APPLY NOW MENU PRIVACY & COOKIES OUR PRIVACY POLICY The Royal Air Force, as part of the Ministry of Defence, is committed to protecting your privacy. When you contact us or visit our websites, your personal information is stored securely and processed fairly as required by the Data Protection Act 2018. This Privacy Policy explains the following What information the Royal Air Force may collect about you How the Royal Air Force will use your information and ensure this is not shared with organisations outside the Ministry of Defence How long your information may be held on our systems Your choices regarding the personal information you provide to us How cookies are used on our websites and the options available to reject these CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY We may update our privacy policy from time to time, so you may want to check the latest version before providing personal data to the Royal Air Force. This version was last updated on 24 May 2018. HOW WE COLLECT INFORMATION We collect personal information when you Register online, request information or submit an application through our websites Complete a printed form, questionnaire or coupon Contact us by phone, post, email or text message Use web chat to talk to a recruiter In addition, information is automatically captured each time you visit our websites. We use cookies (as described here) and collect IP addresses (that can uniquely identify a specific computer or network device on the internet) to track visitors to our websites and prepare management reports. WHAT WE DO WITH THIS INFORMATION We use the personal information you provide to answer your requests for information, to process your applications to join the Royal Air Force, and to make improvements to our websites. WHO WILL HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR INFORMATION Your personal information may be handled by the companies we use as data processors to provide marketing services and process your applications. These companies must comply strictly with our privacy policies that prohibit the use of personal data for their own business purposes. We will not share your information with other organisations outside the Ministry of Defence (unless we are required to do so by law). If you apply to join the RAF, your personal data may be shared with the Army or Navy if you also apply to join these Services. If you agree, the information contained in targeting cookies may be shared with other websites so the advertising displayed on these sites is more relevant to you. No personal data will be shared with other websites – only IP addresses, which identify a specific computer or network device. HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION? Your information will be held on our systems for as long as is necessary to answer your requests and maintain a dialogue with those individuals who remain interested in the Royal Air Force and RAF careers. If you register an interest, but do not apply to join the Royal Air Force, we will keep your personal data for no more than 3 years. This period starts on the day you last made contact with the Royal Air Force, and is reset each time you logon to our website or contact us to request further information. If you apply to join the Royal Air Force, but do not enter Service in the UK Armed Forces, we will keep your personal data for no more than 10 years. Any sensitive personal data will be removed after 1 year. This period only starts if and when all your applications to join the UK Armed Forces have become inactive, and is reset each time you logon to our website or contact us to request further information. At the end of this period, we will remove your personal information from our systems or treat the data to remove any personal identifiers that could be used to identify you as an individual. If you enter Service in the UK Armed Forces, some of your personal data will be retained for 100 years as required under the Public Record Acts. CAN I REMOVE THE INFORMATION HELD IN MY ONLINE ACCOUNT? Your online account is required to manage your current applications. You can ask us to remove your account but we can only do this if you have no active applications to join any Service in the UK Armed Forces. You can ask us to delete an individual application and remove the personal data entered on your application form at any point before it is submitted. You may contact us to withdraw a submitted application at any time but your personal data will continue to be held on our systems (as described above). WILL I BE CONTACTED BY THE ROYAL AIR FORCE FOR MARKETING PURPOSES? We will only contact or send information about the Royal Air Force and RAF careers to those people who have given us permission to do so. If you choose to receive marketing communications, you can tell us whether you want to be contacted by post, phone, email or text messages. You can change these preferences whenever you contact us or at any time by logging on to your account (if you have registered online). If you submit an application to join the Royal Air Force, we will contact you by the most appropriate means to follow-up and process your application. WILL THE INFORMATION BE USED TO MAKE AUTOMATED DECISIONS THAT AFFECT ME? We may use the personal data you provide to make automated decisions that affect you – for example, to decide if you are eligible to join the Royal Air Force or suitable for a particular role. We will inform you whenever we use personal data processed solely by automated means to make a decision that has a significant effect on you as an individual. In these cases, we will take reasonable steps to safeguard your legitimate rights and give you the opportunity to challenge any decision taken by automated means. ADVICE FOR PARENTS AND YOUNG PEOPLE Many young people are interested in information about the Royal Air Force. The privacy and security of their personal data is very important to us. We encourage all parents to supervise their children’s use of the internet and for young people to always seek permission from a parent/guardian before entering any personal data in any website. We will not process or store personal data about children under 13 years and will not accept registrations or applications to join the Royal Air Force from individuals under 14 years. We ask everyone under 18 years to confirm that they have spoken to a parent/guardian about their interest in the Royal Air Force and obtained their permission before registering or applying to join the Royal Air Force. We require anyone under 18 to provide a signed consent form from a parent/guardian before they attend a recruitment event – including meetings, briefings, information days and visits. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE HOLD ABOUT YOU? You can request a report detailing all the information we hold about you by writing to the address below. WHAT TO DO IF YOU DON'T WANT US TO CONTACT YOU IN THE FUTURE Write to the address below asking us not to contact you again. WHAT TO DO IF YOU WANT US TO REMOVE YOUR DETAILS FROM OUR RECORD Write to the address below asking us to delete your details from our records. You need to tell us which records you want us to remove, if you have registered an interest or applied to join more than one Service in the UK Armed Forces (British Army, Royal Navy or Royal Air Force). Further advice on the “right to prevent processing” is provided on the Information Commission’s website. DATA PROTECTION More information about the Data Protection Act 2018 and your rights can be found on the Information Commissioner's Office website. FREEDOM OF INFORMATION More information about the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and the information made available to the public by the Ministry of Defence, can be found on the MOD pages on the GOV.UK website. CONTACTING THE ROYAL AIR FORCE ABOUT PERSONAL INFORMATION If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the information we hold about you, please write to MOD Data Protection Officer, Ministry of Defence, Main Building, Ground floor, Zone D, Whitehall London SW1A 2HB Email address: cio-dpa@mod.gov.uk The MoD’s Personal Information Charter is available here USE OF COOKIES 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 govt services so we can make them better You can manage these small files and learn more about them from the article, Internet Browser cookies - what they are and how to manage them https://www.gov.uk/help/cookies If you'd like to learn how to remove cookies set on your device, visit: the About Cookies site http://www.aboutcookies.org/Default.aspx?page=1 We use the following types of cookies: STRICTLY NECESSARY COOKIES. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website and under our terms with you. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services. ANALYTICAL/PERFORMANCE COOKIES. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us for our legitimate purposes to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. FUNCTIONALITY COOKIES. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us, subject to your choices and preferences, to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region). TARGETING COOKIES. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information subject to your choices and preferences to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose. This is a list of cookies that may be stored on your device when visiting sites within the raf.mod.uk domain. 'FIRST-PARTY' COOKIES SERVER TECHNOLOGY The RAF use Adobe ColdFusion, Java and .Net Server technologies to underpin the raf.mod.uk website, these technologies set cookies to keep track of session state. COOKIES AS RAF.MOD.UK / AIRSPACE.RAF.MOD.UK / SYNDICATION.RAF.MOD.UK Name: CFID Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: when you close your browser Name: CFTOKEN Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: when you close your browser Name: JSESSIONID Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: when you close your browser Name: CFAUTHORIZATION_airspace Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: when you close your browser This cookie is specific to the Airspace Forums application Name: JSESSIONID Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: when you close your browser Name: ASP.NET_SessionID Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: when you close your browser Name: ASPSESSIONIDSQARQAAT Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: when you close your browser This cookie is specific to the RAF Engagement events directory RAF SITE COOKIES Some of the sites within the raf.mod.uk domain may set a cookie to record a your current selection e.g. logging in to a site - this is so you do not need to repeatedly enter their details. COOKIES AS RAF.MOD.UK Name: REMEMBERME Typical content: username as text Expires: 1 year This cookie is specific to raf.mod.uk/altitude and is used to preserve the username in the logon lanyard feature Name: RAFCAREERSID Typical content: random 35 character ID Expires: 1 year This cookie is specific to raf.mod.uk/careers and is used to assign an ID to a user for site personalisation. 'THIRD-PARTY' COOKIES We use a number of suppliers who may also set cookies on their websites' on its behalf. RAF KLICK2CONTACT Name: k2c_Launch; k2c_chat_a1; k2c_history. Source: rafwebchat.klick2contact.com Typical content: username as text and session management, Expires on browser close These cookies are specific to activated livechat sessions to enable a user to talk live with a careers advisor. RAF TALK This enables live chat with AFCO staff to answer questions from users on raf.mod.uk/careers COOKIES AS RAFTALK.EHOSTS.NET Name: ASP.NET_SessionID Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: when you close your browser YOUTUBE VIDEO SHARING [http://www.youtube.com/] YouTube embedded videos are used within the raf.mod.uk domain. COOKIES AS YOUTUBE.COM Name: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE Typical content: encoded text Expires: 8 months Name: use_hitbox Typical content: encoded text Expires: when you close your browser Name: GEO Typical content: encoded text Expires: when you close your browser For further information on YouTube privacy policy click here SURVEY MONKEY [http://www.surveymonkey.com/] Occasionally we run surveys on raf.mod.uk or its subsites. We use the Survey Monkey tool. This will set a cookie to prevent the survey from displaying for users who have already completed it. COOKIES AS SURVEYMONKEY.COM Name: s_sess Typical content: encoded text string of current user survey status Expires: when you close the browser Name: s_pers Typical content: encoded text string of current user survey status Expires: 3 years COOKIES AS WWW.SURVEYMONKEY.COM Name: P_nnnnnnnn (where n is a number) Typical content: number Expires: 8 months GOOGLE WEB SERVICES Google web services are used within the raf.mod.uk domain to add interactive elements e.g. Google maps are used in raf.mod.uk/aircadets to create an interactive map. Google Local is used to resolve postcode to latitude and longitude. COOKIES AS GOOGLE.COM Name: PREF Typical content: text with unique identifiers Expires: 2 years Name: NID Typical content: text with unique identifiers Expires: 1 day For more information on Google privacy policies click here ZMAGS VIEWER [http://www.zmags.com/] raf.mod.uk/aircadets use a 3rd party magazine viewer to host the electronic version of their monthly magazine. COOKIES AS VIEWER.ZMAGS.COM Name: ARPT_SERVICES Typical content: randomly generated text Expires: when you close your browser COOKIES AS STATS.ZMAG.COM Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: when you close your browser Name: ARPT_STATS Typical content: randomly generated text Expires: when you close your browser Name: zmagStatsLastVisitnnnnnn (where n is a number) Typical content: number Expires: 3 months 'ADD THIS' WIDGET [http://www.addthis.com/] This widget is used in several locations around raf.mod.uk domain. This enables users to send the current page to a large spectrum of 3rd party social sites. COOKIES AS ADDTHIS.COM Name: xtc Typical content: randomly generated text Expires: 2 years Name: uid Typical content: randomly generated text Expires: 2 years Name: uit Typical content: number Expires: 24 hours Name: psc Typical content: number Expires: 2 years Name: loc Typical content: randomly generated text Expires: 3 months Name: dt Typical content: randomly generated text Expires: 1 month Name: di Typical content: randomly generated text Expires: 2 years For further information on the privacy policy of Add This please refer to the Add this website: http://www.addthis.com/privacy COOKIES AS RAF.MOD.UK Name: sifrFetch Typical content: boolean value, 'true' Expires: when you close your browser This cookie prevents the browser from repeatedly downloading the SIFR Flash module, making the page load quicker and saving the user bandwidth. 'FOURTH-PARTY' COOKIES FACEBOOK Name: id Typical Content: Unique serial number Expires: 28 days Privacy Policy: https://www.facebook.com/policies/cookies/ Link to opt-out: https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads&view GOOGLE ADWORDS Unique serial number Expires: 30 days Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads Link to opt-out: https://www.google.com/settings/ads/onweb/ QUANTCAST Name: Quantserve Typical Content: unique user ID Expires: 18 months Privacy Policy: https://www.quantcast.com/how-we-do-it/consumer-choice/privacy-policy/ Link to opt-out: https://www.quantcast.com/opt-out COOKIES AS THE GUARDIAN Name: id Typical Content: Unique ID number Expires: One year Privacy Policy: http://www.theguardian.com/help/privacy-policy Link to opt-out: http://www.theguardian.com/advertising/advertising-terms-conditions MEDIA IQ Name: id Typical Content: User id Expires: One year Privacy Policy: https://wearemiq.com/privacy-policy/ Link to opt-out: https://wearemiq.com/privacy-policy/ PERFORM Name: Lotame Typical Content: Unique Expires: 28 days Privacy Policy: http://www.lotame.com/legal Link to opt-out: http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/ COOKIES FOR IMPROVING SERVICE Google Analytics [http://www.google.com/analytics/] sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the website and volumes of usage. This to ensure that the service is available when you want it and fast. COOKIES AS RAF.MOD.UK Name: _utma Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: 2 years Name: _utmb Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: 30 minutes Name: _utmc Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: when user exits browser Name: _utmz Typical content: randomly generated number + info on how the site was reached (e.g. directly or via a link, organic search or paid search) Expires: 6 months For further details on the cookies set by Google Analytics, please refer to the Google Code website http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/concepts/gaConceptsCookies.html#cookiesSet ComScore iStats system (Nedstat / Sitestat) [http://www.comscore.com/] Helps us to measure the usage of certain parts of the raf.mod.uk domain. This enables us to customise the site to user needs. COOKIES AS RAF.MOD.UK Name: ns_session Typical content: Boolean value, either 'true' or 'false' Expires: when you close your browser Name: ns_cookietest Typical content: Boolean value, either 'true' or 'false' - Used to confirm that your browser is able to accept cookies. Expires: when you close your browser COOKIES AS UK.SITESTAT.COM Name: s1 Typical content: randomly generated text Expires: 15 years This is a unique identifier given to each computer to allow log analysis to determine the number of unique users for various parts of raf.mod.uk. Data is only used in aggregate. Name: c1 Typical content: randomly generated text Expires: 15 years This is a unique identifier given to each computer to allow log analysis to determine the number of unique users for various parts of raf.mod.uk. Data is only used in aggregate. For further information about cookies set by ComScore see: http://www.comscore.com/About_comScore/Privacy_Policy DISCLAIMER: The above list represents the known cookies that are used within the raf.mod.uk domain, however the domain is a large enterprise site that allows multiple organisations of the RAF to publish their own content into the domain, they may use a technique or technology that adds a cookie to your device. This cookie may not be listed here. If you find such a cookie please report it to http://www.raf.mod.uk/recruitment/contact and we will add it to the list. 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. Alternatively, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of browsers. You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your machine as well as more general information about cookies. 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. LIFE IN THE RAF Diversity & Inclusion CAREER AND BENEFITS RAF Fitness FIND YOUR ROLE University Air Squadrons APPLY NOW Apprenticeships RAF main website Rejoiners Air Cadets Reserves Events near you Contact us Aircrew Air & Space Ops Cyberspace Engineering Hospitality Intelligence Logistics Medical Services People Ops Security & Resilience Sitemap Privacy Policy Accessibility © 2021 Royal Air Force - Regular & Reserve UK Crown copyright. We value your privacy By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. More Information Manage Preferences Accept All Cookies