Conditions of Use Policy

The General Register Office website is maintained for your personal use and viewing.

Visitors to this website are granted permission to access the information on condition that it is for personal use (including research) and searching is not made through automated means. By registering on this website you are agreeing to the conditions of use and GRO reserves the right to remove access where it is believed the conditions are not being met.

Intellectual property

The names, images and logos identifying the General Register Office are proprietary marks of the General Register Office. Copying of our logos and/or any other third party logos accessed via this website is not permitted without prior approval from the relevant copyright owner.

Linking to our information

We do not require you to ask permission to link directly to pages hosted on this site. We actively welcome other sites linking directly to the information that is hosted on our site. However, we do not permit our pages to be loaded into frames on other sites. The General Register Office's pages must load into the user's entire window.

Links to other websites

The General Register Office is not responsible for the contents or reliability of linked web sites and does not necessarily endorse the views expressed within them. Listing should not be taken as endorsement of any kind. We cannot guarantee that these links will work all of the time and we have no control over the availability of the linked pages.

Virus protection

We make every effort to check and test material at all stages of production for viruses. It is always wise for you to run an anti-virus program on all material downloaded from the internet. We cannot accept any responsibility for any loss, disruption or damage to your data or your computer system which may occur whilst using material derived from this website.

Disclaimer

The General Register Office website and material relating to government information, products and services (or to third party information, products and services), is provided 'as is', without any representation or endorsement made and without warranty of any kind whether express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, compatibility, security and accuracy.

We do not warrant that the functions contained in the material contained in this site will be uninterrupted or error free, that defects will be corrected, or that this site or the server that makes it available are free of viruses or represent the full functionality, accuracy, reliability of the materials. In no event will we be liable for any loss or damage including, without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damages whatsoever arising from use or loss of use of, data or profits arising out of or in connection with the use of the General Register Office website.

These Terms and Conditions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales. Any dispute arising under these Terms and Conditions shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

The General Register Office is an integral part of His Majesty's Passport Office and protecting your privacy is very important to us. Any personal data you provide to GRO will be handled in compliance with current UK data protection legislation. The statement below outlines how we use your personal data when you access this site to order a certificate, a pdf copy and/or a digital image of an entry. It does not apply to any other companies' or organisations' websites to which we may link, including our payment service provider Worldpay.

What information do we collect from you and why?

Information held at the General Register Office has been compiled from records of births, deaths, marriages and civil partnerships received from registration officers and local authorities in England and Wales, records of overseas events registered by British authorities, such as consuls and the Armed Forces and adoption orders issued by the relevant courts. The law permits information to be provided from registration records in the form of a certificate, a pdf copy and/or a digital image of an entry.

Before you can search our online indexes or place an order for a certificate, a pdf copy and/or a digital image of an entry, you will need to create an account on our system. We require an e-mail address which will also act as your username and will be used to verify your account, as well as a delivery address. The provision of any other information, such as your telephone number, is optional but it may assist us if we need to contact you about your order. We will use your information either to inform you that it has been received and is being processed, or that there is a problem. You may be contacted by e-mail, post, or by telephone, if you have provided a contact number.

We would also like to contact you to ask if you are satisfied with our services. This will ensure we continue to improve the service we provide to our customers. If you agree to be contacted for this purpose please tick the box during registration or acceptance of these policies. You can opt in or out of being contacted by GRO for this purpose via the My Details page once logged in.

Your payment details, e-mail and delivery address will be passed to Worldpay, so that the payment for your order may be taken. Worldpay provide this service for the General Register Office and are responsible for all credit/debit card transactions over a secure line. A copy of their privacy statement can be viewed on Worldpay's website.

Our web pages use cookies (small files stored on your computer's hard disk, identifying your computer but not you personally), 'web bugs' and JavaScript tracking code to gather anonymous information about visitors' usage patterns. We do this in order to improve the navigation of the site, the presentation of its content and the quality of its services. The information collected does not include personal details such as your name, age, phone number, postal address or email address, nor does it allow personal identification of a user.

Cookies are also used to help speed up the online ordering process, so that you do not need to re-type the same information a number of times and helps to keep track of the order from one page to the next. We do not store your password or any other information in these cookies, or use them for any other purpose.

For more information please see our Cookie Policy.

Certain exceptional disclosures

We may disclose your personal data if we believe such action is necessary to comply with a legal requirement, or if we consider that a certificate application is being made fraudulently.

How do we protect information we collect?

We follow technical and management practices we believe are reasonable under the circumstances to protect the confidentiality, security and integrity of information stored on our system.

How long do we keep user information?

We generally keep personal data on our server or in our archives for as long as we reasonably need it. We may alter this practice according to changing requirements. We may keep other data for longer periods if the law requires it.

Amending your registration information

You can change your password at any time. To change your email address you will need to create a new account on the home page.

External links

The General Register Office is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of web sites linked from our pages.

Your consent to this policy

By registering with our site, you agree to this Policy. Our full Privacy Information Notice can be found on the GOV.UK website.

If you have any questions about this statement or the practices of this site, please email gro.communications@gro.gov.uk

Introduction

When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.

These pieces of information are used to improve services for you through, for example:

• enabling a service to recognise your device so you don't have to give the same information several times during one task
• recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don't need to do it for every web page requested
• measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there's enough capacity to ensure they are fast
• analysing anonymised data to help us understand how people interact with government services so we can make them better

For more information see GOV.UK.

First-party cookies - Cookies for using our online services

Three cookies are set by our web servers to ensure that your session is maintained for the duration of your visit (until you close your web browser).

Cookie Name	Purpose	Typical Content	Duration
ASPSESSIONIDAAADCCTB	Enabling a service to recognise your device	Encrypted numeric ASP Session ID	Expires when browser session is closed
ValidUser	Once you have logged on with username and password, so you don't have to do it for every Web page you request from our service	Text indicating your role in the feedback process	Expires when browser session is closed
ONS	See list of Cookie Values Below	See list of Cookie Values Below	Expires when browser session is closed

The first cookie contains an ASP Session ID assigned by our server and is created as soon as you visit the site.

The second cookie is called ValidUser and is created when you access a section of the site used to hold customer feedback forms via a direct link in a call closure email sent by our Service Desk team or by a login screen used internally to collate this feedback

The final cookie is called ONS and is created when you login to the online certificate ordering section of our website. It is used to manage the navigation process when placing an online order and contains some or all of the following information during the different steps in the ordering process.

Value Name (known as a Key)	Purpose	Typical Content
ONSUser	Once you have logged on with username and password, so you don't have to do it for every Web page you request from our service	Encrypted numeric ID's
USAGEPOLICIES	Once you have logged on with username and password, so you don't have to do it for every Web page you request from our service after accepting site usage policies	Encrypted numeric ID
ORDER_ID	Once you have started an order, to identify your order to the system	Encrypted numeric ID
APPLICATION_ID	Once you have started an application, to identify your application to the system	Encrypted numeric ID
BASKET_CONTENT	Once you have logged on with username and password, to identify if you have added an order to your basket	Boolean Value Indicating the status of the user's basket
WebAddress	In navigating our site, to identify to the system your current location in the ordering process	URL used to indicate the user's location in the ordering process
ErrorSeverity	To understand where you may have difficulty in using the service, in order to make it easier in future for you to complete your task	Error Information Passed to Exception Report
ErrorNumber	To understand where you may have difficulty in using the service, in order to make it easier in future for you to complete your task	Error Information Passed to Exception Report
ErrorText	To understand where you may have difficulty in using the service, in order to make it easier in future for you to complete your task	Error Information Passed to Exception Report
ErrorSource	To understand where you may have difficulty in using the service, in order to make it easier in future for you to complete your task	Error Information Passed to Exception Report

Third-party cookies - Cookies for improving service and facilitating online payments

We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use the GRO website. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements.

Google Analytics stores information about:

• the pages you visit on the GRO website
• how long you spend on each GRO website page
• how you got to the GRO site
• what you click on while you're visiting the GRO site

We don't allow Google to use or share our analytics data.

Google Analytics sets the following cookies:

Cookie Name	Purpose	Duration
_ga	This helps us count how many people visit the GRO website by tracking if you've visited before	Expires after 2 years
_gid	This helps us count how many people visit the GRO website by tracking if you've visited before	Expires after 24 hours
_gat	Used to manage the rate at which page view requests are made	Expires after 10 minutes

If you choose to disallow cookies via the banner on this site Google Analytics cookies will not be set on your device relating to usage of this site, if you wish to opt out of Google Analytics Cookies for all sites you visit Google provide add-ons for many popular browsers: Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

In order to allow you to pay via a Credit or Debit card when placing an order online, you are directed to a third party payment provider who process the secure financial transaction. The cookies used by WorldPay during this process are listed below:

Service	secure.worldpay.com
Cookie Name	JSESSIONID
Cookie Name	machine
Typical Content	Randomly generated number
Purpose	Third party payment provider - When we provide links to third party services you find useful, they may place a cookie on your device to make their service easier to use
Third Party's Privacy Policy	http://www.worldpay.com/about_us/index.php?page=privacy&c=WW
Duration	Expires when browser session is closed

How to control and delete cookies

We will not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you.

However, if you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our websites, or indeed any other website, you can do this through your browser settings. The 'Help' function within your browser should tell you how.

Please be aware that restricting cookies may impact on the functionality of our website.

If you wish to view your cookie code, just click on a cookie to open it. You'll see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie.
For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone you will need to refer to your handset manual.

To opt-out of third-parties collecting any data regarding your interaction on our website, please refer to their websites for further information.