Privacy and terms

Wellcome is committed to safeguarding your personal information in accordance with data protection law.

The Wellcome Privacy Statement [PDF 276KB] explains how, and on what legal basis, we collect, store, and use personal information about you as:

• a visitor to Wellcome Collection, our offices and our websites
• an applicant for a job at Wellcome
• a participant in any of our events
• a lender or donor to, or recipient of loan items from, Wellcome Collection
• or when you otherwise choose to interact with us.

It also explains how we use personal information in Wellcome Collection for the purpose of archiving in the public interest.

Information on how we collect, store and use personal information in connection with grant-making is set out in our Wellcome Grants Privacy and Confidentiality Statement [PDF 271KB].

Last updated 27th September 2017

Like most organisations, Wellcome uses cookies to capture information about our websites’ users. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we save to your computer or device if you agree.

Cookies allow us to recognise and count your visits, and to see how you move around our sites while you are using them. This helps us to provide you with a good experience while you browse and to improve the way our sites work, for example by making sure you can find what you need.

Cookies are also set when you:

• click on social networking buttons in our pages
• watch videos
• register for services
• take part in surveys and other activities.

Third-party cookies

As well as the cookies we set, we may use third party cookies and other similar technologies set by other websites when you visit them to help us to understand some simple information about the age, location and interests of the people who visit our sites. Third parties may use these technologies to collect or recieve information from our website and elsewhere on the internet and use that information to provide measurement services and to target adverts.

We only ever use this information in aggregate, and never associate it with any personal information that might identify you. 

You can opt out of being tracked by cookies set by third parties by using the Google ad preferences page or the opt-out tool. 

You can also get more information from Google or the Your Online Choices website.

You can opt out of being tracked and the collection and use of information for Facebook ad targeting in your ad settings page on Facebook. You can also get more information from Facebook on their use of cookies and advertising policies.

You can opt out of tracking from all participating companies through the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance 'Your Online Choices' site. In the UK, click on the 'Your ad choices' menu option.

By continuing to use our sites and by using video and social media functionality, you consent to the relevant cookies being set on your device.

For general information about cookies, and how to control and disable them, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org

Cookies we use on our sites by type

Across our sites we may make use of Flash files, which present information, allow integration with third parties (such as YouTube) and can offer a richer online experience. We have strived to identify any Flash elements that are likely to set cookies but, at this point in time, we cannot guarantee the status of every Flash file. Adobe offers a tool to monitor and remove Flash cookies.

We use Google Analytics, Google Analytics demographics and interest reporting, and integrated services that require Google Analytics to collect data via advertising cookies and identifiers. Google Analytics is a tool that helps website and app owners to understand how their visitors behave. It uses a set of cookies to collect information and report website usage statistics without personally identifying individual visitors to Google. It also uses some cookies set by other websites to help us understand more about our sites’ visitors.

We use web beacons like Facebook Pixel to understand what users of our site do after clicking a link in an email that we’ve sent to a list of subscribers, or clicking on an advert we’ve placed on Facebook. This information helps us to improve the content we make, reach people who are interested in our work with our advertising and social activity, and measure how effective our advertising and newsletters are, without personally identifying individual site visitors, newsletter subscribers or Facebook users.

The following table is a list of the cookies we use, why we use them, and on which of our sites.

The material contained in the Wellcome Trust website is provided for general purposes only. Although we endeavour to ensure that the content is accurate and up to date, the Wellcome Trust accepts no responsibility for loss arising from reliance on information contained in this site or other sites that may be linked to from our site from time to time.

Unless otherwise stated, all content on the site is © The Wellcome Trust and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK.

This means that you are free to share the content by copying, distributing and transmitting it, but please attribute it to the Wellcome Trust and provide a link to its website https://wellcome.org. For any reuse or distribution, you must make these licence terms clear to others.