Introduction

The Vulval Pain Society (‘we or us’) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We are a charity established in the United Kingdom with a registered address at PO Box 7804, Nottingham, NG3 5ZQ United Kingdom. For the purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation (the ‘GDPR’), we are the data controller.

This policy sets out the basis on which the personal data we are collecting from you will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal information and how we will treat it.

What does this Policy cover?

This Privacy Policy applies only to your use of our website and email. Our site may contain links to other websites. Please note that we have no control over how your data is collected, stored, or used by other websites and we advise you to check the privacy policies of any such websites before providing any data to them.

What is personal data?

Personal data is defined by the General Data Protection Regulation (EU Regulation 2016/679) (the ‘GDPR’) as ‘any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified in particular by reference to an identifier’.

Personal data is, in simpler terms, any information about you that enables you to be identified. Personal data covers obvious information such as your name and contact details, but it also covers less obvious information such as identification numbers, electronic location data, and other online identifiers.

What are my rights?

Under the GDPR, you have the following rights, which we will always work to uphold:

  • The right to be informed about our collection and use of your personal data. This Privacy Policy should tell you everything you need to know, but you can always contact us to find out more or to ask any questions using the details given below.
  • The right to access the personal data we hold about you by contacting us using the details given below.
  • The right to have your personal data rectified if any of your personal data held us is inaccurate or incomplete. Please contact us using the details in the ‘Contact us’ section below to find out more.
  • The right to be forgotten, i.e. the right to ask us to delete or otherwise dispose of any of your personal data that we have. Please contact us using the details in the ‘Contact us’ section below to find out more.
  • The right to restrict (i.e. prevent) the processing of your personal data.
  • The right to object to us using your personal data for a particular purpose or purposes.

For more information about our use of your personal data or exercising your rights as outlined above, please contact us using the details provided in the ‘Contact us’ section given below.

Data Portability: The right for a Data Subject (you) to receive personal data concerning you, which you have previously provided in a ‘commonly used and machine-readable format’ and your right to transmit the data to another controller.

What personal data do you collect?

When you visit our website, we may gather information about you automatically through your use of the site, e.g., your IP address and how you navigate our site. See the section below on Cookies and other tools.

If you send us an email, we may collect your name, your email address, and any other information which you choose to give us.

How do you use my personal data?

Where we collect personal data, it will be processed and stored securely, for no longer than is necessary in light of the reason(s) for which it was first collected. We will comply with our obligations and safeguard your rights under the GDPR at all times.

If you contact us and we obtain your personal details from your email, we may use them to respond to your email.

Any and all emails containing your personal data will be deleted no later than 12 months after receipt.

You have the right to withdraw your consent to us using your personal data at any time, and to request that we delete it.

How and where do you store my data?

Personal data collected via our website is stored in the UK.

Personal data collected in emails you send to us are stored within the European Economic Area (the ‘EEA’) and the UK. The EEA consists of all EU member states, plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

This means that your personal data will be fully protected under the GDPR or to equivalent standards by law.

Personal data security is essential to us and to protect personal data, we take the following measures:

  • Ensuring that we have adequate site security including relevant SSL Certificates for the site.
  • Mandatory Cookie acceptance choice for visitors to the website
  • If you email us, we will store your details in a secure server environment.

How can I access my personal data?

If you want to know what personal data we have about you, you can ask us for details of that personal data and for a copy of it (where any such personal data is held). This is known as a ‘subject access request’.

All subject access requests should be made in writing and sent to the email or postal addresses shown in the ‘Contact us’ section of this page.

We will respond to your subject access request within 2 weeks and, in any case, not more than one month of receiving it. Normally, we aim to provide a complete response, including a copy of your personal data within that time. In some cases, however, particularly if your request is more complex, more time may be required up to a maximum of three months from the date we receive your request. You will be kept fully informed of our progress.

Cookies and other tools

We collect information about you by using cookies, tracking pixels and other technologies (collectively, ‘Tools’). We use this information to better understand, customise and improve user experience with our websites, services and offerings as well as to manage our advertising. For example, we use web analytics services that leverage these Tools to help us to understand how visitors engage with and navigate our site, e.g., how and when pages in a site are visited and by how many visitors. We are also able to offer our visitors a more customised, relevant experience on our sites using these Tools by delivering content and functionality based on your preferences and interests.

Your web browser can be set to allow you to control whether you will accept cookies, reject cookies, or to notify you each time a cookie is sent to your browser. If your browser is set to reject cookies, websites that are cookie-enabled will not recognise you when you return to the website, and some website functionality may be lost. The Help section of your browser may tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting cookies. To find out more about cookies, visit www.aboutcookies.org.

Certain information is collected by most browsers or automatically through your device, such as your Media Access Control (MAC) address, computer or device type (for example, Windows, Macintosh or Android), screen resolution, operating system name and version, device manufacturer and model, language and internet browser type and version. We use this information to ensure that the services function properly.

Your IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to the computer that you are using by your Internet Service Provider. An IP address may be identified and logged automatically in our server log files whenever a user accesses our website, along with the time of the visit and the pages visited. Collecting IP addresses is standard practice and is done automatically by many websites, applications and other services. We use IP addresses for purposes such as calculating usage levels, diagnosing server problems and administering the Site. We may also derive your approximate location from your IP address.

We may use Google Analytics, which uses cookies and similar technologies to collect and analyse information about use of the Site and report on activities and trends. This service may also collect information regarding the use of other websites, apps and online resources. You can opt into or out of Google Analytics for the VPS website by updating your cookie preferences in the Cookie Tool. You can also learn about Google’s practices by going to www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/ and opt-out of them by downloading the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

We may use Flash Local Shared Objects (‘Flash LSOs’) and other technologies to, among other things, collect and store information about your use of the Site. If you do not want Flash LSOs stored on your computer, you can adjust the settings of your Flash player to block Flash LSO storage using the tools contained in the Website Storage Settings Panel. You can also control Flash LSOs by going to the Global Storage Settings Panel and following the instructions (which may include instructions that explain, for example, how to delete existing Flash LSOs (referred to as ‘information’ on the Macromedia site), how to prevent Flash LSOs from being placed on your computer without your being asked, and (for Flash Player 8 and later) how to block Flash LSOs that are not being delivered by the operator of the page you are on at the time). Please note that setting the Flash Player to restrict or limit acceptance of Flash LSOs may reduce or impede the functionality of some Flash applications, including those used in connection with the Site.

Cookie Policy and your privacy

We use cookies to help improve our website and make your browsing experience more useful, more relevant and tailored to you. In order to comply with recent legislation and in the interests of transparency, we have updated our privacy policy to give you clearer information on the way we use technology such as cookies and how they affect your privacy.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small encrypted text files that are stored on your computer or other device by our websites. They are uniquely assigned to you and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

Types of cookies

Session cookies

Session cookies are stored in your computer’s memory for the length of your browsing session. They become inaccessible after the session has been inactive for a time and are automatically deleted from your computer when the browser is closed. They help keep track of your progress so you don’t have to enter the same information more than once.

Persistent cookies

Persistent cookies are stored on the user’s computer memory and are not deleted when the browser is closed. They are used to keep your preferences for the website, so that they will be remembered for next time you visit the website. They are also used to collect information about the numbers of visitors, the average time spent on a particular page and analyse browsing behaviour on the website. This information is used to find out how well the website works and where it can be improved.

First party cookies

These are cookies set by this website. Some are necessary to the functionality of the site, others provide information to us that we analyse to monitor and improve the site. These cookies will be deleted after each session.

Third party cookies

We want to provide interesting and engaging content on our website and provide relevant content. On a number of pages we use ‘plug-ins’ or embedded media.

For example, we may embed YouTube videos. The suppliers of these services may also set cookies on your device when you visit the pages where we have used this type of content.

Sharing with social networks

If you use the buttons that allow you to share products and content with your friends via social networks like Twitter and Facebook, these companies may set a cookie on your computer. Find out more about these here:

https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy

http://twitter.com/privacy

http://www.google.com/intl/en-GB/policies/privacy/

How do I opt into or out of cookies?

To make full use of the features on our site you will need to accept cookies, as we can only provide you with certain personalised features of this website by using them.

If you’d prefer to restrict, block or delete cookies from our website or any other website, you can use your browser to do this, though your experience of using the site may be significantly impaired should you do so (although, if you choose to restrict, block or delete third party cookies we do not envisage that this will significantly impair the functionality of our website).

Please visit www.youronlinechoices.com or www.allaboutcookies.org. Information on these websites will assist you in exercising your privacy rights providing guidance on how to opt-out of future access or continued storage of information via cookies.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. This may be necessary, for example, if the law changes, or if we change our business or website in a way that affects personal data protection.

Any changes will be immediately posted on our site and you will be deemed to have accepted the terms of the Privacy Policy on your first use of our Site following the alterations. We recommend that you check this page regularly to keep up-to-date.

Contact us

The charity responsible for collection, use and disclosure of your personal data under this Privacy Policy is the Vulval Pain Society.

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, or if you would like to request the exercise of any individual rights, please contact us by emailing us at info@vulvalpainsociety.org or by writing to the following address:

Vulval Pain Society
PO Box 7804
Nottingham
NG3 5ZQ