Privacy Policy

#breakfreefromplastic (herewith referred to as BFFP) believes you have a fundamental right to privacy on the web, and we work to protect your security online. This policy applies to www.breakfreefromplastic.org; different specific web properties (e.g. campaign sites) may use the same or have site-specific privacy and cookies policies. We will always seek your approval for other use of your data if your consent is not covered by this policy.

Introductory Notes

This website privacy statement is designed to be published on BFFPs website.
This website privacy statement is designed to give general information, seeking to meet the requirements of the GDPR, to individuals whose personal data BFFP collects in their capacity as visitors to a BFFP website.
This document is not designed to be addressed to BFFP’s employees or other staff members or other individuals who deal with #breakfreefromplastic (i.e. other than as casual website visitors) in their personal capacity.

#breakfreefromplastic and data privacy

BFFP is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This privacy statement sets out the basis on which BFFP will process any personal information that we may collect about you as a visitor to the BFFP website or, as the case may be, otherwise provided to BFFP.

We therefore ask you to read this privacy statement carefully.

The information that we collect about you

We may collect and process the following information about you:

Information that you give us: This is information about you that you give to us by: (i) making use of our website and the options on our website (e.g. in the event you would sign a petition), (ii) subscribing to the receipt of updates by email, (iii) contacting us for information or help, (iv) signing your name on a list of signatures, (v) participating in BFFP campaigns, (vii) responding to any survey on this website, or (viii) providing information through third party websites or apps provided that you explicitly gave your consent to the applicability of this privacy statement through such third party website or app. It may include, for example, your name, address, email address or telephone number.
Information that our website and other systems collect about you:
- If you visit our website third parties (Google Analytics) will collect some information about you and your visit, such as your browser type and version and the pages on our site that you visit. Google Analytics will not collect the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your device to the internet. You can request Google to provide an extraction of your data related to BFFP website. This information can be used for statistical purposes and will help us improve our website.
- Our website may also download “cookies” to your device – this is described in our cookie statement (below).
- If you exchange emails, telephone conversations or other electronic communications (including comments on this website) with BFFP employees and other staff members or, as the case may be, electronic communication means on third party websites or apps, information technology systems will record details of those conversations, sometimes including their content.
Information that third parties collect about you on our website by performing actions: This is information about you that you give to third parties (such as Facebook, Google and Twitter) by making use of the social network sharing buttons and widgets available on our website.
Information that third parties collect about you on our website by browsing it: This is information about you recorded / tracked by third parties just by making use of the website itself, such as navigating from one page to another (this event will be tracked) or by viewing an embedded Facebook video (if you are logged into Facebook).

The use of your information we collect

We may use your information for the following purposes:

To make your actions known on our website and to third parties. For example, your name may appear together with your comments on our website. To inspire others to take action, we may also show your name and a summary of what you have just done on our website, for instance, if you sign a petition or make a donation. If you petition someone using our website – for example a government official or company CEO – then we may send your name and email address with your message to them;
To send you updates and alerts by email, mail, instant messaging, push notifications or telephone.

We will only process your personal information as necessary for the purposes described above. In doing so, we will consider the balance between your privacy and our interest in processing and refrain from processing if your privacy interest overrides our legitimate interest.

In exceptional circumstances we may also be required by law to disclose or otherwise process your personal information. We will tell you, when we ask you to provide information about yourself, if provision of the requested information is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation or, on the other hand, if it is purely voluntary and there will be no implications if you decline to provide the information. If you are uncertain as to BFFP’s need for information that we request from you, please contact the BFFP representative asking for the information, or contact us (see below), with your query.

Disclosure and international transfer of your information

We may disclose personal information about you where we have obtained your consent or where it is reasonably necessary for the various purposes set out above:

to service providers who host our website or other information technology systems or otherwise hold or process your information on our behalf, under at least the same level of strict conditions of confidentiality and security;
to judicial authorities or other public authorities, in case our legal or moral responsibility compels us to do so (e.g. if you express intent about performing a terrorist activity);
or litigation counterparties, in any country or territory, although only if we are legally required to do so and have no satisfactory basis or prospect to challenge disclosure.

These disclosures may involve transferring your personal information overseas. If you are dealing with us within the European Economic Area, you should be aware that this may include transfers to countries outside the European Economic Area, which do not have similarly strict data privacy laws.

Please contact us (see below) if you would like to know whether any such agreements are in place or, if so, to see a copy.

Retention and deletion of your information

BFFP intends to keep your personal information accurate and up-to-date. We will delete the information that we hold about you when we no longer need it.

We will retain your information for no longer than 2 years after our most recent communication with you, after which it will be deleted or anonymised, unless we have a legal obligation to retain it for a longer period. Contact us for more information.

Your rights

You may have a right of access to the personal information that we hold about you, and to some related information, under data protection law.

You can also require any inaccurate personal information to be corrected or deleted.
You can object to our use of your personal information for direct marketing purposes at any time and you may have the right to object to our processing of some or all of your personal information (and require them to be deleted) in some other circumstances.
In some circumstances, you may also have a “data portability” right to require us to transfer your personal data to you or to a new service provider.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us as set out below. We are obliged to request proof of identity before access to your personal information is given.

If you would like us to remove your information from our mailing list, you can click the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of any email we sent to you or contact us as set out below.

You can also lodge a complaint about our processing of your personal information with the body regulating data protection in your country (details are available here).

Security measures

We have implemented appropriate technical and organisational measures to secure personal data against loss or against any form of unlawful processing. Only employees who require to access information about supporters and website visitors to perform their work are granted access to your personal data.

Contact us

We welcome questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy statement and our processing of personal information.

Please contact us via our contact form.

Changes to this policy

Any changes we make to this privacy statement in the future will be posted to our website and also available if you contact Us as set out above.

Please check back frequently to see any changes.

Last updated: 24 February 2022

#breakfreefromplastic cookies policy

We want to ensure that you enjoy browsing our website. In order to enhance your experience and collect information about your use of our site, we place “cookies” onto your computer.

Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognises that cookie:

cookies allow our systems to recognise the user’s device and make any presettings immediately available
as soon as a user accesses the platform, a cookie is sent to the hard disk of the respective user’s computer

Cookies are useful because they:

allow a website to recognise a user’s device and to target the content displayed to the user’s interests
help us to improve our website offer you a better service more tailored to your requirements
enable us to recognise your device when you return to our website
store information about your favourite activities on the website, thereby allowing us to tailor our website to your individual interests. This may, for example, include advertising according to your personal interests and accelerate the rate at which we can deal with your queries

By using our website you agree that, unless you have set your computer’s browser to reject them, we can place the types of cookies set out below on your device and use that data in accordance with this policy.

You can find more information about cookies at: www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.eu, for a video about cookies check www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBR-xtJVq7E.

Types of cookies

There are two broad types of cookies – ‘first party cookies’ and ‘third party cookies’:

First party cookies are cookies that are served directly by the website operator to your computer, and are often used to recognise your computer when it revisits that site and to remember your preferences as you browse the site. Basically, these are our cookies.
Third party cookies are served by a service provider on behalf of the website operator, and can be used by the service provider to recognise your computer when you visit other websites. Third party cookies are most commonly used for website analytics or advertising purposes.

Use of Google Analytics

BFFP uses Google Analytics to gather visitors’ use of our website and analyse the data to help us maintain and improve the design of our website. Google Analytics generates statistical and other information about website use by means of cookies, which are stored on users’ computers.

Google Analytics cookies will only be applied when the “Performance” cookies consent is given. In case of no-consent, Google Analytics will still run and collect aggregated data. Should you not be willing to get the analytics cookies, please change your cookies settings above (‘change your cookies preferences’).

As mentioned before, Google Analytics cookies used in this website are _utma, _utmb, _utmc, _utmz, _ga and _gid – and they all collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, browser ClientID (to identify returning users, for example), where visitors come to the site from and the pages they visited. Here’s the privacy overview of Google Analytics, the Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites and here how to easily opt-out of Google Analytics cookies.

As of May 2018, Google Analytics introduced the Data Retention controls, giving organisations the ability to set the amount of time before user-level and event-level data stored by Google Analytics is automatically deleted from Analytics’ servers.

Such retention period applies to user-level and event-level data associated with cookies. For BFFP, the Data Retention control for Google Analytics is set to 26 months. Once again, Analytics will not collect the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your device to the internet.

Besides, it is important to mention that Google stores websites traffic information which have Google Analytics tracking code. Check Google’s privacy policy and how to opt-out of Google Analytics cookies.

You can install the “Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on” to prevent information about your visits to our website being sent to Google Analytics.

Use of social networks sharing buttons and widgets

Beside the customised HTML buttons we installed to allow you to share BFFP content on Facebook and Twitter, we may embed widgets from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Soundcloud and other social media on our website to provide an enhanced experience.

These social networking widgets come from web servers which may track your behaviour on our website and may combine this with other information about you originating from other websites. You can install a browser add-ons like “Privacy Badger” for Chrome or “Disconnect” for Chrome and Firefox to control some (the first) or disable them (the second).