Privacy statement

This statement (together with our terms and conditions and any other documents referred to on it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. By visiting www.concern.net and all sub-domains you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this statement.

Concern is committed to protecting your personal data and will comply with all applicable legislation including the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003.

For the purposes of GDPR, the data controller is Concern as defined above and having the address as defined above.

Our site and subdomains may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

You may give us personal data about you, when you enquire about our activities, fill in forms on our site www.concern.net (our site) or correspond with us by phone, e-mail or otherwise provide us with personal data.

This includes, but is not limited to, information you provide when you share information via websites which we manage. The information you give us may include your first name, surname, postal address, e-mail address, phone number, date of birth, financial and credit card and debit card information, your personal preferences about being contacted, your comments about our services and your photograph.

With regard to each of your visits to our sites, we may automatically collect the following information:

• Technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform
• Information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time); products you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page and any phone number used to call our customer service number

We are also working closely with third parties (including, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, data analytics service providers, search information providers) and may receive information about you from them. All such processing will be done in compliance with GDPR.

Our websites and sub-domains use cookies and similar technologies to: provide users with the best possible digital experience; improve our website’s functionality and security; understand more about who visits our websites, where they come from, and how they donate; and to assist us in spreading news about Concern’s work through digital marketing activities. 

Please visit our Cookie Policy to find out more about cookies and similar technologies. You can find a detailed list of all cookies placed on devices via our website, and a list of vendors placing those cookies including links to their privacy statements, in the Cookie Declaration on the cookie policy page.

• Manage your cookie preferences

We will use your personal data for a number of operational purposes, including, but not limited to:

• Carrying out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us and to provide you with the information and services that you request from us
• Providing you with information about other opportunities to support Concern where you do not object to receiving such information
• Creating an account for you if you register with us as a supporter or if you wish to receive information about our activities
• Furthering our charitable aims, including for fundraising activities, where you agree to receive such information
• Providing you, or permitting selected third parties to provide you, with information about goods or services we feel may interest you

Depending on the process we are conducting on your personal data, Concern shall rely on specific legal bases for such processing. For example, we may rely on your consent, on contractual obligations, fulfilling certain legal obligations we may have or in our legitimate commercial interests which will not infringe your rights and freedoms. Where processing is based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent. Concern will retain your data for specified periods of time depending on the nature and type of processing. Once these retention periods have expired, Concern undertakes to anonymise, destroy or delete your personal data.

Concern does not carry out automatic decision-making but we systematically analyse our databases and the information that we hold about you, in order to improve the efficiency, cost effectiveness and relevance of our communication with you (profiling), you will be informed about this as soon as possible, but at the latest when we contact you as a result of such profiling by reference to this privacy statement.

We may sometimes use geo-demographic and/or other personal information which may include identification of individuals’ capacity to give, through a process called ‘wealth screening’, using publically available information sources. We may also carry out our own research into our supporters, again using publically available information or information that you provide us with. This allows us to tailor our fundraising and marketing activities to make them as appropriate as possible for our supporters and reflect their interests as closely as possible.

If you would prefer us not to process your personal data for the purpose of wealth screening, we will respect your wishes.

If you do not wish to be subject to such profiling or wealth screening or wish to update your contact preferences, please call our donor support team on 01 417 7777, who will happily address your request or email preferences@concern.net.

We may share your personal information with any member of our Group of organisations, which means our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in the Companies Act 2014.

We may share your information with selected third parties including:

• Business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with them or you
• Advertisers and advertising networks that require the data to select and serve relevant adverts to you and others.  We do not disclose information about identifiable individuals to our advertisers, but we may provide them with anonymised, aggregated information about our users
• Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site

We may disclose your personal information to third parties in the following circumstances:

• In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets
• If any Concern entity or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets
• If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms and conditions and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of any of the Concern entities, our customers, our service recipients or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of national security, fraud protection and credit risk reduction
• Where we engage the services of third parties, such services are covered by an appropriate contract, and any data acquired in the course of such services is processed in compliance with the GDPR

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area ("EEA"). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. Where we transfer, store or otherwise process personal data outside the EEA we will ensure appropriate safeguards, contractual or otherwise, are in place and are in compliance with applicable data protection law. By submitting your personal data for such purposes, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. Concern will take all reasonable steps necessary to ensure that your personal data is processed securely and in accordance with this Privacy Statement.

All information you provide to us is stored on secure servers. Any payment transactions will be encrypted using SSL technology. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

Unfortunately, subject to the previous paragraphs, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted via our site; any transmission is ultimately at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access to, or unlawful processing or disclosure of, such data.

You have rights under Irish Data Protection legislation, with regard to our processing of your data. You can exercise these rights at any time by contacting us via email at dpo@concern.net or in writing at: The Data Protection Officer, Concern Worldwide, 52/55 Lower Camden Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.

You have the right to access personal data we hold which relates to you, including how we acquired such data, and the purposes for which it is being used. This right requires that you will be given a copy of your personal data which you may have supplied to us via the Site or in other correspondence and interactions.

To exercise this right, you must make your request in writing, posting it to our address as specified below and including with the request, a copy of your passport and a copy of a utility bill which will verify your address. No fee is required for this service. A request will be dealt with as soon as possible and we will respond to your request within one month from the date on which your request was received.

You have the right to have inaccurate personal data corrected. If you discover that we hold inaccurate personal data about you, you have a right to instruct us to correct that information. Such an instruction must be in writing and must contain evidence of the correct information. We will respond as soon as possible, and in any event within one month from the date on which your instructions are received.

Furthermore, we will share your corrective instructions with any organisation with whom the incorrect information has been shared in the 12 months prior to the date of your instructions.

In certain circumstances, you have the ‘Right to be Forgotten’. This means that you can request that Concern removes any and all references to you from our records and systems. We will comply with all such requests in a timely manner, as required by the Data Protection Regulation, unless other operational or legal obligations require us to retain such data for a particular purpose or period of time.

You have the right, at all times, to restrict or object to processing of your personal data which you find intrusive, excessive or unwarranted. Concern will respect your right to do so, but may need to continue such processing where required do to so by law, or within the terms of an existing contractual arrangement.

Where technically feasible and appropriate you have the right to data portability.

If you feel your personal data has been processed inappropriately, please let us know and we will do everything we can to rectify the situation. You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Irish Office of the Data Protection Commissioner if you feel your rights or freedoms have been infringed upon.

Any changes we may make to our privacy statement in the future will be posted on this page. Please check this Privacy Statement occasionally to see any updates or changes to our privacy statement.

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy statement are welcomed and should be addressed to: The Data Protection Officer, Concern Worldwide, 52/55 Lower Camden Street, Dublin 2, Ireland or DPO@concern.net or call 01 417 7700.

This page was last updated on 6 October 2020.