Disclaimer: Our website and publications aim to give you general information to help you make financial decisions. It is not advice, nor can it take account of your own particular circumstances. For advice with a view to making decisions about your own circumstances you should consult a financial or other professional adviser.

© The Financial Services Authority.

Privacy policy

This privacy policy only covers the Financial Services Authority’s Moneymadeclear website at http://www.moneymadeclear.fsa.gov.uk

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) receives personal information through this website. You may, for example, be asked for personal information if you want to take advantage of specific services that we offer, such as online ordering or subscription to our publications. In any case where you provide personal information, we will only use it to deliver the services you have requested.

The FSA site does not automatically capture or store personal information, other than logging the user's IP (Internet Protocol) address and session information such as the duration of the visit and the type of browser used. This is recognised by the web server and is only used for system administration and to provide statistics, which the FSA uses to evaluate use of the site. This policy does not cover links within this site to other websites.

We do not use cookies for collecting user information from the site, but temporary session cookies will be stored for the duration of your visit if you use the briefcase, and for collecting anonymous site usage statistics. These cookies are automatically deleted when you leave the site. See Printing and sending for more information about the briefcase.

For more information about the service we use to collect anonymous site usage statistics, go to Nielsen//NetRatings – see Related links.

Summary of terms

Browser – used to locate and display web pages via a software application. The most popular ones are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

Cookie – message given to a web browser by a web server. The browser then stores the message in a text file called cookie.txt. Each time the browser requests a page from the server, this message is sent back.

A cookie's main objective is to identify users and personalise their visit by customising web pages for them, for example by welcoming them by name next time they visit the same site. A site using cookies will usually invite you to provide personal information such as your name, e-mail address and interests.

IP (Internet Protocol) – all networks connected to the internet speak IP, the technical standard that allows data to be transmitted between two devices. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) is responsible for making sure messages get from one host to another and that the messages are understood.

IP address – if you are connected to the internet you have one, for example it may look something like this 198.184.98.9.

Web server – delivers (serves up) web pages to your computer.