PRIVACY POLICY

At Protect Our Winters UK (POW UK), we’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy in accordance with the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018. This Policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people who visit our website (www.protectourwinters.uk), how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.  

We may change this Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by e-mail using our Contact Us page or by writing to Protect Our Winters UK, 13/3 Clarendon Crescent, Edinburgh, EH4 1PU.  

Who are we?

POW UK’s mission is to change the narrative on climate change, educating and empowering passionate individuals to take simple and rewarding actions, which will in turn create consumer and corporate pressure for sustainable products and investments.  

POW UK is a registered charity (no. SC047595). The registered address is 13/3 Clarendon Crescent, Edinburgh, EH4 1PU. POW UK is part of the wider network of Protect Our Winters International, a group of charities worldwide to co-ordinate climate change activism on national and international levels.  

POW UK is the data controller of any personal information provided via or collected by the POW UK website.  

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you when you use our website to contact us, purchase a product or service from us, make a donation or if you register to receive our newsletter.  

For volunteers and job applicants we collect your personal data from the CV or application you submit to us.  

We may also collect your data from third party sites where we are running services such as ticket sales on Ticket Tailor. This will be stated on their Privacy Policy.  

What type of information is collected from you?

We generally collect the following types of personal information about you:  

• your full name, mobile, address and e-mail address.
• IP address, and information regarding what pages are accessed and when.  
  
  If you make a donation and/or buy our products or services online 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, as explained below.  
  

How is your information used?

We may use your personal information to process the following:  

• Process a donation that you have made;
• Process and manage any orders you may make (e.g. for POW stickers);
• Manage our Carbon Literacy Training courses;
• Answer any enquiries that you may have;
• Carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us;
• Seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
• Notify you of changes to our services;
• Send you communications, which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about campaigns, appeals, other fundraising activities, promotions of our associated companies goods and services. We will not contact you more than four times a month;
• Process a grant or application;
• Process a volunteer and/or job application;  
  

Grounds for using your information

If we collect personal information from you, we’ll only do so with your consent, or where we need it in order to:  

• provide the products or services you have requested, process donations or an application or otherwise perform a contract with you or to carry out a request from you prior to entering into a contract;
• comply with our legal obligations; and/or
• operate our organisation, protect the security of our systems, supporters and users, detect or prevent fraud, enable our partners to comply with their legal obligations, or fulfil our other legitimate interests as described in the “How is your information used?’ section above - unless our interests are overridden by your privacy rights.  
  
  If we rely on your consent to process personal information, you can withdraw your consent at any time, and where we rely on legitimate interests, you may have the right to object to our processing.  
  

How long do we keep your information?

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations (for example the collection of Gift Aid). We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us. We will contact you every three years to obtain continued consent to receive communications from us.  

In the case of volunteer and job applications, we will hold your information for one year after your application, or for the duration of your involvement with or employment by Protect Our Winters UK and for two years afterwards, or longer if we are required to do so to fulfil statutory duties and comply with legislation regarding employment or regulated activities, as defined in the relevant legislation.  

Who has access to your information?

We use eSputnik to manage our e-mail lists and communications. eSputnik are an industry leader in e-mail communications, however they have no access to your data. Your data remains solely accessible by POW UK.  

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties without your consent.  

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes without your consent.  

Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf: We may pass your information to our third party service providers, 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, provide training or POW Pledge services, and send you mailings). However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties beyond the POW UK Network 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.  

When you are using our secure online donation pages, your donation is processed by a third party payment processor, who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. If you have any questions regarding secure transactions, please contact us at info@protectourwinters.uk.  

We may transfer your personal information to a third party as part of a sale of some or all of our business and assets to any third party or as part of any business restructuring or reorganisation, or if we’re under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation or to enforce or apply our terms of use or to protect the rights, property or safety of our supporters and customers. However, we will take steps with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected.

Your choices

We will not contact you for marketing purposes by e-mail, phone or text message unless you have given your prior consent. We will not contact you for marketing purposes by post if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by clicking on the link at the bottom of newsletter e-mails or writing to us at Protect Our Winters UK, 13/3 Clarendon Crescent, Edinburgh, EH4 1PU; or by e-mailing privacy@protectourwinters.uk  

How you can access and update your information

You have the right under the UK GDPR to request free of charge:  

• a copy of the information POW holds about you
• correction or deletion of your personal information;
• restriction of our processing of your personal information, or to object to our processing; and
• portability of your personal information.  
  
  We’re working on ways to make it easier for you to review and correct the information that we hold about you.  
  
  If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please write to us at Protect Our Winters UK, 13/3 Clarendon Crescent, Edinburgh, EH4 1PU.  
  

How we keep your information safe

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely. Any sensitive information (such as credit or debit card details) is encrypted and protected with 128 Bit (or higher) encryption on SSL. When you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear in the URL bar on browsers such as Safari and Google Chrome. Non-sensitive details (your e-mail address etc.) may be 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 and attempt to force SSL on all of our pages, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our system  

Profiling

We may analyse your personal information to create a profile of your interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information 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. We may also use your personal information to detect and reduce fraud and credit risk.  

Use of ‘cookies’

Like many other websites, the POW UK 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. They collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns and do not identify you as an individual. For example, we use cookies to store your e-mail subscription status. This helps us to improve our website and deliver a better more personalised service. It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences. For more information on how to switch off cookies on your computer, visit our full cookies policy. Turning cookies off may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.  

Use of Local Storage

Local storage is a little known means of storing data. Cookies are normally used to store user data, however there are occasions where we use local storage to remember certain things on your device, specifically, we use local storage to remember your Google Analytics ID. This is a unique and random value assigned to you by Google Analytics and does not contain any identifying information. It enables us to tie sessions together in order to better understand our website usage and provide a more comprehensive view to improve our site and message.  

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to external websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website, so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the external websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of external websites even if you access them using links from our website. In addition, if you’re 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 policy of that third party site.  

Aged 18 or Under

We do not knowingly target or collect information from children under the age of 13.  

Anyone under the age of 16 is recommended to get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information. We are also unable to accept volunteers under the age of 18 due to the remote and devolved nature of our team.  

Transferring your information outside of UK and EU

Following Brexit, the UK and European Union (EU) have facilitated transfers of data between the UK and all EU countries. The UK has also recognised adequacy decisions made by the European Commission. If we transfer your information outside of the EU or to a country which has not received an adequacy decision, we will ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your data.  

Contact Details:

By e-mail: privacy@protectourwinters.uk  

Via Webform  

Protect Our Winters UK, 13/3 Clarendon Crescent, Edinburgh, EH4 1PU  

Review and update of this Policy notification:

We keep this Policy under regular review and update inline with changes to our practices, UK GDPR, Data Protection Act 2018 and any other applicable UK law.  

This Privacy Policy is effective since 2017 and was last updated on 06 August 2021.