Visitors to our website and blog users

When someone visits our websites, we use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the RS website. This information is processed in a way that does not personally identify individuals. We do not make, and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. If we do want to collect personal data through our website, we will be transparent about this. We will make it clear when we collect personal data and will explain what we intend to do with it. 

We also use a number of other third-party analytics services to assess how people use our websites so that we can make improvements to the sites. Again, those do not identify visitors personally, this includes Hotjar. On our blogs we sometimes use a third-party data processor acting on our behalf and under our instructions to display and process comments that you make using your chosen username.

You have a right to object to this tracking at any time or can protect your privacy by installing a tracking-blocker or by clearing your cookies at the end of every browsing session. 

We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes a device's IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf. For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.

Find more information on analysis data collected and used by Google Analytics.

We hold analysed data for the periods of: up to 26 months for Google Analytics from the date of your last visit, which resets on new visits to our website; and up to 12 months for Hotjar.

To protect user submissions to forms on royalsociety.org, we have implemented invisible reCAPTCHA on forms. Please note use of the invisible reCAPTCHA is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.