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Privacy Policy

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Prostate Cancer UK is committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what information we hold, whether you are a service user, donor, volunteer, campaigner or employee. We promise to respect any personal data you share with us, or that we get from other organisations and keep it safe.

Developing a better understanding of our supporters through their personal data is vital. It enables us to raise funds more efficiently and cost-effectively and ultimately will help us achieve our ambitious strategy Ten Years to Tame Prostate Cancer which aims to halve the projected number of men dying from prostate cancer by 2026.

We have made improvements to this policy so that we can provide you with a clear explanation about how Prostate Cancer UK and Prostate Cancer Trading Ltd collects and uses the personal information either which you provide to us, which  we collect via our website comes from any other correspondence with you or is provided by third parties.

This policy is written in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and Prostate Cancer UK is registered under the Act as Data Controller of your information.

If you have queries about this policy, please contact Prostate Cancer UK at Fourth floor, The Counting House, 53 Tooley Street, London SE1 2QN. Telephone 020 3310 7000. Email info@prostatecanceruk.org.

Where we collect information about you

Information you give us directly

We will obtain personal information about you when you enquire or sign up for one of our events, make a donation, fundraise on our behalf, order products or services from us, seek assistance from us, engage with our social media or message boards, communicate with us, tell us your story, or otherwise give us personal information.

We may also obtain personal information about you from an organisation working for us (for fundraising purposes). This information could include name, address, telephone number, email address and date of birth.

Information collected indirectly

Your information may be shared with us by independent event organisations, for example the London Marathon or fundraising sites like Just Giving or Virgin Money Giving, or someone on your behalf makes a donation to us in your name.  These independent third parties will only share your information when you have indicated that you wish to support Prostate Cancer UK and with your consent. 

Information we collect when you use our website

Like most websites, we use ‘cookies’ and web server logs to provide us with information on how our site is used. Web server logs note the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent on each page and on the site in total and the website visited before and after our own site. We use cookies to store limited information on your computer to provide this information to us. We use this information to enhance the functionality of our site and to give you the best experience we can. This is vital to ensure that our site can be found easily by people needing to access our prostate information or wishing to donate to help stop prostate cancer being a killer.

Internet browsers will allow some control over most cookies through their settings and, should you wish, you can identify what cookies are on your device and remove them.

Wherever possible we use aggregated or anonymous information which does not identify individual visitors to our website.

When we rely on other organisations to provide information

We may combine the information you provide us with information available from external sources if it enhances our understanding of our supporters. The only aims here are either to improve our marketing and fundraising efficiency or to help us develop new products or services that our supporters may be interested in and will help us to raise vital funds.

The information we get from other organisations may depend on your privacy settings or the responses you have given them in the past. This information may come from the following sources:

Third party organisations

You may have provided permission for a company or other organisation to share your data with third parties, including charities. This could be when you buy a product or a service, register for an online competition or register on a website.

Information available publicly

This may include information found in places such as Companies House and other public records as well as information that has been published in articles/newspapers/online

Social media

Depending on your settings or the privacy policies for social media and messaging services like Facebook, WhatsApp or Twitter, you might give us permission to access information from those accounts or services

What information do we collect?

Personal information is any information that can be used to identify you. The type and quantity of information we collect depends very much on why you are providing it. In general, if you support Prostate Cancer UK via donating, volunteering, registering to fundraise, signing up for an event or buying one of our products then we will usually collect:

  • Your name
  • Your contact details
  • Your date of birth
  • Your bank and credit card details

Credit/debit card details are only collected to process your financial transaction and are not stored on the Charity's electronic systems, in compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

Data Protection law recognises that certain categories of personal information are more sensitive such as health information, race, religious beliefs and political opinions. We will not collect ‘sensitive personal data’ about our supporters unless there is a clear reason for doing so, for example a challenging fundraising event where we may need specific information to ensure we provide the appropriate facilities or support to enable you to participate.

How do we use your information?

We will mainly use your data to:

  • In general to further our charitable aims
  • Provide you with the services, products or information you have requested from us
  • Develop and improve the services, products or information we provide
  • Ask you to participate in research or supporter event satisfaction surveys (this is voluntary)
  • Administer your donation
  • Claim Gift Aid on your donations
  • Support your fundraising efforts
  • Keep a record of your relationship with us
  • Ensure we know how you would like to be contacted by us

Targeting communications

We will sometimes use profiling and screening techniques to analyse geographic, demographic and other information relating to you to better understand your interests and preferences in order to contact you with the most relevant communications. Personal details collected this way will only be used to provide you with information you would reasonably expect or have agreed to. We do this because it allows us to understand more about the background and interests of the people who support us, allowing us to target our resources effectively; a key priority for our supporters. In doing this, we may use additional information from publicly available sources where it is appropriate and this specific activity allows us to make suitable requests to individuals who may have the means and want to give more. 

Profiling and screening means that you receive information that is appropriate, relevant and timely and which we hope will enhance your experience as a supporter. It means that we can raise more funds, sooner and more cost-effectively than we would have otherwise, essential in our fight against prostate cancer. 

Marketing

It is important to us that you receive the level of information about Prostate Cancer UK that suits you. We will contact you to let you know about the progress we are making against our Ten Years to Tame Prostate Cancer strategy, the latest research developments and advice, fundraising opportunities so you can continue to help us with our fight, or to ask for a donation or other support.

Email/text marketing

If you have actively provided your consent to us along with your email address and/or mobile phone number, we may contact you via email or text message. By subscribing to Prostate Cancer UK’s emails or opting in to email communications from us, you have granted us the right to use the email for marketing purposes. When we email you, we may place a tag (also known as ‘tracking pixel’) on the email we send out. This allows us to monitor the performance of our email marketing activity.

Post/telephone marketing

If you have provided us with your postal address or telephone number we may send you direct mail or telephone you about our work and opportunities to support us, unless you have told us that you would prefer not to receive such information.  We actively check telephone numbers against the Telephone Preference Service and will only make telephone calls to you where your telephone number is listed on TPS if you have specifically told us that you do not object to such calls and have consented to receive them.

How you can manage communications from us

It is always your choice as to whether you wish to receive information about our work, the latest advice and developments, how we raise funds and how you can help us battle this disease. If you do not wish us to use your personal information in these ways then you will note that all our marketing material and forms have a clear marketing preferences question and we always include information on how to opt out of such communications. All our information and marketing emails have a clear ‘unsubscribe’ link which when clicked will remove you from future email communications. If you don’t want to hear from us, that is fine just let us know either when you provide your data, receive communications from us or at any time you can contact us on 0800 082 1616 or email us at data@prostatecanceruk.org.

We never sell or share your personal details to third parties for the purpose of marketing, however, if we run an event in partnership with another named organisation your details may need to be shared.

Support for individuals affected by prostate cancer

We run services to provide support to individuals and their families affected by prostate cancer, and collect personal data in order to provide those services. This includes our Specialist Nurses and our Online Community and is managed separately from other data provided to the charity.

The Specialist Nurses collect sensitive personal data about your health when you speak, email or send an instant message to them. They will use this information to answer questions and give advice or guidance. They will not pass the personal information on to anyone else without express permission except in exceptional circumstances to comply with the nurses’ code of professional conduct or the law. We may use some of the information provided for training, quality monitoring or evaluating the services we provide.

Our Online Community asks you to provide your email address when you register and we may contact you about administrative issues and changes to the forum. With your consent, we may also use your email address to send you information about our work. Our Online Community is moderated and we do not display the full names of individuals nor addresses.

When you post personal information on a discussion board on our Online Community your information is publicly accessible. Such information can be viewed online and collected by third parties. We are not responsible for the use of information by such third parties.

When contributing to a discussion we strongly recommend you avoid sharing any personal information that can be used to identify you (such as name, age, address, name of employer etc.). We are not responsible for the privacy of any identifiable information that you post in our Online Community or other public pages of our website.

How we keep your data safe and who has access to it?

We take appropriate measures to ensure that the information disclosed to us is kept secure, accurate and up to date and kept only for so long as is necessary for the purposes for which it is used, or for as long as we are legally required to keep it. We use a secure server when you make a donation via our website and have other technical controls in place to protect your personal details.

We will not sell your details to any third parties, but we may sometimes share your information with our trusted service providers who are authorised to act on our behalf or with whom we work in partnership to deliver and improve services for people affected by cancer. This includes organisations that fundraise on our behalf. If you participate in our raffle or lottery, your information will also be processed by our trading companies who administer and run these on our behalf. We do comprehensive checks on these companies before we work with them, and put a contract into place that sets out our expectations and requirements; especially regarding how they manage the personal data they have collected or have access to.

WE WILL NEVER SHARE, SELL OR SWAP YOUR DETAILS WITH ANY THIRD PARTIES FOR THE PURPOSES OF THEIR OWN MARKETING OR MONETISING YOUR DATA.

In addition, from time to time we may exchange your personal information with other organisations for the purposes of fraud and credit risk reduction. We may also share information with our financial and legal advisors for the purposes of obtaining advice and protecting our legal rights.

When we collect your personal information we use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access. However, no data transmission over the internet is 100% secure, including email. For this reason, we request that you do not send private information to us by email, in particular any financial information. If you do so it is at your own risk and Prostate Cancer UK will not be held liable for any breach in security.

The Prostate Cancer UK website contains links to other websites belonging to third parties and we sometimes choose to participate in social networking sites including but not limited to Facebook and You Tube. We may also include content from sites such as these on our website however, we do not have any control over the privacy practices of these websites. You should make sure that when you leave our site that you have read and understood that site’s privacy policy in addition to our own.

Keeping your information up to date

The accuracy of your personal information is important to us. You can edit the personal information we hold on you at any time, including your address and contact details, as well as changing your communication preferences with us by contacting our Supporter Care Team on 0800 082 1616 or by emailing supportercare@prostatecanceruk.org   

Your rights

Under the Data Protection Act 1998 you have the right to:

  • Request a copy of the information we hold on you
  • Update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong
  • Change your communication preferences at any time
  • Ask us to remove your personal information from our records
  • Object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes.
  • Question a decision made about you by automated means Or
  • Raise a concern or complaint about the way in which your information is used

If you wish to find out more about these rights, or obtain a copy of the information we hold about you, please contact our Supporter Care Team at:

Prostate Cancer UK, Fourth floor, The Counting House, 53 Tooley Street, London SE1 2QN.

Tel 0800 082 1616
Email: supportercare@prostatecanceruk.org

The Right to complain to a supervisory authority

If we cannot deal with your complaint to your satisfaction you also have the right to complain to a relevant supervisory authority: The Information Commissioners Office: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, SK9 5AF, or call: 0303 123 1113 or online at: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy at any time, so please do check it from time to time. We will notify you of any significant changes in the way we treat personal information in a prominent position on our website. By continuing to use our website you will be deemed to have accepted such changes.

Last updated: December 2019