2. IP ADDRESS
2.1 What happens when you visit the Site
Every time you connect to the internet or, if you use an always-on connection, such as broadband or ADSL, when you boot up or restart your computer, you are automatically assigned a unique identifying number known as an IP Address. This IP Address, which contains information regarding the location of your computer on the internet (your country of origin) and the name of your internet service provider (“ISP”), is automatically logged by the Site.
2.2 What is an IP Address?
When you first started your internet session (i.e. your computer connected to the internet), your computer was automatically assigned a unique number (normally in the region of 9 or 10 decimal numbers), known as an IP Address. This is your computer’s unique address on the internet. Without an IP Address, websites would not be able to deliver their content to you given that they would not be able find your computer on the internet. Since each time you disconnect and reconnect to the internet a new IP Address is automatically assigned to your computer, IP Addresses are not inherently capable of identifying you as an individual (at least, by themselves and not combined with other identifiers). An IP Address does, however, contain information regarding the location of your computer on the internet (your country), and the name of your ISP.
2.3 How do we collect your IP Address
Each time you visit a page on the Site, your computer sends out a message to the Site asking for the content to be delivered. This message sent by your computer also encloses your IP Address as a form of “return address”, so that the Site may find your computer in order to send it the requested content. Our web-server automatically logs all these messages.
2.4 What do we do with your IP Address?
When we log your IP Address, the data collected is grouped up with the other logged IP Addresses in order to provide us with the statistics on the geographic location of visitors to the Site, how long they stay on the Site, which are the most viewed pages and for other statistical reasons.
We gather your IP address automatically and store it in log files. These files also contain information relating to your browser type, ISP, operating system, date/time stamp, clickstream data and the files viewed on the Site. Collecting this type of information allows us to generate aggregate information for the purposes of the Site, including in terms of overall user trends and activities online (such as the number of unique visitors, pages access most frequently or the search terms entered). Furthermore, it also allows us to administer the Site, diagnose any potential server problems, analyse visitor trends and statistics, and generally held us to provide you with a better internet experience.
IP Addresses are not stored for longer than necessary for the above stated purposes.
