: – Google products & services – Bank of Ireland Group shares Google Analytics data with Google to help improve Google’s products and services.
Benchmarking – Bank of Ireland Group contributes anonymous data to an aggregate data set to enable features like benchmarking and publications that can help Bank of Ireland Group understand data trends. All identifiable information about Bank of Ireland Group’s website is removed and combined with other anonymous data before it is shared with others.
Technical support – Google technical support representatives have access to Bank of Ireland Group’s Google Analytics data and account when necessary to provide service and find solutions to technical issues.
Opt-out: Users may opt out of Google Universal Analytics’ use of cookies by visiting the Google Universal Analytics opt-out page.
Storage Location: Google stores the information collected by the cookie on secure Google servers.
Google Adwords
What is Google Adwords?
Google Adwords is an advertising analytics service provided by Google, Inc.
How Google Adwords Works
Adwords uses temporary cookies that are stored on a user’s computer for a limited period. Only pages that a user has visited containing the Google conversion code are tracked.
Google do not collect or store personal information. Conversions are not isolated: This means that Google or Bank of Ireland cannot match conversion data to specific customers. Instead Google or Bank of Ireland Group can just see overall data for ads and keywords.
Opt out: There is no opt-out available for this third party cookie. If you do not wish for this third party cookie to be on your computer, please do not click on Google Ads.
Storage Location:Google stores the information collected by the cookie on secure Google servers.
Google Adwords Remarketing
What is Google Adwords Remarketing?
AdWords Remarketing is a remarketing and behavioural targeting service provided by Google Inc.
How Google Adwords Remarketing works
This website uses the Google AdWords remarketing service to advertise on third party websites (including Google) to previous visitors to Bank of Ireland Group’s site. It means that Bank of Ireland Group advertises to previous visitors who haven’t completed a task on a Bank of Ireland Group site, for example not completing a product application. This could be in the form of an advertisement on a site in the Google Display Network. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to Bank of Ireland Group websites.
Google do not collect or store personal information.
Opt out: Users may opt-out of Adwords Remarketing use of cookies by visiting the Adwords Remarketing opt-out page.
Storage Location: Google stores the information collected by the cookie on secure Google servers.
DoubleClick by Google
What is DoubleClick?
DoubleClick leverages a 64-bit persistent cookie tied to the doubleclick.net domain. The contents of the cookie consist exclusively of a single string of random characters. DoubleClick cookies expire two years after they are placed on the web browser. Only pages that a user has visited containing the DoubleClick code are tracked. DoubleClick also uses Remarketing pixels – a pixel is a small, invisible piece of code that tells DoubleClick to save visitors’ cookies to Bank of Ireland websites on a list. Third-party vendors, including DoubleClick (owned by Google), then use the cookies to serve ads on sites across the internet based on someone’s past visits to Bank of Ireland Group websites.
DoubleClick does not collect or store personal information.
Opt-out: Users may opt-out of Double Click cookies by visiting the Doubleclick opt-out page.
Storage Location: Google stores the information collected by the DoubleClick cookie on secure Google servers.
For more information go to Privacy Policies and Privacy Ads.
What is Facebook Retargeting?
Facebook Retargeting is a remarketing service provided by Facebook Inc which uses the Facebook Pixel.
How Facebook Retargeting works:
The Facebook Retargeting Service uses the Facebook pixel on Bank of Ireland websites. The Facebook pixel is a small, invisible piece of code owned and operated by Facebook that tells Facebook to save visitors’ cookies to Bank of Ireland websites.
This website uses the Facebook Retargeting service to advertise relevant Bank of Ireland marketing material on third party websites (including Facebook) to previous visitors to Bank of Ireland Group’s site. It means that Bank of Ireland Group advertises to previous visitors who haven’t completed a task on a Bank of Ireland Group site, for example not completing a product application. This could be in the form of an advertisement on a site in the Facebook network. Third-party vendors, including Facebook, use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to Bank of Ireland Group websites.
Opt-out: Users may opt-out of Facebook Retargeting use of cookies by visiting https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences.
Storage Location: Facebook stores the information collected by the cookie on secure Facebook servers.
What is Facebook Custom Audiences?
Facebook’s custom audiences feature enables Bank of Ireland to create an audience list for sending ads through Facebook.
How Facebook Custom Audiences works
The Bank of Ireland Group uses customer data such as email addresses and phone numbers to match (at an email address or telephone level) to Facebook users.
When Bank of Ireland Group uploads data to Facebook, this data is hashed and the resulting fingerprints are compared with hashed Facebook user email addresses or phone numbers. If Bank of Ireland Group imports an email address that’s unknown to Facebook, that record, once hashed, won’t match anything.
If a Facebook user clicks on an ad which has been sent to them because they are part of a custom audience list, a Facebook cookie installed on the Facebook website allows their user behaviour to be tracked. This enables the Bank of Ireland Group to measure the effectiveness of Facebook ads for statistical and market research purposes. The data collected in this way is anonymous to us, i.e. we do not see the personal data of individual users.
Opt-out: Users may opt out of Facebook Custom Audiences by visiting https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads.
Storage Location: This data is stored and processed by Facebook. Facebook may link this information to your Facebook account and also use it for its own promotional purposes, in accordance with Facebook’s Data Usage Policy. You can allow Facebook and its partners to place ads on and off Facebook. A cookie may also be stored on your computer for these purposes.
How to manage and disable cookies?
Most web browsers give you some control over cookies through the browser settings. However, turning cookies off may interfere with your browsing experience.
For instructions on how to manage and disable cookies, see the privacy and help documentation of your specific browser’s website. If you use more devices and/or browsers you will need to disable cookies on each device and on each browser separately.
Find out how to manage and disable cookies on popular browsers:
For more information about how to manage cookies, including opting-out of different types of cookies please visit: www.aboutcookies.org
You can also find more information about how to opt-out of targeting cookies by visiting: www.youronlinechoices.com
Please note: Bank of Ireland’s 365 online banking service, including Mobile Banking, requires cookies to be enabled in order for the service to function properly. If you disable cookies, you will not be able to use our online and mobile banking services.
Changes To This Policy
We reserve the right to change this Cookies Policy from time to time at our sole discretion. If we make any changes, we will post those changes here and update the “Last Updated” date at the bottom of this Cookies Policy. However, if we make material changes to this Cookies Policy we will notify you by means of a prominent notice on our websites and, where appropriate, notified to you by SMS, e-mail or when you log onto 365 online, start 365 mobile app or one of our other mobile apps.
Questions, comments, requests and complaints regarding this Cookies Policy are welcome. Please contact our Data Protection Officer at:
Telephone: +353 (0)1 6883674
E-mail: DataProtectionOffice@boi.com
Postal Address: Bank of Ireland, PO Box 12940, Dublin 18.
Last Updated: October 2018