Privacy Policy and Cookie Notice

Last updated:  September 2021

Introduction

This Privacy Notice applies to the website found at plan-international.org, including all information and materials contained on it (“the Website”). This Website is managed by Plan Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Plan International Inc. (“Plan Ltd”).

Our Privacy Notice

Plan Ltd is committed to ensuring the privacy of all users of the Website and will comply with data protection law when processing personal data. Personal data is any information that can be used to identify a living individual. 

Data controller of this Website – Plan Limited, Dukes Court, Block A, Woking, Surrey GU21 5BH

Our Data Protection Officer is the contact for all data protection queries and concerns – Data.Privacy@plan-international.org

This Privacy Notice governs all pages on the domain plan-international.org and sets out how Plan Ltd collects and processes personal data via the Website. It does not apply to pages hosted by other organisations, including the websites of Plan International fundraising offices or third-party sites. The Website may be linked to the websites of such other parties, but those other sites may have their own privacy policies which apply to them.

It is important that you read and understand this Privacy Notice so that you are aware of how and why we might collect and process your personal information, and what your rights are under the data protection legislation. By using the Website, you consent to the terms of this Privacy Notice. Plan Ltd may change the terms of this Privacy Notice from time to time and, if such changes are made, we will notify you of those changes by contacting you if appropriate or by publishing the updated Privacy Notice on our website. Your continued use of the Website will be on the terms of this Privacy Notice as amended from time to time.

What personal data we collect and store

The type and amount of information about you that we collect and store depends on how you use the Website. You can access most of the pages on the Website without telling us who you are and without revealing any personal information. Plan Ltd collects anonymous logs during user visits to the Website. This information may be used to create aggregate statistics about how the Website is used (see our Cookies Notice below for more information about this).

We only collect personal information about you via the Website  if you choose to provide it when you:–

  • subscribe to our email updates
  • sign one of our campaign letters or petitions, or
  • email us via the ‘Contact us’ facility

In these instances, we will collect, store and process your name, email address and country of residence plus any additional information that you might provide when using the ‘Contact us’ facility. 

Please note that we have a separate Privacy Notice for candidates who apply for a job with Plan Ltd or Plan International Inc via our dedicated jobs website (https://jobs.plan-international.org/), where you can also sign up to receive job alerts. 

Why we process your personal data

Plan Ltd will only process your personal data in connection with the purpose for which you provided it. In other words, in order to send you marketing information and / or email updates about the work we are doing, or to show your support for a particular petition. In this way, Plan Ltd’s processing of your personal data is based on your consent. 

Who your personal data is shared with

Your personal data will be shared internally within Plan Ltd so that we can fulfil the purpose for which you provided it. When you have signed one of our petitions, we may share your name and details of the country where you live with the organisation(s) which is the target(s) of the petition. Where necessary, we will share your information with our service providers in order to allow them to deliver services to Plan Ltd, for example, if we contract with a service provider to host the Website. When we have your consent, we will share your personal information with Plan International fundraising offices if they request details of subscribers to email updates in their territory. They may contact you , for example, to invite you to support their activities or to subscribe to their newsletters. Otherwise, we shall only share your personal information if we are required to disclose it by law. Plan Ltd will never sell the personal data that you provide. 

Sending personal data outside the UK 

Your personal data may be transferred outside the UK if, for example, Plan Ltd contracts with a third party service provider to perform functions on our behalf, (such as a company that hosts the Website), if you have signed a petition and the target organisation of the petition is located outside the UK, or if Plan Ltd transfers your personal data to one of the Plan International fundraising offices based in the country where you live.  

Where your personal information is transferred to a service provider or Plan International office based outside of the UK, we will ensure that your personal data is protected to the same extent as in the UK through one of the following safeguards:

Transfer to a country (in the European Economic Area or otherwise) whose national privacy legislation ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data as determined by the UK government; or

Put in place a contract with the service provider or Plan International fundraising office that means they must protect personal data to the same standards required in the UK.

Opting out of receiving messages from Plan Ltd

If you have opted to subscribe to our email updates, we will hold your personal information for as long as you continue to subscribe to our mailing list. Any e-mail we send you will enable you to opt out of receiving further e-mails from us. If you choose to unsubscribe from receiving further emails, we will immediately stop sending you any communications and we will remove your personal information from our system within six months. You can also request that we remove you from our mailing lists by contacting our Data Protection Officer (see details below).

If you simply sign one of our petitions, but do not opt to receive our email updates, then we will only retain your personal data for a maximum of 12 months, unless you request that we remove it earlier.

How your personal data is protected

Plan Ltd takes the security of your personal data seriously. There are internal policies, procedures and controls in place to try and ensure that your personal data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is only accessed by its employees in the performance of their duties.

Where Plan Ltd engages third parties to process personal data on its behalf, they do so only the basis of written instructions, and under a duty of confidentiality. Third parties are also obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures which are compliant with data protection legislation to ensure the security of personal data. 

What your rights are 

Under certain circumstances, by law, you have the right to:-

  • Request access to the personal information Plan Ltd holds about you. This is available through a Subject Access Request and must be made in writing to the Data Protection Officer (Data.Privacy@plan-international.org) 
  • Require Plan Ltd to change or rectify incorrect or incomplete personal data about you
  • Request Plan Ltd to delete or stop processing your personal data, for example, where the personal data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights (unless you are making a Subject Access Request and Plan Limited reasonably concludes that it is manifestly unfounded or excessive). If you make a request Plan Limited has one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights please contact the Data Protection Officer at Data.Privacy@plan-international.org or in writing to Data Protection Officer, Plan International Headquarters, Block A, Duke’s Court, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5BH

Complaint resolution

Plan Ltd will strive to resolve any complaints relating to its processing of personal data promptly and fairly. Plan Ltd will cooperate with data protection authorities and other regulators, agencies, and tribunals involved in resolving such complaints. In the first instance, please raise your concerns to data.privacy@plan-international.org.

If you are unhappy with how we have dealt with your personal data or your request / complaint, please note that you can make a formal complaint to the supervisory authority in the country where you live or work. If you believe there has been an infringement of your rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), please contact the supervisory authority in the UK or the relevant EU member state. In the UK the supervisory authority is the Information Commissioner’s Office, which you can contact via its website or via its address:

Information Commissioner’s Office Wycliffe House
Water Lane Wilmslow Cheshire SK9 5AF

ICO Helpline number: +44 (0)303 123 1113

Our Cookie Notice

A cookie is a text-only piece of information that a website transfers to your web browser so that the website can remember who you are. A cookie will normally contain the name of the Internet domain from which the cookie has come, the “lifetime” of the cookie, and a value, usually a randomly generated unique number.

Plan Ltd uses cookies and analysis software for the purpose of enhancing your user experience. For example, measuring how many people are using each page of the website and for how long so that we can try to improve the quality of our website.

This information is not used to develop a personal profile of you.

By using our Website, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device. 

Users have the opportunity to set their devices to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. To prevent the download of cookies, or otherwise control how cookies are used on your computer, please read the help information supplied with your Internet browser software, go to www.allaboutcookies.org, or read further instructions below.

Our use of cookies

This website uses functional, anonymous statistics and marketing cookies. Statistics and marketing cookies can be accepted or rejected via the Cookie Banner – these will be disabled by default when the user arrives on the website.

  • Functional cookies are necessary for the website; they remember choices you make to give better functionality.
  • Anonymous statistics cookies allow us to measure visits to the website, without identifying particular individuals.
  • Marketing cookies allow us to tailor advertising by Plan International to visitors’ interests on our site or to show a visitor advertising in a social media channel, for example.

Anonymous statistics cookies

Google Analytics

The Website uses Google Analytics to help analyse how users use the site. This analytical tool uses ‘cookies’, which are text files placed on your computer, to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information in an anonymous form.

The information generated by the cookie about your use of the Website (including your IP address) is transmitted to Google. This information is then used to evaluate visitors’ use of the Website and to compile statistical reports on website activity for Plan International.

Plan Ltd will not (and will not allow any third party) to use the statistical analytics tool to track or to collect any personally identifiable information of visitors to our site. We will not associate any data gathered from this site with any personally identifying information from any source as part of our use of the Google statistical analytics tool.

Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. Neither Plan Ltd nor Google will link, or seek to link, an IP address with the identity of a computer user.

By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above. See Google’s Analytics overview for further information.

Crazy Egg 

This Website uses a service called Crazy Egg to collect anonymous data about user behaviour on some of the Website’s pages, such as where they click or scroll to on a page. To do this, Crazy Egg will deposit a cookie in your browser.

Neither Plan Ltd nor Crazy Egg will use this information to personally identify our Website’s users. Please see Crazy Egg’s Privacy Policy. Find out how to opt out of Crazy Egg.

Marketing cookies

Google Ads

We use Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting to create remarketing audiences based on specific behaviour, demographic, and interest data.

We retrieve basic demographic and content interest data via Google Ads cookies, for users who have consented to Ads personalisation with Google. Via Google Signals, we link this to individual – but anonymous – user behaviour tracked via the Google Analytics cookie. The resultant user profiling is made available, in aggregate, in Google Analytics reports. These are estimations of user attributes based on Google Ads behaviour and are not accurate personal data. To further protect user privacy, we cannot report demographic and interest data at the individual level, even anonymously: there is a threshold of at least 7 users before this information may be shown in any Google Analytics report.

These audiences can then be targeted by online advertising through Google Ads when visitors are browsing Google or its partner websites.

Plan Ltd will not (and will not allow any third party) to use Google Analytics or Google Ads to track or to collect any personally identifiable information of visitors to our website.

Find out how to opt out of personalised online advertising.

Facebook

This Website uses a Facebook cookie which creates a link between your visit to this Website and Facebook. This helps us to show users relevant content on Facebook and to learn how users are interacting with our content on Facebook. Facebook will collect data to enable this. Information on how Facebook handles its users’ data can be found here. See below for information on how to disable this cookie.

Twitter

This Website uses a Twitter cookie which creates a link between your visit to this Website and Twitter. This helps us to show users relevant promoted content on Twitter and to learn how users on Twitter are interacting with our advertising. Twitter will collect data to enable this. Information on how to opt out of Twitter’s interest-based advertising can be found here.

Other cookies

Third-party cookies

To enrich our content, we sometimes embed photos and video content from websites such as YouTube or Twitter. As a result, when you visit a page with content embedded from, for example, YouTube or Twitter, these sites may set a cookie.

This Website also has ‘share’ buttons to enable users of the site to easily share articles with their friends through social networks, for example, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. These sites may set a cookie when you are also logged in to their service. 

Plan Ltd does not control the dissemination of these cookies and you should check the relevant third-party website for more information about these.

Disabling and enabling cookies

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying the settings on your browser.

Please be aware that restricting cookies may impact on the functionality of this Website. 

To disable cookies if you are using Microsoft Windows Explorer: Click on ‘Tools’ in the top menu, then on Internet Options, then on the tab marked ‘Privacy’; Move the slider to the position corresponding to the level of cookie acceptance/denial acceptable to you.

To remove existing cookies if you are using Microsoft Windows Explorer: Click on ‘Tools’ in the top menu, then on Internet Options; In the section marked ‘Browsing History’, click on ‘Delete…’; In the section marked ‘Cookies’ click on ‘Delete cookies’; Click on ‘Yes’ or hit the ‘Enter’ key.

To disable cookies in other browsers see the links below:

Other browsers have similar cookie management abilities in their settings, please refer to your browser’s ‘Help’ facility.

Find more detailed information on disabling cookies here: www.aboutcookies.org.

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