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Privacy policy
Privacy policy
The Institute for Addressing Strangulation is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
This policy explains when and why we collect personal information about you, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others, how we keep it safe and secure and your rights and choices in relation to your information.
Any questions regarding this policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to contact@ifas.org.uk.
Who are we?
The Institute form Addressing Strangulation is a charity that works to increase awareness of risks associated with strangulation. In this policy ‘IFAS, ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ means:
Institute for Addressing Strangulation. Registered Charity No. 1119599.
How do we collect information from you?
We obtain information about you in the following ways:
Information you give us directly.
For example, we may obtain information about you when you register to attend one of our events, make a donation, or when you register to be a subscriber to our training and research alert email list.
Information you give us indirectly
Your information may be shared with us by third parties, which might include:
Event co-organisers, subcontractors acting on our behalf who provide us with technical, payment or delivery services, our business partners, advertising networks analytics providers and search information providers.
You should check any privacy policy provided to you where you give your data to a third party.
When you visit this website
We, like many companies, automatically collect the following information so that we can improve the service we offer.
Technical information, including the type of device you’re using, the IP address, browser and operating system being used to connect your computer to the internet. This information may be used to improve the services we offer.
Information about your visit to this website, for example we collect information about pages you visit and how you navigate the website, i.e. length of visits to certain pages, products and services you viewed and searched for, referral sources (e.g. how you arrived at our website).
We collect and use your personal information by using cookies on our website – more information on cookies can be found under the ‘Use of Cookies’ section below.
Social Media
When you interact with us on social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter we may obtain information about you (for example, when you publicly tag us in a tweet or photo). The information we receive will depend on the privacy preferences you have set on those types of platforms.
Public Information
We supplement information on our supporters with information from publicly available sources such as annual reviews, corporate websites, public social media accounts, the electoral register and Companies House in order to create a fuller understanding of someone’s interests and support. For more information, please see the section on ‘Building Profiles’ below.
What type of information is collected from you?
The personal information we collect, store and use might include:
Your name and contact details (including the region you live in, your email address and the organisation your work for, if applicable);
Information about your research/training interests;
Information about your activities on our website and about the device used to access it, for instance your IP address and geographical location;
If you make a donation online or make a purchase, your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions;
Any other personal information shared with us.
Data protection laws recognise certain categories of personal information as sensitive and therefore requiring greater protection, for example information about your health, ethnicity and religion. We do not usually collect sensitive data about you unless there is a clear and valid reason for doing so and data protection laws allow us to.
Where appropriate, we will make it known why we are collecting this type of information and what it will be used for clear.
How and why is your information used?
We may use your information for a number of different purposes, which may include:
Providing you with the services, products or information you asked for.
Processing requests that you have submitted;
Carrying out our obligations under any contracts entered into between you and us;
Keeping a record of your relationship with us;
Conducting analysis and market research so we can understand how we can improve our services, products or information;
Checking for updated contact details against third party sources so we can stay in touch if you move;
Seeking your views or comments on the services we provide;
notifying you of changes to our services;
Sending you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about our latest training and research, fundraising appeals and activities and promotions of goods and services; and processing grant or job applications.
How long is your information kept for?
We keep your information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes it was collected for. The length of time we retain your personal information for is determined by operational and legal considerations. For example, we are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory and regulatory obligations (e.g. health/safety and tax/accounting purposes).
We review our retention periods on a regular basis.
Who has access to your information?
We do not sell or rent your information to third parties.
We do not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.
However, we may disclose your information to third parties in order to achieve the other purposes set out in this policy. These third parties may include:
Third parties working on our behalf: We may pass your information to our third party service providers, suppliers, agents, subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process donations and send you mailings). However, when we use these third parties, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the services and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and prevents them from using it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.
Lawful Processing
Data protection law requires us to rely on one or more lawful grounds to process your personal information. We consider the following grounds to be relevant:
Specific Consent
Where you have provided specific consent to us using your personal information in a certain way, such as to send you email.
Performance of a contract
Where we are entering into a contract with you or performing our obligations under it.
Legal obligation
Where necessary so that we can comply with a legal or regulatory obligation to which we are subject, for example where we are ordered by a court or regulatory authority like the Fundraising Regulator.
Vital interests
Where it is necessary to protect life or health (for example in the case of medical emergency suffered by an individual at one of our events) or a safeguarding issue which requires us to share your information with the emergency services.
Legitimate interests
Where it is reasonably necessary to achieve our or others’ legitimate interests (as long as what the information is used for is fair and does not unduly impact your rights).
We consider our legitimate interests to be running the IFAS as an organisation in pursuit of our aims and ideals. For example to:
Send email communications which we think will be of interest to you;
Conduct research to better understand who our target audience are and how we can best serve them;
Monitor who we deal with to protect the company against fraud, money laundering and other risks;
And understand better how people interact with our website.
When we legitimately process your personal information in this way, we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. We will not use your personal information where our interests are overridden by the impact on you, for example, where use would be excessively intrusive (unless, for instance, we are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
When we use sensitive personal information, we require an additional legal basis to do so under data protection laws, so will either do so on the basis of your explicit consent or another route available to us at law (for example, if we need to process it for employment, social security or social protection purposes, your vital interests, or, in some cases, if it is in the public interest for us to do so).
Fundraising and Marketing Communications
We may use your contact details to provide you with information about our research and analysis, our fundraising appeals and opportunities to support or work with us, if we think it may be of interest to you.
We will only send you marketing and fundraising communications by email and if you have explicitly provided your prior consent. You may opt out of our marketing communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the end of our marketing emails.
Your choices
You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us about the work we do, our training events and the research we produce, then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form used to collect your information.
We’re committed to putting you in control of your data so you’re free to change your marketing preferences (including to tell us that you don’t want to be contacted for marketing purposes) at any time by contacting us by email: contact@ifas.org.uk
We will not use your personal information for marketing purposes if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted and will retain your details on a suppression list to help ensure that we do not continue to contact you. However, we may still need to contact you for administrative purposes like where we are processing a donation or thanking you for your participation in an event.
Building profiles
We may analyse your personal information to create a profile of your interests and preferences so that we can tailor and target our communications in a way that is timely and relevant to you. We may make use of additional information about you when it is available from external sources to help us do this effectively. This allows us to be more focused, efficient and cost effective with our resources and also reduces the risk of someone receiving information they may find inappropriate or irrelevant.
We’re committed to putting you in control of your data so you’re free to opt out of your information being used in this way at any time by contacting contact@ifas.org.uk
Your Rights
Under UK data protection law, you have certain rights over the personal information that we hold about you. Here is a summary of the rights that we think apply:
Right of access
You have a right to request access to the personal data that we hold about you. You also have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you, and we will provide you with this unless legal exceptions apply.
If you want to access your information, please send a description of the information you want to see and proof of your identity by email to contact@ifas.org.uk
Right to have your inaccurate personal information corrected
You have the right to have inaccurate or incomplete information we hold about you corrected. If you believe any of the information we hold about you is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us via email contact@ifas.org.uk
Right to restrict use
You have a right to ask us to restrict the processing of some or all of your personal information if there is a disagreement about its accuracy or we’re not lawfully allowed to use it.
If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please email us at contact@ifas.org.uk
Please note that exceptions apply to a number of these rights, and not all rights will be applicable in all circumstances. For more details we recommend you consult the guidance published by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, https://ico.org.uk/
Keeping your information safe
When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that appropriate technical and organisational controls are in place to protect it.
Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk.
Use of ‘cookies’
Like many other websites, this website uses cookies. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. This helps us to deliver a better more personalised service when you browse our website and improve our services.
It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences. Turning cookies off may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.
Links to other websites
Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites even if you access them using links from our website.
In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the privacy policy of that third party site.
16 or Under
We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.
Vulnerable circumstances
We are committed to protecting vulnerable people and appreciate that additional care may be needed when we use their personal information. In recognition of this, we observe good practice guidelines in our interactions with vulnerable people.
Website recording
The only software on our website that collects users data is Google Analytics, this collects a variety of information which Google outline here.
Changes to this policy
Any changes we may make to this policy in the future will be posted on this website so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. If we make any significant changes we’ll make this clear on this website.
Review of this Policy
We keep this policy under regular review.
This policy was created in March 2023.
