What is this Privacy Policy for?
The policy sets out the different areas where user privacy is concerned and outlines the obligations & requirements of the users, the website and website owners. Furthermore the way this website processes, stores and protects user data and information will also be detailed within this policy.
The Website
This website and it’s owners take a proactive approach to user privacy and ensure the necessary steps are taken to protect the privacy of its users throughout their visiting experience. This website comply’s to all UK national laws and requirements for user privacy.
Use of Cookies
This website uses cookies to tailor better the users’ experience while visiting the website. This website uses a cookie control system allowing the user on their first visit to the website to allow or disallow the use of cookies on their computer / device. This complies with recent legislation requirements for websites to obtain explicit consent from users before leaving behind or reading files such as cookies on a user’s computer / device.
Cookies are small files saved to the user’s computer / device storage that track, save and store information about the users’ interactions and usage of the website. This allows the website, through its server to provide the users with a tailored experience within this website.
Users are advised that if they wish to deny the use and saving of cookies from this website on to their computer’s / device’s storage they should take necessary steps within their web browsers security settings to block all cookies from this website and its externally linked other domains.
This website uses tracking software to monitor its visitors to understand better how they use it. This software is provided by Google Analytics which uses cookies to track visitor usage. The software will save a cookie to computer’s / device’s storage in order to track and monitor the users’ engagement and usage of the website, but will not store, save or collect personal information. You can read Google’s privacy policy here for further information.
Other cookies may be stored to the user’s computer / device storage by external servers through code that is used by this website. Such cookies are used typically expire after 30 days, though some may take longer. No personal information is stored, saved or collected.
Contact & Communication
Users contacting this website and/or it’s owners do so at their own discretion and provide any such personal details requested at their own risk. Your personal information is kept private and stored securely until a time it is no longer required or has no use, as detailed in the Data Protection Act 1998. Every effort has been made to ensure a safe and secure form that emails submitted information to the site owner, but users using such form are advised that they use it at their own risk.
This website and its owners use any information submitted to provide you with further information about the products / services they offer or to assist you in answering any questions or queries you may have submitted. Your details are not passed on to any third parties.
External Links
Although this website only looks to include quality, safe and relevant external links users should always adopt a policy of caution before clicking on any external web links mentioned throughout this website.
The owners of this website cannot guarantee or verify the contents of any externally linked website despite their best efforts. Users should therefore note they click on external links at their own risk and this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.
Social Media Platforms
Communication, engagement and actions taken through external social media platforms that this website and its owners participate in are custom to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policies held with each social media platform, respectively.
Users are advised to use social media platforms wisely and communicate / engage upon them with due care and caution in regard to their own privacy and personal details. This website nor it’s owners will ever ask for personal or sensitive information through social media platforms and encourage users wishing to discuss sensitive details to contact them through primary communication channels such as by telephone or email.
This website may use social sharing buttons which help share web content directly from web pages to the social media platform in question. Users are advised before using such social sharing buttons that they do so at their own discretion and note that the social media platform may track and save your request to share a web page respectively through your social media platform account.
Shortened Links in Social Media
This website and it’s owners through their social media platform accounts may share web links to relevant web pages. By default some social media platforms shorten lengthy urls.
Users are advised to take caution and good judgement before clicking any shortened urls published on social media platforms by this website and its owners. Despite the best efforts to ensure only genuine urls are published many social media platforms are prone to spam and hacking and therefore this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any shortened links.
GDPR Statement
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has become enforceable from the 25th of May 2018 and has replaced the Data Protection Act (DPA) previously in use. SHERPA prepared for the GDPR by addressing the following points:
- Information it holds: SHERPA is documenting which personal data it holds, where it comes from and who has access to it. The personal data that is collected consists of name, email address and affiliation of the people registered on the website. These informations are stored on the SHERPA server using 256 bit SSL encryption protected by CloudFlare and SSL. Only three members of SHERPA can access this via encrypted password secure admin access.
- Communicating privacy information: this privacy notices of SHERPA website have been changed according to the GDPR implementations. This includes an explanation of SHERPA lawful basis for processing the data, the data retention period and the how the data will be used. These concepts are expressed in an easy to understand language.
- Individual’s rights: SHERPA’s procedures have been checked to ensure that they cover all the rights that individuals have. This has been reflected in this privacy notices of the SHERPA website.
- Subject access requests: the way in which subject access requests are handled take into account the new GDPRs rules.
- Lawful basis for processing personal data: the lawful basis of SHERPA for processing data are described in this privacy notices of the project and are available online to all the visitors of the website.
- Consent: An explicit consent is required when registering on the SHERPA website and filling the Terms and Conditions of the services.
- Children: SHERPA does not offer any online service specific to children and thus will not require a parental or guardian consent for any data processing activity. Furthermore, a system to verify individuals’ ages is not necessary as the website does not contain any material that is considered inadequate to certain age groups.
- Data breaches: the project has procedures to detect, report and investigate personal data breaches. This is achieved by running hourly checks on the website and diagnostics via Cloudflare to ensure there are no data breaches.
- Data Protection by Design and Data Protection Impact Assessments: SHERPA adopts a privacy by design approach as it takes privacy into consideration from the start. A Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) would not be necessary as the processing of the data collected does not result in any high risk to individuals.
- Data Protection Officers: since SHERPA does not carry out a regular and systematic monitoring of data of individuals on a large scale, nor it deals with special categories of data, a Data Protection Officer is not required.
- International: the project operates for now only in the UK. As such, a lead data protection supervisory authority is not necessary. Should SHERPA expand its activity to other countries in the EU then this point will be re-considered.
For more information on our privacy policy and notices please use the following link …
https://www.dmu.ac.uk/policies/data-protection/data-protection.aspx