Privacy policy

Hearing Dogs for Deaf People values and respects the choice you make to support our work to help more people with hearing loss – without you we would not be able to change lives. Kindness and consideration underpins everything we do and we will always treat the information you choose to share with us with respect and a great deal of care. This Privacy Policy tells you how we use any information that you share with the Charity, or we get from other organisations, and how we protect your privacy.

If you have any questions, or want to check, change or update your details at any time please contact us.

By post: Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, The Grange, Wycombe Road, Saunderton, Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire, HP27 9NS

By email: dataprotectionofficer@hearingdogs.org.uk

By phone: 01844 348100 (Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm)

This policy was last changed on 10 May 2018.

1. Who we are

This policy covers Hearing Dogs for Deaf People (abbreviated to HD), Hearing Link (abbreviated to HL) and Hearing Dogs for Deaf People (Trading) Ltd and Hearing Link (Trading) Ltd – known as associated entities. When we use the word ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ in this policy, it means both the Charity and its associated entities.

The Data Controller is Hearing Dogs for Deaf People.

HD and HL trading sells a range of goods and enters into corporate partnership arrangements; all profits are passed to Hearing Dogs for Deaf People to help change the lives of those with hearing loss.

Your acceptance of this policy, and our right to change it;

• By using our websites, social media pages, entering a competition or providing your information, you consent to our collection and use of the information you provide in the way(s) set out in this policy. If you do not agree to this policy please do not use our sites, social media pages or services.
• We may make changes to this policy from time to time. If we do so, we will post the changes on this page and they will apply from the time we post them.

2. Legal Information

The full legal entity is:

Hearing Dogs for Deaf People – a charity registered in England and Wales (293358), and Scotland (SC040486).  Registered with Information Commissioners Office (ICO) Z7456458.

As a kind and caring charity, we strive for the highest possible standards in our fundraising, are registered with the Fundraising Regulator and are committed to complying with our Supporter Promise.

3. Your data – what information we collect

This covers information that you have chosen to tell us directly yourself. When you get in touch with us to support us, use one of our services, or in any other way, we may process the following types of personal information about you:

• Name.
• Contact details (e.g. address, landline and mobile number, email address).
• Your interactions with us. This could include, but is not limited to, your donation history; puppies you’ve sponsored, your responses to our communications; information you’ve shared with us about why you have supported us; events, meetings and fundraising activities you’ve taken part in or shown an interested in.
• Financial information.
• The country you are in.
• Date of birth.
• Any preferences about your interests and how you like to be contacted.

Information you give to us indirectly

This covers information that you don’t share with us directly but that is shared with us by other organisations with your permission.

This may include:

• The data we receive from independent fundraising platforms (e.g. JustGiving or Virgin Money Giving). We’ll only receive your information from these companies if you have given permission for them to share it with us.
• The information that you have shared with us publicly on social media (e.g. Facebook or Twitter).
• Third party data about you through social media channels, for example, your Twitter or Facebook feeds, to get to know you better and to provide more relevant communications to you.
• Non-personal information such as IP addresses (the location of a computer on the internet), pages accessed, and files downloaded. This helps us to determine how many people use our sites, how many people visit on a regular basis, and how popular our pages are. This information doesn’t tell us anything about who you are or where you live. It simply allows us to monitor and improve our service.

If you have provided consent for another organisation to share your personal information with us, but you no longer wish to hear from us, you can change your mind at any time. Please contact us using the details provided in this policy or on the communication you have received.

Information about you obtained from third parties

This covers information that has been shared with us about you by someone else. This includes:

• When a friend sponsors a puppy for you as a gift or makes a donation in your name.
• Personal information about you from service providers, the press, search engines, social media (e.g. LinkedIn) and reputable public data sources (e.g. Companies House, BoardEx, the Charity Commission, Land Registry). Personal information we may collect via these channels may include your job title, directorships, contact information, demographic data (including estimated income and property value), date and size of previous donations to other charities, details of philanthropic activities you engage in, etc. We may use this information to build a profile of you (i.e. your interests, preferences, demographics and level of potential donations) to enable us to tailor fundraising efforts and communications based on your circumstances and interests, and how likely you are to support our work. This enables us to understand our supporters better and helps us make appropriate requests to those who might be able and willing to give more than they already do and so ensure that we are making the best use of our resources. We may combine information we have obtained about you from these third party sources with other information that we hold about you for this purpose.

4. How we use your data

We treat information about you with great care and respect, and your information is only used if we have legal grounds to do so, which might be because:

• you have provided consent
• it is necessary to allow us to deal with your request, enquiry or purchase; (contract)
• we have a regulatory or legal obligation to do so;
• or the information is being used with Legitimate Interest to further our charitable aims.

What is Legitimate Interest?

This legal ground for processing means that organisations can process your personal information if they

1. have a genuine and legitimate reason for doing so and
2. That use does not harm any of your rights and interests as an individual.

We do not unduly prioritise our legitimate interests as a charity over your interests as an individual. We always respect your rights. Which is why we carry out a balancing exercise of the rights of the Charity with the rights of our supporters for the marketing communications we send.

We may use the information we collect to:

• Fulfil your requests – such as applications for services, donations, puppy sponsorships, competition entries, participation in campaigns and provision of information or opportunities to volunteer or work for Hearing Dogs for Deaf People.
• Process sales transactions, donations, other payments, verify financial transactions and process Gift Aid.
• Handle orders, deliver products and communicate with you about orders.
• Provide a personalised service to you when you visit our websites – this could include customising the content and/or layout of our pages for individual users
• Record any contact we have with you.
• Comply with legal and regulatory requirements and protect against fraud.
• Help diagnose problems with our website and server, administer our website, compile broad statistical data and update and maintain our website.
• Carry out research, profiling and screening on our supporters (using the data collection methods listed above) to help us gain a better understanding of them and to make appropriate requests to supporters who may be willing and able to give more than they already do.
• Communicate with our supporters and customers to share information about our work and how you can support it.
• We may on occasion use your email address to communicate with you via social media sites, where you have provided us with that address. For example, those supporters who signed up to take part in the Great British Dog Walk may receive notifications on Facebook and their associated entities that future events are taking place.
• We may upload your email address to third party sites (e.g. Facebook and Google) to help us deliver targeted communications to you, and people similar to you, to help us improve the relevance and effectiveness of our fundraising and communications.
• If you enter your details onto one of our online forms, and you don’t ‘send’ or ‘submit’ the form, we may contact you to see if we can help with any problems you may be experiencing with the form or our websites.
• Identify visitors to our sites or locations where we undertake operations.

Legitimate Interest to send you direct mail

Unless you tell us not to, we will rely on our Legitimate Interest ground (explained above) for sending you direct mail. From time to time, we would like to post you exciting updates about our work, products, services and how you can support us, including fundraising activities and research. Unless you have requested that we do not send you some, or all of this, our direct mailings do include marketing and fundraising asks which further the aims and objectives of Hearing Dogs for Deaf People.

5. Who we share your personal information with

We have great respect for the information we know about you and we do not swap, sell or rent your personal information to anyone.

We will only share your information if:

• We are legally required to do so, e.g. by a law enforcement agency legitimately exercising a power or if compelled by an order of the Court.
• We believe it is necessary to protect or defend our rights, property or the personal safety of our people or visitors to our premises or websites.
• We are working with a secure partner that is carrying out work on our behalf.

These secure partners may include mailing houses, marketing agencies, IT specialists and research firms. The kind of work we may ask them to do includes; processing, packaging, mailing and delivering purchases, answering questions about products or services, sending postal mail, emails and text messages, carrying out research or analysis and processing card payments.

6. Where we store your personal information

Your information is stored on computers located in the UK or securely on the Microsoft cloud. We may transfer the information to other offices and to other reputable third-party organisations as explained above – they may be situated inside or outside the European Economic Area. We may also store information in paper files.

7. How long we keep your personal information

Without your kind support we simply wouldn’t exist and because of this we value every interaction we experience with you. We believe it’s important to remember our history together, especially if you get back in touch with us or leave us a gift in your Will.

However, as with all relationships, we know that things can change and we understand that you may choose to have a break from supporting our work.

Therefore, if you do not make a donation or interact with us for 5 years, we will remove your details from our database.

You have the right to request that we delete your details at any stage. Our contact details are at the top and bottom of this policy.

If you enter your details onto one of our online forms, and you don’t ‘send’ or ‘submit’ the form, we may contact you to see if we can help with any problems you may be experiencing with the form or our websites.

We may also use your personal information to detect and reduce fraud and credit risk.

8. Cookies and online policy

‘Cookies’ are small text files that record information on your computer about the websites you visit and how you use them. Our website uses cookies to help us understand who is visiting our website, how they interact with it and to make sure it’s working effectively. We do not access any information stored in cookies placed on your machine by other websites.

If you would like to stop our cookies from being stored on your computer in future, you can do so by following instructions on your Internet browser.

For more information on this and the Cookies we use please refer to our Cookies policy.

9. Web Security

We place a great importance on the security of all personally identifiable information associated with our kind supporters, customers and users.

• We have security measures in place to attempt to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of personal data under our control. For example, only authorised personnel are authorised to access user information and we use Secure Server Software (SSL) to encrypt financial and personal information you input before it is sent to us.
• Financial transactions made online to Hearing Dogs using this website are secure.  No one can access your credit card details when you use our site.
• We use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) across our website to encrypt all personal and financial data, including your name, address, email address and direct debit details.
• You can see the connection is secure by looking at the padlock or key icon in your browser.
• While we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of data will not occur while it is under our control, we use our best efforts to try to prevent this.

Unfortunately, the transmission of data across the internet is not completely secure and whilst we do our best to try to protect the security of your information we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of data will not occur whilst data is being transferred.

10. Your rights and contacting us

The General Data Protection Regulation gives you certain rights over your data and how we use it. These include:

• The right to be informed
• The right of access
• The right to rectification
• The right to erasure
• The right to restrict processing
• The right to data portability
• The right to object
• Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

You have a right to ask us to stop processing your personal data, if it is not necessary for the purpose you provided it to us for (e.g. processing your donation or registering you for an event) we will stop.  Please contact us on 01844 348100  between 9am and 5pm from Monday to Friday or by emailing dataprotectionofficer@hearingdogs.org.uk if you have any concerns and we will be happy to help.

If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, you wish to exercise any of your rights above, or you wish to change your contact preferences at any point you can do so by calling us on 01844 348100  office hours Monday to Friday or by emailing dataprotectionofficer@hearingdogs.org.uk

You have a right to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you,  if there are any discrepancies in the information we provide, please let us know and we will correct them.

If you want to access your information, please send a description of the information you want to see and proof of your identity (photo copy or scan of document with proof of who you are) by post to Maria Thomson, Data Protection Officer, Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, Wycombe Road, Saunderton, Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire, HP27 9NS. We may not accept these requests by email to ensure that we only provide personal data to the right person.

For more information about your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation, please visit the website of the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.