This Privacy Notice describes how Advance HE will collect, generate and use personal information about you when you use the My Advance HE Portal (‘My Advance HE’). For the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018 Advance HE is a Data Controller, which means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use the personal information we collect or generate about you. We are required under the data protection legislation applicable in the UK to notify you of the information contained in this statement.
Who we are
Advance HE is a company limited by guarantee incorporated in England and Wales under company number 4931031, and registered as a charity in England under charity number 1101607 and in Scotland under charity number SC043946, with its registered office at Innovation Way, York Science Park, York YO10 5BR. We can be contacted by post, by email at enquiries@advance-he.ac.uk or by phone on 01904 717500. For data protection or privacy queries, please contact us at data.protection@advance-he.ac.uk or in writing addressed for the attention of the Data Protection Officer.
Information we may collect from you
We may collect and process the following data about you:
- Information that you provide when you complete forms on My Advance HE at www.my.advance-he.ac.uk. This includes mandatory and optional information you provide when registering, such as your name, date of birth and institution. It also includes information you provide when you update your profile or contact preferences, sign up to Advance HE services or apply for Fellowship.
- We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with our system.
- If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.
- We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.
- Details of transactions you carry out through My Advance HE and of the fulfilment of your orders.
- Details of your visits to My Advance HE including, but not limited to: traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, whether this is required for our own billing purposes or otherwise and the resources that you access.
What we may use your data for
- Customer care in relation to My Advance HE or any other Advance HE services you use
- To create an individual customer profile. Your customer profile includes data you have provided to Advance HE and data which is generated by your use of Advance HE services, for example contact details, preferences, Advance HE accreditations, purchases and booking and attendance history.
- Administration of your profile or account, including confirming your identity when dealing with lost password requests.
- Transmission of your data to suppliers of Advance HE services and we may share your personal data between suppliers of Advance HE services where relevant
- To ensure that content from My Advance HE is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer
- To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us
- To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us
- To notify you about changes to our service
- To use information for reporting purposes, including our internal reporting and reporting to your institution where they are an Advance HE Member institution
- We may sometimes be obliged to disclose your personal information by law such as by a regulator with appropriate power, or court order. Note in particular that information held by or for public bodies can be subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Automated processing of data
For information specifically on cookies and tracking on our website, please see our Cookie Policy. When you first visit our website, you will be presented with a cookie banner which allows you to make an informed choice about which types of cookies to accept on your device. You can also stop tracking at any time by using private browsing mode.
When you interact with us, for example by booking onto a programme or event, submitting an application for accreditation, completing a web form, downloading content from our website or opening an email we have sent you, we may keep a record of this information on our systems and use it to determine your interests. We automatically generate data from certain interactions which allows us to tailor our communications so that they are relevant to you and assist you in accessing the information and products that interest you. In addition, if you have consented to tracking cookies, some of your past browsing history on our site will also be available to help us more effectively engage with you.
We also use these sources of information to improve our site, services and products and assess our marketing performance. For example, if you have consented to email marketing, information is collected about when and if the email was opened and which links were clicked. This information is used to assess the engagement and success of an email campaign. You can unsubscribe from our mailings at any time by updating your contact preferences here, from your preferences page in My Advance HE Portal, or by clicking on the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the end an email you have received.
Transfers of your personal data
In some circumstances the data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (‘EEA’). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers, for purposes including but not limited to the fulfilment of your order, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storage or processing. Advance HE comply with the applicable data protection laws and take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Notice.
How we will protect your personal information
We are committed to holding your personal information securely.
Where personal information is held electronically by Advance HE, it is held on a computer system that is owned and controlled by us or such other third party appointed by us.
We may store your details in both paper and electronic format. Paper copies are held locally at our offices or securely by our staff or contractors. Sometimes we will make electronic copies by scanning or typing up information from paper documents, which are then stored on our computer system.
All the information that you provide to us will be transmitted to and stored on our secure servers or the servers of such other third party who we may appoint from time to time to store information.
You are responsible for keeping your My Advance HE password, and any other passwords you may have to access Advance HE sites and services, confidential. We ask you not to share your passwords with anyone.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any such transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use our high standard of security procedures and measures to protect against unauthorised access.
How long we will retain your data for
We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for (see the section ‘What we may use your data for’ above). To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider:
- the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data;
- the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data; and
- the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
Advance HE ensure that our suppliers and selected third parties with whom we share your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Notice will delete your personal information when they no longer require it.
Links to other sites
The My Advance HE Portal may, from time to time, contain links to other websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these will have their own privacy policies and that Advance HE do not accept any responsibility or liability for their use of any personal information you submit to them. Please check their policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.
Your duty to inform us of changes
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your relationship with us.
Your data rights
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
- Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a ‘subject access request’). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
- Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
- Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
- Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
- Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
- Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
If you want to make any of the requests outlined above, please contact our Data Protection Officer at data.protection@advance-he.ac.uk or in writing.
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information or exercise any of the other rights in relation to your data. However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.
Note that we may request specific information from you to enable us to confirm your identity and verify you have the right to access, or exercise any other rights in relation to, the information. This is a security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person is unauthorised to receive it.
If you have any concerns about Advance HE’s handing of your personal data, please let us know in the first instance and we will do our best to resolve the issue. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. For more information, please see https://ico.org.uk/.