The Rivers Trust takes your privacy very seriously and is committed to protecting your privacy online. All reasonable endeavours have been used to make sure that the content and accuracy of our communications with you are consistent with normally accepted standards and practices.

We aim to safeguard our users’ privacy whilst providing a personalised and valuable service. Collecting personal information is necessary if we are to satisfy the expectations and requirements of our users, e.g. by communicating with them and providing an interactive service.

Transmitting information over the internet is generally not completely secure, and we can’t always guarantee the security of your data. Where possible, we have procedures and security features in place to try and keep your data secure once we receive it, but any data you transmit is at your own risk.

The types of data we will collect are:

Information about how you use the website, such as IP address (the location of the computer on the internet), pages accessed and files downloaded. This will help us to determine how many people use our sites, how often you visit, and which pages you like the most. We don’t use this information to identify you, such as where you live.
Personal information, such as name, postal address, telephone number, e-mail address, information about your interests and hobbies will only be collected in connection with specific activities and campaigns, such as questionnaire registration, citizen science initiatives, newsletter sign-ups and feedback forms that have been collected with your consent. The information is either needed to fulfil your request or to enable us to provide you with a more personalised service by analysing or reviewing the information that you provide to ensure that we give you access to or send you the information that you are interested in.
User data collected by Google Analytics via cookies. The information gathered is not personally identifiable. It is used to provide us with an overview of the type of users visiting our website. To opt out, please visit this site.

How do we use this information?

Any personal data relating to you will be used and recorded by us in accordance with current data protection legislation and this Privacy Policy. We will use the information you provide to:

Fulfil your requests, for example entering data for questionnaires, participation in campaigns and provision of information.
Provide a personalised service to you when you visit our websites e.g. by customising the content and or layout of our pages for each individual user.
Record any contact we have with you;
Prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our websites and enable third parties to carry out technical, logistical or other functions on our behalf;
In aggregate (and therefore anonymously) to profile your use of the websites and carry out research on our users’ demographics, interests and behaviour to help us gain a better understanding of how our users navigate and use the websites, and to enable us to improve our service to you; and
Provide you with information which we think may be of interest to you, as explained below.

We collect data in real time in order to send you operational assistance emails in case your transaction is not completed.

When submitting your personal information, you will be given the option not to be included in mailings from The Rivers Trust (whether by post, e-mail or other electronic messaging, telephone or fax). If you do agree to receive this information and later decide that you no longer wish to be contacted, you can let us know by e-mailing: [email protected].

If we contact you by email or text message, each time you receive a message you will also have the option to decline to receive further information from us in that manner.

We may use other companies to provide services on our behalf, including sending postal mail, e-mails and text messages and analysing data. We will only provide those companies with the information they need to deliver the service and they are prohibited from using that information for any other purpose. We require all such companies to treat your personal information as fully confidential and to fully comply with all applicable UK Data Protection and consumer legislation.

We may disclose aggregate statistics about our site visitors to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers and other reputable third parties and for other lawful purposes, but these statistics will include no personally identifying information. We will use Google Analytics to provide this information.

We may disclose personal information if we receive a complaint about any content you have posted or transmitted to or from our site, if required to do so by law or if we believe that such action is necessary to protect and defend the rights, property or personal safety of The Rivers Trust, its site or its visitors.

Except as indicated above we will not use or transfer this data to any third parties without your prior permission.