Privacy policy

The PDA Society is a Charity (Registered Charity Number: 1165038).

Your privacy is important to us

To better protect your privacy, in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and General Data Protection Regulations, we provide this notice explaining our general information practices and the way your information is collected and used.  To make this notice easy to find and access it is available on all of our website pages, located at the bottom right hand corner of each page.

Links

Our website also contains links to other third party sites. If you click on a third party link, you will be directed to that third party’s site. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites and encourage you to read their privacy statements.

The Information We Collect

The PDA Society does not capture or store any personal information, other than that you submit using our online forms, your emails, your posts in our forum, your eLearning record in our training hub and cookies. The data captured is only used for the purposes for which it is submitted and is not shared with any third party (other than the Data Processors we use to help us manage our records/training and process orders/payments) without your permission. For information about how we use cookies please see our cookies policy below.

Use and storage of your personal information

The PDA Society Commit to:

  1. Only process information necessary to establish or maintain registration or support.
  2. Only process information necessary to provide or administer activities for people who are registered users of the organisation, have regular contact with it or who contact us for support.
  3. Only share this information with people and organisations outside of the PDA Society when this is necessary to carry out the organisation’s activities or when there is a legal reason to do so, for example, relating to the protection or safeguarding of you or another person’s safety.
  4. Only keep the information while the individual is a registered user, supporter or requires our support or for as long as necessary for the purposes of our support administration, and remove your personal information at your request.

If you use our online discussion forum we may use the information you post and the responses to compile aggregate statistics (e.g. number of registered users, numbers of individuals addressing specific issues, etc.), to assist us in research and development to supply to our partners. In these cases, all information will be completely anonymous.

We publish newsletters and occasionally operate online surveys, which you can select to receive from the PDA Society at the point of registration. We will never sell our members e-mail addresses.

If you use our training hub:

  1. When you enrol as a student or subscriber (“learner”) on our training hub or related courses, as part of the enrolling process, we collect the personal information you give us such as your name and email address.
  2. When you provide us with personal information to become a learner on our training hub, make a purchase, or participate in the course, you imply that you consent to our collecting it and using it for that specific reason only.
  3. If we ask for your personal information for a secondary reason, like marketing, we will either ask you directly for your expressed consent, or provide you with an opportunity to say no.
  4. We will only send you emails about your registration, your course content, your course progress or other updates relevant to your account. We may also use your email to inform you about changes to the course, survey you about your usage, or collect your opinion. By agreeing to our privacy policy you consent to the above.
  5. We may disclose your personal information if we are required by law to do so or if you violate our Terms and Conditions.
  6. Our courses and training hub are hosted by Thinkific Labs Inc. (“Thinkific”). They provide us with the online course creation platform that allow us to sell our product/services to you.
  7. Your data is stored through Thinkific’s data storage, databases and the general Thinkific application. They store your data on a secure server behind a firewall for as long as you keep your account. Please see Thinkific Privacy Policy for further information about how they process and protect your data.

Payments

If you make a purchase or donation on our website or shop site, we use a third party payment processor. Courses and event tickets purchased through our training hub and Eventbrite are also processed by a third party. Payments are encrypted. For more insight, you may also want to read:

Our Commitment to Data Security

To prevent unauthorised access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. As a user, you agree to any information you have entered above being stored in a database. While this information will not be disclosed to any third party without your consent the webmaster, administrator and moderators cannot be held responsible for any hacking attempt that may lead to the data being compromised.

We also use third party organisations (‘Data Processors’) to help us manage our records and process orders, donations and payments and we ensure that the Data Processors we use are fully compliant with all Data Protection legislation. For more insight, you may also want to read their privacy statements:

We also link from our website to the following third party fundraising platforms whose privacy statements are also detailed below:

Our Commitment to Safeguarding Children and Adults at Risk

All the information that we receive is treated confidentially, unless there are any concerns regarding safeguarding. Any concerns regarding safeguarding, in accordance with our safeguarding policy, would be forwarded to our Safeguarding Lead Person, to be dealt with in accordance with current legislation and guidelines.

How to Contact Us

Should you have other questions or concerns about these policies or to find out what information we hold about you please write to:

The PDA Society
PO Box 6080
SHEFFIELD
S12 9EW

or send us an email at info@pdasociety.org.uk.

Cookie policy

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or remembers your preferences when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website. Please visit: https://www.wikihow.com/Disable-Cookies to learn how to do this.

Cookies on our website

The PDA Society website uses cookies for the following purposes:

  • To store login and account information for user accounts.
  • To track visitor numbers and metrics.
  • To provide extra security against CRSF attacks.

Our website also uses:

  • Cookies set by Google that store information on how visitors use our website and provide analytics.
  • Cookies set by YouTube that provide video functionality and anonymous statistical data for embedded YouTube videos on our website. They also register and store user’s video preferences and data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen.

Changes to policies

We reserve the right to modify our policies at any time, so please review them frequently. Changes and clarifications will take effect immediately upon their posting on the website.

Last updated 10th February 2023.