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Privacy Policy

Introduction

This privacy policy relates to the Environmental Investigation Agency UK (UK Reg. Charity No. 1182208 and Company No. 7752350) website: https://eia-international.org.

Registered with the Information Commissioner for the United Kingdom and referred to as EIA in this policy. Processing and retention of personal information is governed by the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). You can view our registrations and search for Environmental Investigation Agency. Should you be unhappy about how we manage your data, you can contact the ICO.

EIA is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This policy (together with any other documents referred to in it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

The website https://eia-international.org  is owned and operated by the Environmental Investigation Agency UK.

1. How and when do we collect information?

When you visit the EIA website, sign a petition or become a donor by post, telephone or email, we may collect and process information about you.

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, our servers in the UK. It may also be processed by persons operating in the EEA who work for us or an organisation we have instructed. If we do send your personal data outside the EEA we will take steps to ensure that the recipient implements appropriate measures to protect your information.

2. What does providing my personal information mean?

When you provide us with your personal data, you are agreeing to consent to the collection and use of any information you provide in accordance with the stated purposes and this privacy policy.

We are required by law to tell you what information we keep on file and what we use it for. If you think that you may wish to object to the use of your personal information for direct marketing purposes, please read the information below first, especially the part which tells you what we do not do with information about you.

3. Fundraising privacy

How we use your personal information:

We are committed to protecting your privacy. We will only use the information that we have about you in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

We hold information that is necessary for the administration of your donations and/or your direct debits. We may also wish to contact you by phone, SMS, post or email to update you on our work, campaigns, special events, appeals or other activities related to the work of the Environmental Investigation Agency that may be of interest to you.

We take the privacy of our supporters extremely seriously and all personal information we collect is held securely and safely.

You are under no obligation to provide any such information.  However, should you choose to withhold requested information, we may not be able to provide you with certain services.

Consent, legitimate interest and the information we hold about you:

  • Your name and postal address.
  • Your email, if you have told us. Environmental Investigation Agency will only email you to acknowledge online donations or if you have said that you would like to receive electronic communications from us in line with the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations (PECR). All emails we send you will give you the option to unsubscribe and decline future emails.
  • Your telephone number(s), if you have told us. We also actively check telephone numbers against the Telephone Preference Service and will only make telephone calls to you where your telephone number is listed on the TPS if you have specifically told us that you do not object to such calls by EIA and have consented to receive them.
  • Your date of birth, if you have told us.
  • Details of any donations you make (date, amount, donation code). We have a legal responsibility to keep track of these details.
  • Gift Aid declaration: a note of whether you pay UK income tax and your home address, again if you have told us. This is used to enable us to claim from the Inland Revenue the tax you have already paid on your donations to the Environmental Investigation Agency.
  • Details of any direct debits instructions, payments and cancellations. We have a legal responsibility to keep track of these details and inform you of any changes.
  • Details of any appeals, publications, communications you receive from us and details of any contact we have with you.
  • A note of whether you remember the Environmental Investigation Agency in your Will, if you inform us.
  • Communications you send to us, for example to report a problem or to submit queries, concerns or comments regarding our work, our fundraising, the Site or its content.

Data Protection law recognises that certain categories of personal information are more sensitive. This is known as sensitive personal data and covers health information, race, religious beliefs and political opinions. We do not usually collect ‘sensitive personal data’ about our supporters unless there is a clear reason for doing so, such as participation in a marathon or similar fundraising event or where we need this information to ensure that we provide appropriate facilities or support to enable you to participate in an event. However we will always make it clear to you when we collect this information from you, what sensitive personal data we are collecting and why.

In certain instances, we collect and use your personal information by relying on the legitimate interest legal basis. This is because when you, for example, request to receive information about the work of EIA, we have a legitimate organisational interest to use your personal information to respond to you and there is no overriding prejudice to you by using your personal information for this purpose. This is also the case where we process your donations in support of EIA’s objectives, where we keep you informed by post or telephone of how your support is making a difference and where we need to take steps to protect our network security or risk of fraud, or for our internal administrative purposes.

In most instances, however, we will rely on obtaining your consent to our use of your personal information. This is the case, for example, where we seek to obtain your consent to receive email marketing or SMS to inform you about the work of EIA.

Will we disclose the information we collect to outside parties?

The Environmental Investigation Agency does NOT trade names with other organisations, ‘list swap’ or rent out our supporters’ list.

The Environmental Investigation Agency will disclose this information to other organisations solely in connection with the administration and the processing of your donations, in particular online donations, payroll giving or direct debits donations.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply any agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of EIA, or others. This includes exchanging information with other organisations for the purposes of safeguarding or other statutory regulations we have to comply with.

Finally, we may also disclose your personal information if required or permitted to do so by law or if we believe that such action is necessary to prevent fraud or cybercrime or to protect the EIA website or the rights, property or personal safety of any person.

Access to the Environmental Investigation Agency’s data is secured and protected. It is restricted to a limited number of fully trained staff within the organisation. We do not store credit card details.

Online donations and payments

To make an online donation or payment by direct debit or payment card, you will be directed to a payment gateway. Payment gateways use security features and encryption to ensure your data remains safe.

We offer the use of PayPal for online donations and Rapidata for online direct debits. Further information about the collection and use of the data will be provided on the relevant payment gateways’ own privacy policies.

Communicating with our supporters

We will not use your personal information for postal appeals or telephone campaigns if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted by us for such purposes. However, we will retain your details on a suppression list to help ensure that we do not continue to contact you.

The only other outside bodies who might receive some information from us would be agents such as the mailing service who pack and send out our appeals, Investigator magazines or Year in Review. These agents have a legal responsibility to use our information only for the purpose for which we supply it. They will not use it to contact you on their own behalf or on behalf of other organisations.

On occasion we may improve the quality and accuracy of the information you have provided such as your contact details by checking against publicly available external data lists. This helps us ensure our records are fully up-to-date and to avoid misdirecting communications. These agents have a legal responsibility to use our information only for the purpose for which we supply it. They will not use it to contact you on their own behalf or on behalf of other organisations.

Profiling

EIA was founded with the help of philanthropy, and philanthropy continues to make an enormous impact at EIA. We may use profiling techniques or use third party insight companies to provide us with general information about supporters or to add publicly available information from reliable sources to create a profile of their interests, preferences and level of potential donations so we can contact supporters in the most appropriate way and with the most relevant information.

We also use publicly available sources to carry out due diligence on donors in line with the EIA’s Gift Acceptance Policy and to meet money laundering regulations.

Publicly Accessible Data Sources we may use:

  1. Public Registers; including Companies House Data, Electoral Commission (Political Donations), Electoral Roll (Open Register), FCA (Financial Services Register), The Law Society, Land Registry.
  2. Trade & Industry References; Professional directories, Charities Commission website.
  3. UK Reference Volumes; including Who’s Who, Debrett’s People of Today, Debrett’s Peerage, City of London Livery Company information, Trustfunding.org.uk.
  4. Print and Broadcast Media; including newspapers (such as The Telegraph, The Times and Sunday Times, City AM) magazines, rich lists.
  5. Internet; including general google searches, company websites, online only articles, social media and public fundraising pages on websites (such as Justgiving.com, Linkedin.com, Facebook, Twitter) and only if the information about yourself is made public by yourself.

You can opt out of your data being used for profiling techniques by contacting us in writing by post or email.

4. Online privacy, cookies and web browsers

EIA may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual. The information collected will not be shared with any third parties unless legally required by law.

EIA’s website uses cookies to record visits to the website. This helps us to improve the website and provide you with a good experience when you browse the website.

Please see our Cookies Policy for more information.

Uses made of your information collected online

We will use the information you provide to:

  • enable us to provide you with campaigning news, event invitations, e-newsletters and our fundraising campaigns offered through the EIA website and information which you request
  • improve the layout and/or content of the pages of the EIA website and customise them for users
  • identify visitors to the EIA website
  • through online surveys we may ask what you are interested in about our work, or for your opinion in order to improve your online experience.

You can tell us not to contact you with information regarding our campaigns either at the point such information is collected on the EIA website or, where you do not wish us to continue to use your information in this way, by following the unsubscribe instructions on any communications sent to you by email. You can also ask us to amend or delete the information we hold about you. Our contact details are set out at the end of this policy.

Information sharing

We may disclose aggregate statistics about visitors to the EIA website in order to describe our services to prospective partners such as institutional funders who wish to understand our reach and other reputable third parties and for other lawful purposes, but these statistics will include no personally identifiable information.

Data security online

We place great importance on the security of all personally identifiable information associated with our users.  We have security measures in place to attempt to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of personal information under our control.  Our security measures and privacy policy are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorised personnel have access to personal information.  Whilst we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of information will never occur, we use all reasonable efforts to prevent it.

You should bear in mind that submission of information over the internet is never entirely secure.  We cannot guarantee the security of information you submit via the EIA website whilst it is in transit over the internet and any such submission is at your own risk.

It is advisable to clear the browsing data in the browser history and close your browser when you have finished your user session to help ensure others do not access your personal information if you use a shared computer or a computer in a public place.

5. How can I avoid receiving unwanted communications from EIA and other organisations?

EIA does NOT trade names with other organisations, ‘list swap’ or rent out our supporters’ list.

If you do not wish to receive further communications of a particular type or no longer wish EIA to contact you at all please tell us. We will always respect your wishes.

We recommend you keep an eye out for tick boxes on online and offline donation forms from us or other charities, to opt in or out of various communication types.

To avoid receiving unwanted communications from other organisations, beware of the small print in other organisations lifestyle surveys and ensure you opt out if you do not want to be contacted by third parties. If necessary, sign up to appropriate preference services, including the Fundraising Preference Service (FPS), Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and Mailing Preference Service (MPS).

6. Your rights

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for fundraising purposes. We will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by only checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data.

Should your personal details change, please help us to keep your information up to date by contacting us. You can also exercise the right to change your contact preferences at any time by contacting us at [email protected]

You have a legal right under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), to contact us at any time to ask for a copy of what information we hold about you or to amend or update the information we hold about you. On request and on receipt of a proof of identity, we will provide you with a copy of such information (unless exempt under the 2018 Act). Subject access requests should be addressed to: [email protected]

7. Notification of change of Privacy and Usage Policy

We reserve the right to change this privacy policy from time to time by changing it on the Site. Should this happen, we will post a notice of the change on the website, and you will be deemed to have accepted the changes. This privacy policy was last updated on 23 February 2021.

In the event that we undergo a re-organisation, you agree that any personal information we hold about you may be transferred to that re-organised entity.

8. Contact

Questions and comments regarding this privacy policy should be addressed to: [email protected].

Post: EIA 62/63 Upper Street, Islington, London N1 0NY.