privacy policy

Hacked Off is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This Policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people who visit our website, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.

We may change this Policy periodically in accordance with Data Protection legislation so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. By using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.

Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to campaign@hackinginquiry.org or by writing to The Hacked Off Campaign, Bank House Southwick Square, Southwick, Brighton, BN42 4FN.

Who are we?

The Hacked Off Campaign was established in 2011 in response to the phone-hacking revelations and campaigns for a free and accountable press for the public. We work closely with victims of press abuse and are committed to seeing  the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry implemented in full.

The company is limited by guarantee (no. 08176670). The registered address is Bank House Southwick Square, Southwick, Brighton, BN42 4FN.

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you when you use our website – www.HackingInquiry.org. For example, when you comment on a post, make a donation or sign up to receive our email updates.

What type of information is collected from you?

Comments

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

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here.

After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

The comment itself and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Cookies

Like many other websites, the Hacked Off website uses cookies. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. They collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns and do not identify you as an individual. For example, we use cookies to store your country preference. This helps us to improve our website and deliver a better more personalised service.

It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences, but turning cookies off may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.

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.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

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.

How is your information used?

We may use your information to:

  • Process a donation that you have made;
  • Process a comment made on a post
  • To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us;
  • Seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
  • Notify you of changes to our services;
  • Send you communications via email after you sign up to our mailing list. These may include information about campaigns, appeals, petitions and other fundraising activities;
  • Process a job application which you make to us.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.

Third Party access to your information?

We will not release your information to any third parties unless you have specifically agreed that we can do so or where we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf:

Your information is passed on to our third party service providers, agents subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process donations and send you emails).

However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes.

Third Party Product Providers we work in association with:

If you make a donation online, your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions, as explained below.

Donations are handled by PayPal, GoCardless or Stripe (depending on how you choose to donate). These are secure payment providers, equipped to protect payments and personal data.  Their privacy policies are published on their websites.

If you have any questions regarding secure transactions, please contact us at campaign@hackinginquiry.org.

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely. Any sensitive information (such as credit or debit card details) is encrypted and protected.

Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

We use MailChimp as our marketing automation platform so we can send you emails about the campaign. When you sign up to join our mailing list, you acknowledge that the information you provide will be transferred to MailChimp for processing in accordance with their Privacy Policy and Terms.

We may transfer your personal information to a third party if we’re under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation or to enforce or apply our terms of use or to protect the rights, property or safety of our supporters and customers. However, we will take steps with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected.

Occasionally other providers are used on a similar basis.

Your choices

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. You can unsubscribe from mailings at any time or email camapign@hackinginquiry.org to be removed from our mailing list.

When signing a petition, declaration or writing to politician, you can select your choices about further contact from Hacked Off by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form on which we collect your information.

We will not contact you for campaigning purposes by email unless you have given your prior consent. We will not contact you for campaigning purposes by post unless you have explicitly agreed to this for a specific campaign, signing up to our mailing list is not permission to post material. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us by email: campaign@hackinginquiry.org .

How you can access and update your information

The accuracy of your information is important to us. If you change email address, or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please email: campaign@hackinginquiry.org or write to us at: The Hacked Off Campaign, Bank House Southwick Square, Southwick, Brighton, BN42 4FN.

You also have the right to ask for a copy of the information you have provided to us. Please contact us if you wish to be sent this data.

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you.

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.

Profiling

We may analyse the personal information you give to us when you sign up to our mailing list to create a profile that may include your Parliamentary constituency, local MP and preferences so that we can contact you about specific appeals or campaigns. We may make use of additional information about you when it is available from external sources to help us do this effectively. We may also use your personal information to detect and reduce fraud and credit risk.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site.

16 or Under

We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Transferring your information outside of Europe

As part of the services offered to you through this website, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the European Union (“EU”). By way of example, this may happen if any of our servers are from time to time located in a country outside of the EU. These countries may not have similar data protection laws to the UK. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing. If we transfer your information outside of the EU in this way, we will take steps to ensure that appropriate security measures are taken with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this Policy.

If you use our services while you are outside the EU, your information may be transferred outside the EU in order to provide you with those services.

Review of this Policy

We keep this Policy under regular review.