www.astonalumni.org (the “Website”)
GENERAL
Your privacy is important to us. This privacy policy is intended to give you confidence in the privacy and security of the personal information we obtain from you whether you upload information to this Website, download it, or are merely visiting.
Please note that we are not responsible for any use of your personal information you provide to third party websites that may be accessed via this Website. You will therefore need to review the privacy policy of any third party websites that you use.
COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
When you use this Website you may be asked for personally identifiable information such as your name, address, date of birth, email address and telephone number. By giving us such information you agree to our using it in the manner described in this policy.
You may withdraw your consent to our use of your personal information for this purpose at any time by emailing us at alumniinfo@aston.ac.uk and we will aim to process this request within 5 days of receipt of your withdrawal of consent.
Cookie information, pages you have requested and your IP address may also be recorded by us from your browser as set out in this Privacy Policy.
USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We may use your information to process your service requests, provide access to secure areas of the Website, to personalise your visit to the Website and to enable us to review, develop and continually improve the services we provide online. We also use this information to prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our Website and to enable third parties to carry out technical, logistical or other functions on our behalf.
Your data may be used by the University to send you publications, marketing literature and newsletters which we think may be of interest to you, for friend-finding, market research and promoting the benefits, services and opportunities involved in the University’s development and alumni relations programme. Your data may also be used to send you information on fund-raising programmes. As part of our fund-raising programmes, we may disclose your data to third party organisations in order to process the payment of fund pledges.
If you do not wish to continue to receive such information from the University or third parties, please e-mail alumniinfo@aston.ac.ukor alternatively when we send you an e-mail, follow the instructions at the end of the message explaining how you can opt-out of receiving any further information from us.DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
Any disclosure of personal information will be strictly controlled and made fully in accordance with current UK legislation, in particular the UK Data Protection Act 1998 (the Act).
The information you provide may be made available to any part of the University, our academic schools and administrative departments, recognized alumni groups and other clubs associated with Aston University. We will not disclose your personal information to any third party other than those acting in their capacity as an agent of the University or external contractors working on behalf of the Higher Educational Survey Agency (HESA) unless you have consented to such disclosure or where we are required to do so by law.
If you choose to make your data visible to other alumni by clicking the relevant check boxes in your profile then you are deemed to have consented to the disclosure of your data by the University to other users of the Website and to disclosure outside of the EEA. The University cannot be responsible for other parties’ use of the personal information which you make available to other users of the Website in this way. Please be careful about what personal information you disclose on any part of the Website.
We may provide information about you to third parties, our employees and agents in order to administer any accounts and services provided to you by the University. Any access to or use by third parties of personal information provided by you will only be to perform functions on our behalf related to purposes set out in this Privacy Policy and may not be used for any other purpose.
Should you breach our terms and conditions or any Website terms of use or if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, we may disclose your information to a relevant authority. This may include exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
TRANSFER OF YOUR DATA OUTSIDE OF THE EEA
As part of the services offered to you through this Website, the information you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside of the European Economic Area ("EEA"). These countries may not have similar data protection laws to the EEA. If we transfer your information outside of the EEA in this way, we will take steps to ensure that your privacy rights continue to be protected.
RIGHT TO ACCESS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
The Data Protection Act 1998 gives you the right to access information held about you. You can obtain access to your personal information held by us by completing a University Data Subject Access Request Formand submitting the Form with a cheque for £10 (to cover administration costs for collating this information), made payable to "Aston University", to:
Ms Jean Hasson,
Data Protection Officer,
Marketing and Communications,
Aston University
Aston Triangle
Birmingham
B4 7ET
If you have any questions about Aston University’s Data Protection Policy please write to our Data Protection Officer at the above address or e-mail j.hasson@aston.ac.uk. You may be asked to provide evidence of your identity before we provide such access.
We always endeavour to make sure that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date, if you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please write to us or e-mail us as soon as possible, at the above address. We will promptly correct any information found to be incorrect.
COOKIES
We may create and access cookies (a piece of information which is stored on your computer and allows us to identify if you have visited the site before) on your PC. Cookies cannot be executed as code or used to deliver a virus. Other servers cannot read them and personal information cannot be gathered from them. They are simply an identifier shared between you and us to allow us to improve the services we offer to you through our Website.
If you do not wish cookies to be placed on your PC, then they can be disabled in your web browser. The option to do so is normally found in your browser's "security settings" section. However, please note, permanently disabling cookies in your browser may hinder your use of our Website as well as other websites and interactive services.
SECURITY
All account information is password protected. Where appropriate we use industry standard SSL-encryption to protect data transmission. All security on our University websites is treated seriously and reviewed by our security & abuse team on a regular basis.
We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in connection with the collection, storage and disclosure of your information. Our security procedures mean that we may occasionally request proof of identity before we disclose personal information to you.
If you have any further concerns about security, please email the Data Protection Officer.
Wherever possible, the University sets security standards to prevent any unauthorised access to your personal data. However any information and personal data carried over the Internet and by e-mail is not secure and is liable to interception, loss, redirection and corruption by other people unless it is encrypted by you.
POLICY CHANGES
Changes in this policy will be posted on our Website. You are advised to check our Website regularly to view our most recent privacy policy.