Text Only Version Republic of Ireland Great Britain Bristol & West Isle of Man

Bank of Ireland's Privacy Policy

At Bank of Ireland we are committed to ensuring the privacy of your information.

We understand that as a customer or visitor using the Bank of Ireland site, privacy and the security of your confidential information when online is very important to you. The purpose of our Privacy Policy is to outline Bank of Ireland's practices in this area.

Some of the technical terms used in our privacy statement are explained at the end of this section.

The Information we collect
As you browse through our web site, our web server collects information about your visit, not about you personally. We gather and monitor statistics such as:

• The number of people who visit our site
• The date and time of visits
• The number of pages viewed
• The time spent on the site
• The most popular sections of our site

This information is anonymous and no attempt will be made to identify visitors. So, for example, on a specific day we can identify that our site has forty thousand visitors. However we know nothing about these visitors in terms of email addresses or any other personal information.

We will only ask for personal information from which you can be identified (such as your name, address, email address, etc...).

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Use of "Cookies"

What is a cookie?

Cookies are small pieces of information, stored in simple text files, placed on your computer by a web site. Cookies can be read by the web site 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 web site 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 web site.

How do Bank of Ireland use cookies?

Bank of Ireland uses cookies to collect information about visitors' use of the website, including things like connection speed, operating system details, the time and duration visits and IP addresses. The information collected by cookies enables Bank of Ireland to understand the use of its site, including the number of visitors it has, the pages viewed per session, time exposed to particular pages etc. This in turn helps to provide visitors with a better experience. Bank of Ireland will not attempt to personally identify visitors from their IP addresses.

Cookies will not be used to contact you for marketing purposes other than by means of advertisements offered within Bank of Ireland's website.

Cookies do not in any way compromise the security of your computer.

Visitors can use this Website with no loss of functionality if cookies are disabled from the web browser.

How to disable cookies?

Below is information on how to disable cookies for some of the more popular web browsers.

Internet Explorer 5.0+

• Go to the 'Tools' menu
• Click on 'Internet Options'
• Click the 'Security' tab
• Highlight the 'Internet' zone (selected by default)
• Select security level 'High' for this zone
• Click on 'OK'

Mozilla Firefox

• Open the Edit menu and choose Preferences.
• Under the Privacy & Security category, choose Cookies. (If no subcategories are visible, double-click the category to expand the list.)
• Click the following radio button: Disable cookies

Netscape 6.0+

• Go to 'Edit' in the menu bar
• Click on 'Preferences'
• Click on 'Advanced'
• Select the 'Cookies' field
• Tick either 'Warn Me Before Accepting a Cookie' or 'Disable Cookies'
• Click on 'OK'

Disclosure of Information
Bank of Ireland will not divulge customer information to a third party unless:

Bank of Ireland Group will not divulge customer information to a third party unless we have received customer authorisation OR we are required to do so by law.

Security of Information
At www.bankofireland.co.uk we understand how important the security and confidentiality of your information is to you. Keeping customers' information secure is a top priority for Bank of Ireland. Our goal is to protect your information on the Internet in the same way as we would over the phone, in a branch or at an ATM.

To ensure the highest level of security of information passing between our customers and ourselves, Bank of Ireland uses what is known as 128 bit SSL when you enter or register Banking365 or Business Online. This is an encryption method which scrambles information while it moves from one source to another to prevent the information being viewed or tampered with.

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Some technical terms explained

Encryption: A method of scrambling information while it moves from one source to another to prevent others from viewing or tampering with the contents

Secure Socket Layer (SSL): A form of encryption that protects information being transmitted over the Internet to prevent it being tampered with during transit.

Firewall: A method for keeping a network secure. Firewalls are commonly used to give users secure access to the Internet as well as to separate a company's public web server from its internal network.

Cookies:A "cookie" is a small text file or a small piece of information which a web site stores through your web browser on your PC that it can later retrieve when you log back on to the site. www.bankofireland.co.uk does not use "cookies"

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