Cullercoats Lifeboat Online | UK | Saving Lives At Sea

This RNLI Policy explains the privacy and the data protection practices that apply to all websites operated by the RNLI, and to the RNLI’s use of text messaging. A link to this Policy is available from all websites which it applies to.

In this Policy references to the RNLI or to 'Cullercoats Lifeboat', ‘we’ or ‘us’ are to the RNLI charity (registered charity no. 209603) and to the RNLI’s trading companies, RNLI (Sales) Ltd (company number 2202240) and RNLI (Enterprises) Ltd (company number 1784500), all of West Quay Road, Poole, Dorset BH15 1HZ.

Our aim is to safeguard our users' privacy while providing a personalised and valuable service. Collecting personal information is necessary if we are to satisfy the expectations and requirements of our users, e.g. by communicating with them and providing an interactive service. We appreciate that you do not want the personal information you provide to us distributed indiscriminately and here we explain how we collect information, what we do with it and what controls you have.

1. non-personal information such as IP address (the location of the computer on the internet), pages accessed and files downloaded. This helps us to determine how many individuals use our sites, how many people visit on a regular basis, which pages are most popular and which pages are least popular. This information doesn't tell us anything about who you are or where you live, it simply allows us to monitor and improve our service.

2. personal information such as name, postal address, telephone number, email address, date of birth (where appropriate), card or bank details, information about your interests and hobbies etc. We collect this information only in connection with specific activities, such as registration or membership requests, product purchases, feedback, donations, competition entries etc. The information is either needed to fulfil your request or to enable us to provide you with a more personalised service. You don't have to disclose any of this information to browse the sites. However, if you do choose to withhold requested information, we may not be able to provide you with certain services.

fulfil your requests, for example applications for membership, donations, competition entries, participation in campaigns and provision of information
process sales transactions, donations, or other payments and verify financial transactions
handle orders, deliver products and communicate with you about orders
identify visitors
provide a personalised service to you when you visit our websites eg by customising the content and/or layout of our pages for each individual user
record any contact we have with you
prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our websites and enable third parties to carry out technical, logistical or other functions on our behalf
in aggregate (and therefore anonymously) to profile your use of the websites and carry out research on our users' demographics, interests and behaviour to help us gain a better understanding of how our users navigate and use the websites, and to enable us to improve our service to you
provide you with information which we think may be of interest to you, as explained below:

As well as using personal information to fulfil requests, we also like to keep our supporters informed about the RNLI's activities, campaigns and promotions or about updates to our sites. Although we don't sell or rent personal information, we do agree, from time to time with other like-minded organisations to contact each other's supporters for mutual benefit. In addition, we sometimes contact our supporters with offers from companies that benefit the RNLI and may be of interest.

By entering an RNLI competition you will generally be agreeing to receive mailings, emails or text messages from the RNLI. In other situations, when submitting your personal information, you will be given the option not to be included in mailings or other contacts from the RNLI or other organisations (whether by post, email or other electronic messaging, telephone or fax). If you don't want to receive this information, simply follow the instructions shown.

If you do agree to receive this information (whether by entering a competition or otherwise), and later decide that you no longer wish to be contacted, you can let us know by emailing: coram@rnli.org.uk or by telephoning 0845 122 6999 or in the case of text messages, by texting ‘RNLI STOP’ to 81505.

We may use other companies to provide services on our behalf, including packaging, mailing and delivering purchases, answering customer's questions about products or services, sending postal mail, emails and text messages, analysing data and processing credit card payments. We will only provide those companies with the information they need to deliver the service and they are prohibited from using that information for any other purpose. We require all such companies to treat your personal information as fully confidential and to fully comply with all applicable UK Data Protection and consumer legislation.

We may disclose aggregate statistics about our site visitors, customers and sales in order to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers and other reputable third parties and for other lawful purposes, but these statistics will include no personally identifying information.

We may disclose personal information if required to do so by law or if we believe that such action is necessary to protect and defend the rights, property or personal safety of the RNLI, the site or its visitors.

Every year, children take part in a range of important activities for the RNLI. These include our popular sponsored events. To ensure safety and to keep an accurate record of attendance, participants in these events are required to register with us. When children register for these events through our website, their personal information is stored on our database and we contact them from time to time to tell them about future events. However, it is our policy not to request donations or subscriptions nor to accept product orders from children under 18.

Our sites contain links to other sites. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites, even if you access them using links from our websites. We recommend that you check the policy of each site you visit.

In addition, if you linked to our websites from a third party website, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners or operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site and contact its owner or operator if you have any concerns or questions.

The RNLI places a great importance on the security of all personally identifiable information associated with our supporters, customers and users. We have security measures in place to attempt to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of personal data under our control. For example, our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorised personnel have access to user information. We use secure server software (SSL) to encrypt financial information you input before it is sent to us. While we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of data will not occur, we use our best efforts to prevent this.

In simple terms a cookie is a small piece of information sent from our website to your computer to help us to identify you quickly. If you prefer not to accept a cookie, you can navigate the websites like a normal user. Any information gathered by the use of cookies is compiled on an aggregate, anonymous basis.

Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to your hard drive to store and sometimes track information about you. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but if you prefer, you should be able to change your browser to prevent that. You should read the information that came with your browser software to see how you can set up your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie, this should then give you the opportunity to decide whether to accept it. However, you may not be able to take full advantage of a website if you do so. Cookies are specific to the server that created them and cannot be accessed by other servers, which means they cannot be used to track your movements around the web.

personalise the sites to your requirements and avoid lengthy registration/personalisation on each occasion
identify who you are and to access your account information
estimate our audience size and patterns
ensure that you are not asked to register twice
control how often visitors see similar ads
track preferences and to improve and update our websites
track the progress and number of entries in some of our promotions and contests.

Further information about cookies can be found at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's website www.allaboutcookies.org.

Information which you submit via this website is sent to a computer located in the United Kingdom. This is necessary in order to process the information and to send you the information you have requested. Information submitted by you may be transferred by us to our other offices and to other reputable third party organisations as referred to in this Policy and these may be situated outside the European Economic Area.

We may make changes to this Policy from time to time. If we change our Privacy Policy we will post the changes on this page. If the change in our Privacy Policy affects the use of your personal information, then we will use our best endeavours to contact you by email to seek your consent to the use.

By using our sites, or by entering a competition, you consent to the collection and use of information by the RNLI in accordance with our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this Policy, please do not use our sites or enter our competitions.

Any personal information submitted via our websites is treated in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. To find out more about your entitlements under this legislation, visit the Information Commissioner's website: www.dataprotection.gov.uk/ or read the Act online at: www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/19980029.htm.

You may request details of personal information, which we hold about you under the Data Protection Act 1998. A small fee will be payable. If you would like a copy of the information held on you, please write to: RNLI, West Quay Road, Poole, Dorset, BH15 1HZ.

If you have any questions relating to this Privacy Policy or how we use the personal information we have about you, please contact: Chris Oram at RNLI, West Quay Road, Poole, Dorset, BH15 1HZ. Tel: 0845 122 6999