Privacy notice & Cookies
RSPCA Solent Branch is committed to respecting your privacy and keeping your personal information safe, whether you are a supporter, volunteer, shopper or campaigner. This Privacy Notice applies to all personal information we collect or process about you; it sets out how and why we obtain and use your personal information, as well as how we protect it.
We may need to update this notice from time to time without notifying you, so please check it regularly, but if we make any significant changes, we will let you know.
How we may use your information
We will not rent, swap or sell your personal information to other organisations for them to use in their own marketing activities.
The legal basis that we rely on for processing your data will depend upon the circumstances in which it is being collected and used, but will in most cases fall into one of the following categories:
- where you have provided your consent to allow us to use your data in a certain way
- where the processing is necessary to carry out for the performance of a contract with you
- where the processing is necessary in order for us to comply with a legal obligation; or
- where it is in our legitimate interests to perform our functions, for example, processing donations or sending you administrative communications where our legitimate interest is to raise funds and to deliver our charitable purpose.
Legal requirements
We may disclose your personal/sensitive personal information when required to by law, for example, to HMRC for tax purposes or to police forces for the prevention or detection of crime. Further, we safeguard the sharing of such information by using formalised information sharing agreements with organisations where appropriate, or on an ad hoc basis after ensuring the request and disclosure are legally compliant.
When we conduct prosecutions, we may publish the identity of the defendant in court alerts and press statements.
Data research and accuracy
On occasion we may also use your personal information for research purposes so that we can improve our services and better meet the needs of our beneficiaries. This may include us contacting you to see if you would like to become involved in one of our research projects. We also feature case studies on our website and materials about the amazing work that our supporters undertake for us. In both instances we will always obtain your prior consent before using your data in these ways.
Cookies
What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files placed either temporarily or permanently on your computer by websites that you visit which collect and record information, including your IP address. Each time you visit one of our websites, your browser will send the cookie file back to the website’s server on each subsequent visit unless your alter your browser settings.
We do not use cookies to store financial information.
Why do we use cookies?
Cookies help us to:-
- Understand how visitors use our websites and collect anonymised statistics (e.g. the number of visitors to our websites) in order to improve performance
- Provide a more personalised online experience by displaying content that would be of interest to you
- Display relevant advertising to you when you visit websites other than ours
- Remember your details and preferences to avoid asking you for that information again
- Measure how cost-effective our advertising is
What information do we collect using cookies?
Examples of ways we may use cookies to record information include:-
- Areas of the website you visit and engage with, and the amount of time you spend on the website
- Whether you have visited our website before or whether you are a new visitor
- The country, region, city and/or borough associated with your IP address or device
- How you came to our website
- The type of device and browser you use
- Any error messages that you receive on the site
We may also measure the success of the emails we send so that we can understand what subject lines and stories people like the most.
Website cookie acceptance
By continuing to use our website, you consent to our use of cookies and those we use will be stored on your device unless you change your cookie preferences in your browser.
Our website may also contain hyperlinks to third party websites that are owned and operation by other organisations. These websites have their own privacy policies, including policies on their use of cookies, and it is important that you read them as they will govern the use of any personal information you submit or which is collected by cookies whilst you browse that website. We cannot accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of third party websites and your use of such websites is at your own risk.
Changing your cookie preferences
If you wish to reject or disable any cookies which are set by our websites, you can do this through your browser settings. The ¿Help¿ function within your browser should tell you how but for ease, here are links to show you how to change in cookie settings for various browsers:-
Please note that if you visit our website anonymously (i.e. you switch off cookies), we may still collect certain information from your browser, such as your IP address, for the purpose of protecting our website from malicious attacks.
You can find out more about cookies at www.allaboutcookies.org.