1. Who we
are The Benzo Research Project
(BRP: “we” or “us”) is an unincorporated charitable association
led by students and young people. Drugs and Me (DnM) is a drug harm reduction education
website, on which we hosted the testimonial sharing platform (03–09/2022). Data
controllers of your personal data and inquiries regarding this privacy
notice and data subject rights can be made via hello@brp.org.uk
2. Scope of this Privacy
Notice This Privacy Notice aims at
informing website visitors to the Benzo Research Project
website, as well as contributors and other stakeholders about how we
process personal data. We are committed to processing personal
data responsibly, securely, and proportionally throughout the
project.
3. How we collect your personal
data If you shared your testimony on Drugs
and Me's website, this process is intended to be anonymous, and we
don’t want to know your name or any other identifying details for
this purpose. We do not collect or retain personal information about you
when you are filling in your form, including your IP address or
location.
However, there are
other circumstances in which we will obtain personal information from
you when you or interact with us. For example, when
you: a) enquire about our
activities via email or
instagram; b) volunteer with
us; c) make a donation to us;
or d) otherwise provide us with
personal information
4. The personal data types we
collect In the circumstances noted above,
we collect the following types of general personal data about
individuals, including:
Gender,
location, email addresses, names, telephone numbers, social media
accounts (Instagram). These are processed when we engage in email,
phone, or correspondence through social media like Instagram,
volunteers, media requests and other stakeholders who contact
us.
5. The lawful bases for processing your personal
data We process personal data on
the following bases:
Consent – [Volunteers]
Legitimate interest – [Media and other
stakeholders]
6. What we do with your personal
data We process your personal data
with the purpose of:
Enhancing our research or undertaking additional research
with trusted parties to provide insights and produce speciality
knowledge to advocate for change
Undertaking awareness raising to advocate for policy
reformations, support curriculum planning with
schools/universities and to increase awareness through media
publications
Promoting our message and mission
(marketing)
Complying with legal and regulatory
obligations
Contributing to the creation of a harm reduction application
developed by the team at Drugs and Me
7. Analysis of testimonies by
external parties Explicit consent must be
obtained from the Benzo Research Project before the testimonies can be
used or analysed in any way by any external
parties.
8. How we
secure your data when we process
it Anonymous
data We require all testimonies
submitted to be anonymous. Therefore we do not collect identifying
information. Should a testimony be submitted with personal information,
this will be edited out and the original deleted. This editing process
is explained on the submission page. We have put appropriate technical
and organisational security policies and procedures in place to protect
the submitted testimonies from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction.
All submitted testimonies are password protected and access is
restricted only to those who need to access it. Those individuals who
have access to the submitted testimonies prior to its anonymous posting
online are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information,
and sign a data confidentiality agreement
document. Personal
data For individuals who
choose to contact us via social media, email or other means, usernames
and contact details will be accessible through the social media platform
for the purpose of contacting you again in relation to your enquiry, but
will not be stored elsewhere. Your details or information shared in your
enquiry will not be used in our research or passed to any third party
without your explicit permission. We install and regularly update all
security and anti-virus software in use on all of our
systems.
Please be aware that the
transmission of data via the Internet is not completely secure. Whilst
we do our best to try to protect the security of your personal data, we
cannot ensure or guarantee the security of your data transmitted to the
Benzo Research Project or Drugs and Me
website.
9.
Do we use cookies? Our website is
hosted by Cloudflare who does not use cookies. Where cookies are used (e.g., an embedded social media post), a statement
will be sent to your browser explaining the use of
cookies.
10. Your data protection
rights You have the following
rights in relation to your personal data that we process. You can
exercise your rights by emailing us at hello@brp.org.uk,
including:
Right to Withdraw
Consent – You can withdraw your consent that
you have previously given to one or more specified purposes to
process your personal data. This will not affect the
lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw
your consent.
Right to Rectification and
Erasure – You can ask us to correct our
records if you believe they contain incorrect or incomplete
information about you or ask us to erase your personal data
after you withdraw your consent to processing or when we no
longer need it for the purpose it was originally
collected.
Right to Restriction of
Processing – You can ask us to temporarily
restrict our processing of your personal data if you contest the
accuracy of your personal data, prefer to restrict its use
rather than having us erase it, or need us to preserve it for
you to establish, exercise, or defend a legal claim. A temporary
restriction may apply while verifying whether we have overriding
legitimate grounds to process it. You can ask us to inform you
before we lift that temporary processing
restriction.
Right to Object –
You can object to our use of your personal data for direct
marketing purposes, including profiling or where processing has
taken the form of automated decision making. However, we
may need to keep some minimal information (e.g., email address)
to comply with your request to cease marketing to
you.
Right to Make a
Complaint – You can contact the UK
Information Commissioner’s Office (https://ico.org.uk/concerns/handling/)
regarding any concerns you may have about our data handling
practises. We may need to request specific information from you
to help us ensure your right to access the information or to
exercise any of your other rights. This helps us to ensure that
personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to
receive it.
11. How long do we retain
personal data? We retain personal
data to comply with applicable laws, regulations, and professional
obligations that we are subject to. Unless a different time frame
applies as a result of business needs or specific legal, regulatory, or
contractual requirements, we retain personal data for a period of 2
years.
12. Do we link to other
websites? Our websites may contain
links to other sites that are not governed by this Privacy Notice. Please review the
destination websites’ privacy policies before submitting personal
data on those sites. Whilst we try to link only to sites that share our
high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the
content, security, or privacy practices employed by other
sites.
13. Do we change this Privacy
Notice? We regularly review this
Privacy Notice and will post any updates to it on this webpage. This
Privacy Notice was last updated 2nd April
2024. 14. Contact
us If you have any concerns as to
how your data is processed, you can contact us by email: hello@brp.org.uk.We
will respond to your queries within 30 days from when we receive
them.