Website Privacy Policy

We at Animal Aspirations (“Animal Aspirations”, “AA”, “we”, “us” and “our”) are highly committed to protecting our audience’s (young students, parents/guardians, teachers, etc.) privacy. We have prepared this Privacy Policy to describe our practices regarding the personal information (defined below) we collect from our Users through our website and any of our subscriptions/competitions, your rights to what information is processed about you, and how you can contact us about your information.

This Privacy Policy will apply whether you are a “Visitor” (meaning that you simply browse the website) or a “Subscriber” (meaning that you have applied for one of our competitions or subscription services). Subscribers may include students, parents, educators, and schools. Visitors and Subscribers are individually referred to as a “User” and collectively as “Users”, "you", and "your".

Via our website we can collect personal and anonymous data. “Personal data” is information that allows someone to identify or contact you. “Anonymous (non-personal) data” is information that is not associated with or linked to your personal information and does not, by itself, lead to the identification of individual persons.

PERSONAL DATA

The personal data that we may collect could include:

your name
address (only for competitions involving prizes we need to mail to you)
personal and/or parent/guardian email address
age/date of birth
gender
ethnicity (special category data)
educational/professional status

All of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you for one of the following reasons:

You’ve signed up to any of our subscription services (i.e. newsletter) and opted-in for data processing
If we have competitions where we require personal information for later contact
You’ve contacted us directly requesting to sign up for a subscription

We use the information that you have given us in order to

Send you content relevant to any subscriptions you have signed up for
To personally view the data provided to ensure that we are reaching our target audience
To contact you personally if you have participated in any of our competitions

We may share this information with

Royal Veterinary College’s (RVC) Widening Participation Team (WPT) if we feel you could benefit from or would enjoy some of the events / activities the WPT holds throughout the year. These could include summer schools, subject masterclasses, and RVC’s Night at the Vet College events.
More info at on RVC’s WPT: https://www.rvc.ac.uk/study/rvc-is-open-for-all/widening-participation/schools-outreach

ANONYMOUS/NON-PERSONAL DATA

We collect anonymous data through the use of ‘cookies’ (small bits of information sent to your computer) and internet protocol (IP) addresses. The data we receive through these methods is anonymous and will never be identified with or lead us back to any of our users. This anonymous data allows us to track our website analytics (via WIX and GoogleAnalytics) including but not limited to:

which areas of our website are visited the most
how many visitors we receive to the website
what regions are our users from
through which route users access our website.

This allows us to continually work towards improving our users’ online experience.

Our cookie banner prevents marketing, performance and analytics cookies to be placed by your site prior to visitor consent. But some external elements on our website may continue to load cookies. These elements includes:

Events Calendar
Our quizzes (from involve.me)

DATA STORAGE AND SECURITY

We at Animal Aspirations ensure that all personally and non-personally identifiable information that we receive via the Internet is secure against unauthorised access. This information is kept in a safe and secure system isolated from direct connection to the Internet. Our website is hosted on the Wix.com platform. Wix.com provides us with the online platform that allows us to provide services for and share our information with our users. User data may be stored through Wix.com’s data storage, databases and Wix applications behind a firewall.

We may also use an external data storage software (i.e. GoogleCloud) to securely store user data. If we utilize GoogleCloud, we will remove all personal data besides name and email from WIX. We keep your name and email on WIX so you can keep any subscription you may have. A copy of all your data, including personal data, will be exported to our GoogleCloud until you request for us to remove said data.

If you request for us to delete your information, we will do so by removing your name and email from the subscription database on WIX and from any external data storage software we use. What this means is that we will anonymise the data you have provided us, removing any link to you directly, but allowing us to still use the data to assess our audience.

By disclosing your information to Animal Aspirations via any of our competitions or available subscriptions, you agree to the collection, storage and processing of your personal information in the manner set out above.

If you have any queries regarding this privacy policy or would like to change, amend, or delete any personal information we collect, please contact us at animalaspirations@rvc.ac.uk.

GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION (GDPR)

The lawful basis we rely on for processing your information is your consent. You are able to remove your consent at any time. (More info on this at: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/lawful-basis-for-processing/)

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to object to processing - You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. Please contact us at animalaspirations@rvc.ac.uk if you wish to make a request.

How to complain

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us at animalaspirations@rvc.ac.uk.

You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

The ICO’s address: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk

Links to other websites

Our website contains links to other websites that are not operated or monitored by us. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to its website. We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third party sites or services. If you are worried about your data protection from these sites, we strongly advise that you review the privacy policies of the sites you decide to visit.

UPDATES TO PRIVACY POLICY

We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently. Changes and clarifications will take effect immediately upon their posting on the website. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you below that it has been updated, so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we use and/or disclose it.