Privacy

Privacy

Benevolent Friends Guardians & Trustees, a non-profit company registered in England (“We” and the “Company”) take the issue of privacy very seriously; and are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. It is our policy to take all necessary steps to ensure that Personal Information held by us is processed faithfully and lawfully in accordance with the requirements of all applicable privacy and data legislation that is enacted globally and within your jurisdiction.

About this Policy

This Policy (“Policy”) is an official Policy of the Company and in reference to the site www.benfriends.org (“Site”) and personal information (“Personal Information”), its use and privacy (“Privacy”). All our employees and data processors who have access to Personal Information are obliged to follow it. This Policy sets out how we will treat your personal information. If you have any concerns regarding this Policy, as a courtesy you should first contact us to express your specific concerns. If you are not satisfied then, you may freely choose to contact the appropriate privacy and data officials in your home jurisdiction.

Collection of information from site visits

When you or any non robot log onto our Site, as a vital part of our commitment to security and safety, we will automatically log certain information about how you are using the Site. This may include the URL that you came from, your IP address and the pages that you visited. Such information is both vital and integral to maintaining the highest level of security and integrity of the Site; and in helping mitigate malicious traffic or attempted intrusions.

Collection of information from registrations

When a real and physical person agrees to register as a guest or as a member, we will collect and store securely certain personal information such as name, email as well as mobile phone. Such information forms an essential foundation and personality to any guest or member registration number. Even if a real and physical person may cease to be a guest or member, the adherence to appropriate regulatory laws and competent management requires that such information is retained and accurately reflects the status of the current or previous member or guest.

Collection of information from subscriptions

We may offer e-mail newsletters and other subscriptions which can be registered for in isolation or alongside magazine offers. E-mail addresses submitted will be held in an independent database and used to send these regular newsletters. It is possible to unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time. Occasionally we will also send you featured products or services from our carefully selected partners, you can unsubscribe from such emails at any time and receive only newsletters.

Collection of information from surveys

We may on occasion run market research surveys, including but not limited to any annual guest, member and service surveys. Data submitted is provided voluntarily and is held anonymously and cannot be linked back to an individual, as it is used solely to produce general analysis of market trends on a grouped basis.

Separately, We may collect address details and e-mail details at the end of a survey as a separate process to enable free copies of material to be supplied or e-mail newsletters to be delivered.

Collection of information from competitions and offers

If you enter a competition, We may use your personal information to manage any competition entries you submit, validate such competition entries, and send you any prizes you may win.

If you sign up to receive magazine offers, We will use your personal information to send you the offer.

If you request information from an advertiser via our enquiry service the details needed to supply you with the information, your request will be provided to the advertiser.

Collection of information from aggregated statistics

We may share your personal data with a third-party auditing organisation so they can verify aggregated statistics about circulation and usage of our products or review our policies, processes and procedures for compliance with relevant standards. In such cases, we will alert you and ensure you can view their particular privacy and data policies.

No collection of information from cookies

We do not use cookies to manage your experience and to measure the use of our Site.

Where we store data and your information

We store data on secure servers and high security facilities as part of the technical administration of our Services, applications and website environments. Our secure facilities and servers may or may not be outside the country where you currently live. Therefore, Personal Information may be transferred to such locations in other countries in order to perform the Services. We will ensure that appropriate controls are in place to ensure your Personal Information is processed and retained in a secure manner which is equivalent to those required within the privacy and data usage laws.

If you choose to put Personal Information on publicly available parts of the Site, this will be accessible to persons in other countries that may not have data protection laws as comprehensive as those that exist in your country or region.

Information sharing and disclosure

We may share personal information with carefully selected third parties in order to maintain the Service and to other businesses within our Company for the purpose of informing you of other products and services. We will not sell, trade or rent your Personal Information to others unless you have given us your permission.

We do not accept the use of psuedonyms, nor the unauthorised use of other people’s name and identities as a means of creating a profile, or registering an account. We consider the unathorised use of other people’s name and identities for the purpose of creating an account or profile a form of identity theft; and if discovered you grant us permission to report such acts to the appropriate law enforcement authorities, including the suspension or termination of any such account or profile.

On our Site you are publicly identified by your chosen user name. If you choose your full name (in part or full) as your username, you have voluntarily disclosed that information to the wider community. If you provide information in your public profile, it will be made public to other guests and members, so please consider the details that you are sharing.

We regard our databases of guest and member information (that includes your Personal Information) as a valuable asset. Should we sell or transfer any of our business assets this may include the sale or transfer of such databases of information to third parties. In addition, such a transfer or sale may mean that your Personal Information is transferred to other countries than where you currently live.

Please note that we reserve the right to access and disclose individually identifiable information to comply with applicable laws and lawful government requests, to operate our systems properly and to protect both ourselves and our users.

Security

We take all reasonable care in the collection, storage, processing and disclosure of your personal data and have implemented internal security procedures to minimise the risk that unauthorised parties will be able to access and misuse the information. However, the Internet is an open medium and we cannot guarantee that any information you send to us by email or via our Site will not be tampered with or intercepted.

Children’s information

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Your rights

Subject to user and request verification and the pre-payment of any processing fees, you have the following rights (unless exemptions apply), that can be exercised by contacting us via the Site Contact form, being the right:-

  • to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes; and
  • to request a report of personal information held about you and to obtain a copy of it; and
  • to prevent any processing of a record of personal data that is causing or is likely to cause unwarranted and substantial damage or distress to you or another individual; and
  • to obtain the rectification or completion of records of personal data which are inaccurate or incomplete; and
  • to restrict or object to the processing of your personal data and to request its erasure under certain circumstances. We will not be able to erase personal data where we have a legal obligation to retain such data; and
  • in certain circumstances, to receive your personal data, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly-used and machine readable format and the right to transmit that data to another data controller without hindrance, or to have that personal data transmitted to another data controller, where technically feasible; and
  • to lodge a complaint about the way in which your personal data is being shared with a supervisory authority.

If you have any queries concerning your Personal Information or this Policy, please contact us using the Contact forms on this site.

[Updated as at: January 1, 2022]