Privacy Policy

This policy is effective as of 3rd March 2021.

Who we are

The Basildon Natural History Society is a charity registered in England & Wales (no. 286117)

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Membership

If you become a member of the Basildon Natural History Society, we collect your Name, Address, Telephone Number and Email Address. This data is collected to maintain the Society’s database of members and to give member benefits (such as the Quarterly Bulletin).

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Subscriptions

When commenting, visitors have the option to be notified of new posts or comments by email. To set up and process subscriptions, we use the visitor’s email address and IP address. This data used for the exclusive purpose of monitoring and preventing abuse and spam.

Contact forms

When visitors use the website’s contact forms, they are asked for personal information such as their name and email address. This information will be used to process and respond to your query.

Cookies

When you accept the Privacy Notice a cookie will be stored to remember that you have accepted it. This cookie will expire after 180 days.

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

If you subscribe to posts or comments, a cookie is set to remember these subscription preferences.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

The website uses Fathom Analytics. Information about what data Fathom Analytics collects, what it is used for is available here: https://usefathom.com/compliance. No personal data is stored over time. The lawful basis for this is the legitimate interest to continually improve our website.

Who we share your data with

If you choose to use Gift Aid on donations or contributions, we will share your Name and Address with HMRC to claim Gift Aid.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

If you are a Member, your membership data will be kept until you are no longer a member.

If you use Gift Aid, we are legally required to keep your records for 6 years after the most recent Gift Aid contribution.

What rights you have over your data

If you have a Member of the Soceity, or have left comments on the Website, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service, Akismet. The Akismet service privacy policy is available here: https://akismet.com/privacy/. We send this service your IP address, user agent and referrer, as well as the information provided in the comment form.

Subscriptions to posts or comments are processed by Jetpack. The Jetpack privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/.

Contact Us

If you would like to contact the Society about your data, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. For security reasons, we can only provide your data if the request is sent from the associated e-mail address.

Additional information

What data breach procedures we have in place

In the event of a data breach, we will notify all affected users as soon as possible.

What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data

The website may decide to reject comments if the Akismet anti-spam service determines a comment is likely to be spam. If you believe that this decision is incorrect please contact us.