Privacy policy

From the 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) replaces the Data Protection Act 1998, giving you as an individual more rights in relation to the personal data we as an organisation may hold about you.

Your privacy is important to the British Lingual Orthodontic Society (“we/us/BLOS”) so we’ve developed a Privacy Policy (together with our Membership Terms and any other documents referred to in it) that covers how we collect, use, disclose, transfer, and store your information. We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy applies to our website at www.blos.co.uk (“the Website”) and describes the type of information that we may collect from you (“you/your”) whether you are a visitor to our Website, a registered Member, supplier and any other people that we may contact through the use of our services (“Services”), or the use of our Website, how that information may be used or disclosed by us and the safeguards we use to protect it.

We have drafted this Privacy Policy to be as clear and concise as possible. Please read it carefully to understand our policies regarding your information and how we will treat it. By using or accessing our Website, you agree to the collection, use and disclosure of information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy was last updated on 25 May 2018 to add new provisions to the policy applicable regarding GDPR. Please check back regularly to keep informed of updates to this Privacy Policy.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. Your acceptance of our Privacy Policy is deemed to occur upon your first use of our Website. If you do not accept and agree with this Privacy Policy, you must stop using our Website immediately.

If you have any comments on this Privacy Policy, please email them to contact@blos.co.uk.

Who are we?

Here are the details that we are required to give to you in accordance with Data Protection Legislation (please note this means the Data Protection Act up to and including 24 May 2018 and from 25 May 2018 and onwards the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and any other applicable law which relates to the protection of individuals rights with regard to the processing of personal data):

Our Website address is: www.blos.co.uk

Our full name is: British Lingual Orthodontic Society

Our trading office is: c/o British Orthodontic Society, 12 Bridewell Place, London EC4V 6AP

What we collect

We may collect, use, transfer and process the following data about you when you use our Website or contact us via our Website:

• Information you put into forms on our Website at any time. This includes information provided at the time of registering to use our Website, to enable us to contact you, subscribing to our Services or requesting further services.
• Requests that marketing material be sent to you.
• Information you may provide to us when you contact us by email, phone or otherwise.
• Questions, queries or feedback you might leave on our Website.
• Your email address and subscription preferences when you sign up to our email alerts.
• How you use our emails, for example whether you open them and which links you click on, and your IP address.
• Details of which version of web browser you used as well as information on how you use the site, by using cookies and page tagging techniques.
• Financial and transactional data. We do not accept payments directly as these are paid securely via the British Orthodontic Society who collects such payments on our behalf. Your acceptance of this Privacy Policy is your agreement to such an arrangement.

We may also ask for your information when you report a problem with our Website or provide other feedback and we will collect the following data to enable us to provide our Services to you:

• A record of any correspondence between us.
• Details of your visits to our Website and the resources you use.
• Any information that you upload to our Website and any other form of interaction data you may provide.
• Information about your computer (e.g. your IP address, browser, operating system etc) for system administration and to report aggregate information to our advertisers. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns and does not identify any individual.

We do not share any personal data with any third parties without your consent.

This information helps us to:

• Send you our newsletters from time to time if you have requested this information.
• Ensure that content from our Website is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your device.
• Provide you with information, products or Services that you request from us or with your consent, those Services which we feel may interest you.
• Take steps at the request of you prior to entering into a contract or to carry out our contractual obligations and provide you with the Services under the terms of our contractual arrangement with you.
• Allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so.
• Notify you about changes to our Services.
• Contact you electronically about similar Services to those previously provided to you.
• With your prior consent, tell you about other services that might interest you.
• Allow selected third parties such as our clients to contact you directly. We will ask for your consent each time, before passing on your details, and will not do so unless your consent is given.

This information can be viewed by authorised people in, and authorised agents of, BLOS to:

• Improve the site by monitoring how you use it.
• Gather feedback to improve our services, for example our email alerts.
• Respond to any feedback you send us.

If you do want to be contacted for marketing purposes, please opt in to the relevant box that you will find on screen when we collect your data.

Please note, that if you no longer wish for us to process your personal data for marketing purposes, you can contact us at contact@blos.co.uk at any time, and we will update our systems. However, in doing so you acknowledge that this may limit the Services we can provide to you. In some cases, the collection and retention of personal data may be a statutory or contractual requirement.

Our lawful basis

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
• Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

Generally we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to our marketing communications or sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message.

As already indicated above, with your permission and/or where permitted by law, we may also use your data for marketing purposes which may lead to us contacting you by email and/or telephone with information, news and offers on our Services. We agree that we will not do anything that you have not agreed to under this Privacy Policy, and we will not send you any unsolicited marketing or spam. We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that we fully protect your rights and comply with our obligations under the GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, as amended in 2004, 2011 and 2015.

Cookies

We use cookies to distinguish users and improve our Website. Please look at our Cookies Policy for more cookie information.

Where your information is stored

We store your information, whenever possible, on secure servers in the European Economic Area (EEA) (except for data that we gather when you sign up to our email alerts).

By giving us your personal data, you agree to this arrangement. Where such processing takes place, appropriate controls, such as the adoption of agreements containing appropriate standard clauses are in place to ensure that your information is protected to the same standard as if it were in the UK. We will do what we reasonably can to keep your data secure, and up to date and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

When you sign up to our email alerts

We use MailChimp for our email alerts.

MailChimp has staff based outside the EEA, and stores your data in the US. MailChimp is certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield framework. When you sign up to our email alerts, you agree to your personal data being stored in this way.

As a subscriber to our email alerts, we may contact you from time to time to ask for your feedback on how to improve our email alert service.

We will continue to send you email newsletters and alerts until you tell us not to or use the unsubscribe option on any of our emails.

Keeping your information secure

Data security is of great importance to us, and to protect your data we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure data collected through our Website. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have procedures and security features in place to keep your information secure once we receive it. This is detailed in our Data Protection Policy.

However, notwithstanding the security measures that we take, it is important to remember that the transmission of data via the internet may not be completely secure and that you are advised to take suitable precautions when transmitting to us any personal data via the internet and you take the risk that any sending of that data turns out to be not secure despite our efforts.

Disclosing your information

We may pass on your personal information if we have a legal obligation to do so, or if we have to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements. This may include disclosing to other companies and organisations in connection with fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

We are allowed to disclose your information in the following cases:

• If we want to sell our business, or our company, we can disclose it to the potential buyer.
• If we want to sell or buy any business, or assets, we can disclose your personal data to the potential buyer or seller of such business or assets.
• We can disclose it to other businesses in our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiary as defined in Section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006.
• We can disclose it if we have a legal obligation to do so, or in order to protect other people’s property, safety or rights.
• In connection with legal proceedings (including prospective proceedings).
• In order to establish or defend our legal rights.
• We can exchange information with others to protect against fraud or credit risks.

In addition, we may engage third parties to assist us in carrying out certain functions on our behalf such as business partners, suppliers, sub-contractors etc. These include companies to assist with financial services, marketing, search engine facilities, advertising and technology services. We only share the appropriate level of personal data to enable the third party to provide their services. Where your data is required to be shared we will take all reasonable steps to ensure your data is handled safely and securely and in accordance with our and the third party’s obligations under Data Protection Legislation.

Selected third parties include:

• British Orthodontic Society
• Simply Website Support
• Google
• MailChimp
• Vimeo
• Eventbrite
• Marketing consultants

This is a list of the main third parties with whom we share your personal data. If you would like a full list of third parties who process your data, and their contact details, please email contact@blos.co.uk.

Your rights

You have a number of rights under the Data Protection Legislation including the following:

• The right to request a copy of the information we hold on you. When you request this information, this is known as a Subject Access request (SAR). In most cases, this will be free of charge however in limited circumstances we may apply an administration charge. For example, where repeated requests are made.
• The right to have personal data we hold about you transferred securely to another service provider in an electronic form.
• The right to have inaccurate personal data corrected.
• The right to have any out of date personal data deleted once there’s no business need or legal requirement for us to hold it.
• The right to object or restrict some processing, in limited circumstances and only when we don’t have legitimate grounds for processing your personal data.
• The right to object to personal data being used to send you marketing material. As mentioned above, we will only send you marketing material where you have given your consent to do so. You can remove your consent at any time.
• You can ask us not to use your data for marketing. You can do this by contacting us at contact@blos.co.uk or when asked on our website.
• The right to ask for a decision to be made manually, where a decision is made using automated means and this adversely impacts you.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please send your request to contact@blos.co.uk.

If you’ve signed up for email alerts, you can unsubscribe or change your settings at any time.

Links to external websites

Please note that if you click on, or follow, any links from our site to external websites, our Privacy Policy will no longer apply. Please check the privacy policies of any such external site before submitting any personal data, as we cannot accept any responsibility or liability in relation to them.

Changes

If we change our Privacy Policy, we will post the changes on this page. If we decide to, we may also email you.

Your consent

By using our Website and by way of acknowledgment, you consent to our Privacy Policy.

Contact BLOS

Email: contact@blos.co.uk.

Dispute resolution

The Parties will use their best efforts to negotiate in good faith and settle any dispute that may arise out of or relate to this Privacy Policy or any breach of it.

If any such dispute cannot be settled amicably through ordinary negotiations between the parties, or either or both is or are unwilling to engage in this process, either party may propose to the other in writing that structured negotiations be entered into with the assistance of a fully accredited mediator before resorting to litigation.