Privacy Policy
1 Introduction
1.1 About Us
Within this Privacy Policy, any reference to ‘we’, ‘our’, or ‘us’ refers specifically to My Academic Family, CIC, a company incorporated in Scotland under company number SC729032 and registered at the address: Herbert House, 24 Herbert Street, Glasgow, G20 6NB, Scotland.
1.2 What Does This Policy Cover?
This Privacy Policy applies to your use of our website and participation in programmes and services provided by My Academic Family, CIC whether as a volunteer or beneficiary. Our website 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. We advise you to check the privacy policies of any website before providing any data to them.
2 What Information We Collect
2.1 Registering with My Academic Family
We currently collect and process the following information:
2.1.1 Name, email address, phone number, age (required)
2.1.2 Home address, country of nationality (optional)
2.1.3 Personal educational details (for example, the name of the university you are attending, whether you will be continuing your studies in subsequent years, and whether you have graduated with your degree).
2.1.4 Additional personal information shared by you for the matching process (such as interests, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc)
2.1.5 Information shared with us during surveys.
2.1.6 Information provided from third party sources, such as our Partners, who connect you to our service.
2.1.7 Data relating to your use of our website.
2.2 Moodle Community
When you participate in our online Moodle Community forum, we and third parties may collect and store the following additional information:
2.2.1 Comments you voluntarily post or make while engaging with online discussions with My Academic Family or peers in your Community Forum (these may be fellow volunteers or fellow students)
2.2.2 Any information within email communication with My Academic Family, CIC for user support or inquiries.
2.3 Supporting My Academic Family
When you make a donation to My Academic Family or purchase stationery materials from our online store, we and third parties working with us will collect the following information:
2.3.1 Credit/Debit card information
2.4 Using Our Website
When you access and use our website we may use cookies which enable us to track, collect, and collate information about your use of our website, including pages you visit, the specific URL which brought you to our website, and any links embedded on our website that you access. This information can include IP addresses, and any information collected by cookies. This may include information such as the length of time you spend on certain pages on our website and any information concerning page interactions. For more information on our Cookie Policy, please refer to the Cookie Policy information provided at the end of our Privacy Policy.
3 How We Get Personal Information and Why We Have It
3.1 From You
Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you for one of the following reasons:
3.1.1 To allow My Academic Family to contact you for the execution of its services.
3.1.2 To allow My Academic Family to mail you materials (as appropriate).
3.1.3 To facilitate the matching process as part of the mentoring service we provide.
3.1.4 To enable My Academic Family to analyse the success of its services.
3.1.5 To accept donations from you to support My Academic Family’s services.
3.2 From Partners
We also receive personal information indirectly, from the following sources in the following scenarios:
3.2.1 Partner organisations who share contact information with us to facilitate the acquisition of volunteers or beneficiaries for the mentorship services.
4 How We Use Your Information
By providing our online digital services to you, we and third parties we partner and work with will collect, store, and use your personal information for the following reasons:
4.1 By providing our online digital services to you, we and third parties we partner and work with will collect, store, and use your personal information for the following reasons:
4.1.1 Managing your Moodle Community Account;
4.1.2 To provide you with technical support;
4.1.3 To send you email notifications and updates about our services;
4.1.4 To enable us to carry out the services we provide;
4.1.5 To contact you to check-in when you have been noted as inactive by your mentor or your student;
4.1.6 To contact you for mandatory and/or optional feedback opportunities to enable us to analyse and improve our services;
4.1.7 For marketing purposes, where you give consent to receive marketing communications, which includes emails with information and news about our services;
4.1.8 To use your information in an aggregated format to identify trends on our website.
4.1.9 To share general user data with our partners for research on how to improve our services;
4.1.10 To mail you materials (as appropriate);
4.2 We will use cookies to collect information relating to your use of our website to enable, maintain, and improve the function of our website and the quality of our services. For further information, see our Cookie Policy below.
5 Whom we may share your information with
5.1 For the purposes listed above, we may share your information with the following third parties. Please note that any third parties’ use of your personal data will be governed by their own privacy policies and may have separate obligations under applicable data protection laws. We suggest that you review any third party privacy policies that may apply to you carefully.
5.2 Third parties that can potentially receive your information include:
5.2.1 Our payment service providers (i) PayPal (UK) Limited, (ii) Stripe, Inc; and
5.2.2 Our print on-demand company, Printroom.co.uk;
5.2.3 Customer relationship management service providers such as services which allow us to send personalised emails to you;
5.2.4 Our file storage and management service providers;
5.2.5 Any entity which we are under a duty to disclose or share your information to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our Terms and other legal requirements, to protect our rights, property, safety of our users or others; including the exchanging of information with companies or organisations to enable fraud protection and reduce credit risk.
Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information are:
6 Legal Basis for Processing Your Information
We have multiple legal bases for collecting and utilising the personal information described above.
6.1 Where the use of your personal information is necessary to perform our obligations under any contract with you (including executing any of our services and/or providing you with access to our Moodle Community on our website, for which you have registered);
6.2 Where we have your explicit consent to collect, store, and use your information for particular purposes, including where you consent to receiving email newsletters and updates about our company or services;
6.3 Where use of your personal information is necessary for purposes of pursuing My Academic Family’s legitimate interests as long as these interests are not outweighed by your own interests, fundamental rights, or freedoms. For example, ensuring that any case involving your personal information is reasonable, and any information used has a minimal impact on your personal privacy. Such legitimate interests are:
6.3.1 Conducting our day-to-day business, including keeping our website fully functional and offering our services;
6.3.2 To test and release new services which we believe benefit our volunteers and beneficiaries of our services;
6.3.3 To ensure we deliver a high level of satisfaction and service to all those who are involved with the execution of our services (including both volunteers and students) through continuous communication and responses to inquiries;
6.3.4 To track and ensure we complete contractual obligations;
6.3.5 To carry out market research and develop our company;
6.3.6 To operate our website;
6.3.7 To consider your application for a volunteer position or paid employment at our company; and
6.3.8 In some limited cases, we may have legal obligations to collect personal information from you.
7 Storage and Security of Information
7.1 All of the information we collect is stored on secure servers. Upon registering, we will ask you to choose a password which enables you to access our Moodle Community Forum. You are responsible for ensuring this password remains confidential. We request that you do not share this password with any person or entity.
7.2 Additionally, we (or third parties acting for us) may store or process information we collect about you in countries which may have different of data protection laws than in the UK. We have used our best efforts to ensure the security of your data, it is your responsibility to make an informed decision to avail yourself of our services or if your concerns about the handling of data require you to refrain from using our website.
8 Data Retention
8.1 We keep personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing and legitimate business need to do so (such as providing you with a service you have registered for, or to comply with applicable legal, tax, or accounting requirements).
8.2 When we no longer have an ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it, or if this remains impossible, then we will secure and store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until we can delete the information.
9 Your Rights
Under the Data Protection Legislation, you have the following rights, which we will always work to uphold:
a) The right to be informed about our collection and use of your personal data.
b) The right to access the personal data we hold about you.
c) The right to have your personal data rectified if any of your personal data held by us is inaccurate or incomplete.
d) 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 hold. Please contact us to find out more.
e) The right to restrict (i.e. prevent) the processing of your personal data.
f) The right to object to us using your personal data for a particular purpose or purposes.
g) The right to withdraw consent. This means that, if we are relying on your consent as the legal basis for using your personal data, you are free to withdraw that consent at any time.
h) The right to data portability. This means that, if you have provided personal data to us directly, we are using it with your consent or for the performance of a contract, and where that data is processed using automated means, you can ask us for a copy of that personal data to re-use with another service or business in many cases.
i) Rights relating to automated decision-making and profiling. We do not use your personal data in this way.
You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.
10 Children
We take very seriously our legal obligation to protect the privacy of children. Therefore, we do not knowingly collect or maintain personal information from persons under thirteen (13) years of age, and no part of Our Site is directed to persons under thirteen (13) years of age. If you are under thirteen (13) years of age, then please do not use or access Our Site at any time or in any manner. We will take appropriate steps to delete any personal information of persons less than thirteen (13) years of age.
11 Cookies
This website uses cookies and follows the Cookie Policy as established by SquareSpace. Cookies are small files which are stored on your computer’s hard drive and are used to collect your personal information. You can refuse cookies, but if you choose this option, some of the functionality of our website may no longer be available to you.
For further information on our and SquareSpace’s cookie policy, please see below.
12 Contact Details
My Academic Family, CIC
Herbert House
c/o Brett Nicholls Associates
24 Herbert Street
Glasgow G20 6NB
Scotland
Email: support@myacademicfamily.org.uk
13 Updating the Privacy Policy
We retain the right to edit this Privacy Policy when necessary to comply with the law and in accordance with the best practices in our industry or to meet any changing business requirements. Any updates or amendments will be posted on our website. By continuing to use our website, partake in any of our services, or provide any information to us you will be deemed to have accepted the Privacy Policy as amended at the time of your access and use.
14 How to complain
If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us at carly@myacademicfamily.org.uk.
You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.
The ICO’s address:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Helpline number: 0303 123 1113
ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk
Cookie Policy
Analytics
This website collects personal data to power our website analytics, including:
Information about your browser network and device
Web pages you visited prior to coming to this website
Your IP address
This information may also include details about your use of this website, including:
Clicks
Internal links
Pages visited
Scrolling
Searches
Timestamps
We share this information with SquareSpace, our website analytics provider, to learn about site traffic and activity.
Cookies
This website uses cookies and similar technologies, which are small files or pieces of text that download to a device when a visitor accesses a website or app. For information about viewing the cookies dropped on your device, visit the cookies SquareSpace uses.
Customer Accounts
If you donate to us or purchase stationery materials from our online store, we collect personal information to improve our checkout experience and customer service. This information may include your:
Billing and shipping address(es)
Email address
Name
Phone number
We share this information with SquareSpace, our website hosting provider, so they can provide website services to us.
Emails
Marketing emails
We may send you marketing emails, which you can unsubscribe from by clicking the link at the bottom of the email. We share your contact information with SquareSpace, our email marketing provider, so they can send these emails on our behalf.
Order and account emails
We may email you with messages about your order or account activity. For example, we may email you to tell you that:
You’ve created a Customer Account
Your Customer Account password has been reset or updated
You’ve made a purchase
Your order has shipped
It is not possible to unsubscribe from these messages.
We share your contact information with SquareSpace, our website hosting provider, so they can send these emails to you on our behalf.
Fonts
This website uses font files from Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts. To properly display this site to you, servers where the font files are stored may receive personal information about you, including:
Information about your browser, network, or device
Your IP address
Visitor Data
For customers
When you buy something on this website, we collect personal information from you to fulfil the order. When you donate to us, we collect personal information from you to complete the transaction. We may collect information like your:
Billing and shipping address(es)
Details relating to your purhase
Email address
Name
Phone Number
We share this information with SquareSpace, our online store hosting provider, so that they can provide website services to us.
As you go through checkout, this site may auto-complete your shipping and billing address by sharing what you type with the Google Places API and returning suggestions to you to improve your checkout experience.
For website visitors
This website is hosted by SquareSpace. SquareSpace collects personal data when you visit this website, including:
Information about your browser, network and device
Web pages you visited prior to coming to this website
Your IP address
SquareSpace needs the data to run this website, and to protect and improve its platform and services. SquareSpace analyses the data in a de-personalised form.