Privacy Policy

16/01/2024

For the purposes of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (“GDPR”), SAFETY4SEA (“SAFETY4SEA”, “we”, “us”) is a data controller.

SAFETY4SEA respects individual privacy and values the confidence of its users, customers, employees, business partners and others. Not only does SAFETY4SEA strive to collect, use and disclose personal information in a manner consistent with the laws of the countries in which it does business, it also has a tradition of upholding the highest ethical standards in its business practices.

SAFETY4SEA takes seriously the issue of safeguarding your privacy online. This Policy applies to the website owned and operated by SAFETY4SEA: seafit.safety4sea.com (the “Website”). This Policy describes how SAFETY4SEA collects and uses the personal information you provide on the Website and your options regarding the ways in which your personal information is used.

 

1. How SAFETY4SEA Collects Personal Information

SAFETY4SEA collects personal information directly in the following ways:

  • When users sign petitions
  • When users subscribe to email mailing lists
  • When users contact SAFETY4SEA via email or phone

SAFETY4SEA collects personal information indirectly in the following ways:

  • When users “follow” or interact with SAFETY4SEA representatives on third-party websites such as social media platforms

SAFETY4SEA collects information when it is available from external publicly available sources.
For example, depending on your privacy settings for social media services, we may access information from those accounts or services.

SAFETY4SEA also automatically collects the following types of your personal information when you visit the Website:

  • technical information, including the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your device to the internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions and operating systems and platforms.
  • Information about your visit to the Website, including the uniform resource locator (URL) clickstream to, through and from the website (including date and time), services you viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, referral sources, page interaction information (such as scrolling and clicks) and methods used to browse away from the page.

In general, we may combine your personal information from these different sources for the purposes set out in this Policy.

 

2. Types of Personal Information SAFETY4SEA uses

  • Name and contact information: position and organization, nationality, rank, email, age group address (for petition signers and survey participants)
  • Email subscription preferences
  • Web browser and browsing data: browser type, device type, IP address, referral source, length of website visit, number of page views
  • Interest information expressed by the site sections and services used by website users.

Special categories of personal information

The GDPR recognises certain categories of personal information as sensitive and therefore requiring more protection, for example: information about your health, ethnicity or political opinions. SAFETY4SEA does not collect these special categories of personal data.

 

3. Why SAFETY4SEA Collects Personal Information

Your personal information, however provided to us or obtained by us, will be used for the purposes specified in this Policy. In particular, we may use your personal information:

  • To provide you with services, products or information you have requested (for example to sign petitions or participate in surveys);
  • To enable SAFETY4SEA to send website users information about relevant surveys, services and/or any other information which we consider may be of interest (where appropriate, such contact would only be made with users’ consent);
  • To improve website users’ experience, for example by personalizing the presentation of information;
  • To enable analysis, targeting, and segmentation of the website audience in order to develop business strategy and improve communications efficiency;
  • To conduct research into the impact of SAFETY4SEA’s efforts;
  • To investigate and respond to user requests and inquiries (and communicate with users in general);
  • To establish, defend or enforce legal claims;
  • For the purposes of network and system security and performance;
  • For the prevention of fraud; and/or
  • To enable publication of news related to SAFETY4SEA, where allowed by applicable law or with users’ consent where required.

 

4. Communications for marketing or promotional purposes

We may use your contact details to provide you with information about our services, which we consider may be of interest to you (for example, updates about a petition you previously signed, information about petitions relating to similar campaigns, or information about other ways in which you can assist one of our campaigns).

Where we do this via email, we will not do so without your prior consent (unless allowed to do so via applicable law).

Where you have provided us with your consent previously but do not wish to be contacted by us about our services in the future, please let us know by email at [email protected]. You can also opt out of receiving emails from SAFETY4SEA at any time by clicking the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of our emails.

 

5. Lawful bases for Processing Personal Information

The GDPR requires us to rely on one or more lawful bases to use your personal information. We consider the grounds listed below to be relevant:

  • Where you have provided your consent for us to use your personal information in a certain way (for example, we will ask for your consent to use your personal information to send you promotional / marketing material).
  • Where necessary so that we can comply with a legal obligation to which we are subject (for example, when we are obliged to share your personal information with regulatory bodies which govern our work and services, or when we are obliged to share information with law enforcement agencies).

 

6. Your rights and how to exercise them

Where we rely on you consent to use your personal information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This includes the right to ask us to stop using your personal information for marketing purposes or to unsubscribe from our email list at any time. You also have the following rights:

  • Right of access: you can write to us to ask for confirmation of what personal information we hold on you and to request a copy of that personal information. Provided we are satisfied that you are entitled to see the personal information requested and we have successfully confirmed your identity, we will provide you with your personal information subject to any exemptions that apply.
  • Right of erasure: at your request we will delete your personal information from our records as far as we are required to do so. In many causes we would propose to suppress further communications with you, rather than delete it.
  • Right of rectification: if you believe our records of your personal information are inaccurate, you have the right to ask for those records to be updated. You can also ask us to check the personal information we hold about you if you are unsure whether it is accurate / up to date.
  • Right to restrict processing: you have the right to ask for processing of your personal information to be restricted if there is disagreement about its accuracy or legitimate usage.
  • Right to object: you have the right to object to processing where we are (i) using your personal information for direct marketing or (ii) using your information for statistical purposes.
  • Right to data portability: to the extent required by the GDPR, where we are processing your personal information (that you have provided to us) either (i) by relying on your consent or (ii) because such processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are party or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract, and in either case we are processing using automated means (i.e. with no human involvement), you may ask us to provide the personal information to you – or another service provider – in a machine-readable format.
  • Rights related to automated decision-making: you have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing of your personal information which produces legal or similarly significant effects on you, unless such a decision (i) is necessary to enter into/perform a contract between you and us/another organisation, (ii) is authorised by EU or Member State law to which SAFETY4SEA is subject (as long as that law offers you sufficient protection); or (iii) is based on your explicit consent.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using our Contact Form or contact us via the details contained in section 11 below.

Please note that some of these rights only apply in limited circumstances. For more information, we suggest that you contact us using the details in section 11 below. We may ask you for additional information to confirm your identity and for security purposes, before disclosing personal information requested to you.

You are further entitled to make a complaint about us or the way we have processed your personal information to the data protection supervisory authority in your home country.

 

7. Will we share your personal information?

In general, we may disclose your personal information to selected third parties in order to achieve the purposes set out in this Policy. Please note that, where required under applicable data protection law, we will not do so without your consent.

Non-exhaustively, those parties may include:

  • Law enforcement agencies and regulatory authorities (where legally obligated)
  • Professional service providers such as accountants, auditors and lawyers
  • Analytics and search engine providers

Petition signers’ provided information, such as name, and limited demographic information (nationality) are NOT published on the petition.

SAFETY4SEA reserves the right to share personal data if necessary for the purpose of merging with or partnering with other organizations(s).

Other than as described here, SAFETY4SEA would only share personal data with the informed consent of our website users and members.

 

8. Security/storage of and access to your personal information

SAFETY4SEA is committed to keeping your personal information safe and secure and we have appropriate and proportionate security policies and organisational and technical measures in place to help protect your information.

This includes corporate policies and staff training regarding how your personal information should be handled, as well as physical security, encryption, and network security for IT infrastructure. Your personal information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff.

 

9. How long will we retain your personal information?

In general, unless still required in connection with the purpose(s) for which it was collected and/or processed, we remove your personal information from our records six years after the date it was collected. However, if before that date (i) your personal information is no longer required in connection with such purpose(s), (ii) we are no longer lawfully entitled to process it or (iii) you validly exercise your right of erasure (please see section 6 above), we will remove it from our records at the relevant time.

Please note that, if you request to receive no further contact from us, we will keep some basic information about you on our suppression list in order to comply with your request and avoid sending you unwanted materials in the future.

 

10. Links and third parties

We may link our website directly to other sites. This Policy does not cover external websites and we are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those sites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any external websites you visit via links on our website.

 

11. How to contact us

If you have questions or concerns about this Policy or about the way in which SAFETY4SEA processes your personal information, please contact us by email: [email protected].

 

12. Cookie policy

SAFETY4SEA uses web “cookies” and similar technologies to track users’ movements around the Websites, and for other features and services.

 

13. Obligatory vs Voluntary Participation

Providing personal information to us which we have requested from you is voluntary. However, website users who do not provide data will not be able to use many of the services offered.

 

14. Changes to this Policy

SAFETY4SEA reserves the right to change the Policy, but will notify users of such changes through email and/or by posting a notice on the site. In the event of any material change, this notification will be prior to that change becoming effective. If the change involves the use of a user’s personally identifiable information then the notice to users will contain directions on how users can opt-out of the change.