1. About this Policy
This Privacy Policy explains our practices, including your choices, regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of certain information, including your personal information. From now on, we’ll refer to it as ‘Policy’.
It applies to your use of:
- The SHEilds site – https://www.sheilds.org/.
- Other SHEilds owned websites, including our eLearning platforms.
- Third-Partys service plans
From now on, we’ll refer to these collectively as ‘SHEilds Services’.
From time to time, we may develop new services. They’ll also be subject to this policy.
This policy is not:
- The SHEilds Terms and Conditions, which is a separate document, that can be found here – https://www.sheilds.org/terms-conditions/.
The basic principles of the SHEilds privacy policy are:
- SHEilds shall not make use of your Personal Details without your permission, except where necessary to supply the services expressly requested by you. E.g., Using one of the SHEilds services.
- SHEilds shall give you the opportunity to check and correct information relating to you.
2. Information about us
Our Site is owned and operated by SHEilds Ltd. A limited company registered in England under company number 04623681, whose registered address is Hesslewood Hall, Ferriby Road, Hessle, England, HU13 0LH and whose main trading address is West Court, Hesslewood Hall, Ferriby Road, Hessle, HU13 0LH, UK.
Our VAT number is GB 808949875.
We are regulated by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
For information on how to contact our Data Protection Officer Rebecca Rusling please refer to the ‘Contact us’ section on this policy.
3. Your personal data rights and controls
Privacy laws give certain rights to individuals over their personal data.
| It’s your right to… | How? | |
| Be informed | Be informed of the personal data we process about you and how we process it. | We inform you:
|
| Access | Request access to the personal data we process about you. | To request a copy of your personal data from SHEilds please contact us. |
| Rectification | Request that we amend or update your personal data where it’s inaccurate or incomplete. | You can correct your data by either: |
| Erasure | Request that we erase your personal data.
Please note there are situations where SHEilds is unable to delete your data, for example when:
|
You can request that we erase your personal data by emailing privacy@sheilds.org. It may take SHEilds up to 30 days to respond to you. |
| Right to Opt-Out | Request to opt out of the processing of your personal data. | You can exercise your right to opt out by:
|
| Data portability | Request a copy of your personal data in electronic format. | For information about how to exercise the right to portability, see ‘Know/Access’ above. |
| Not to be subject to automated decision making | Not be subject to a decision based solely on automated decision making (decisions without human involvement), including profiling, where the decision would have a legal effect on you or produce a similarly significant effect. | SHEilds does not carry out this type of automated decision making in its’ Services. |
| Withdrawal of consent | Withdraw your consent to us collecting or using your personal data. You can do this if SHEilds is processing your personal data solely based on your consent. |
To withdraw your consent, you can:
|
* Due to technical or other limitations it is not always possible for SHEilds to exert control over third party cookies. Users can learn how they can effectively control cookies behaviour by visiting the following link – https://cookies.insites.com/disable-cookies/.
Verifying requests
To verify a customers, request to know, request to delete, and request to correct, we may ask you to provide us certain details relating to your SHEilds account. Please note, if you do not have a SHEilds account we will be unable to honour your request as we do not keep sufficient information necessary to do so.
4. Personal data we collect about you
These tables set out the categories of personal data we collect from you.
Collected when you sign up or update your account.
| Categories | Description |
| User Data | Personal data that we need to create your SHEilds account that enables you to use the SHEilds services. Data we collect may include:
|
| Street Address Data | We require your street address for the following reasons:
|
Collected through your use of SHEilds services.
| Categories | Description |
| Usage Data | Personal data collected and processed about when you’re accessing or using SHEilds services. Examples include:
Technical Data:
Your general (non-precise) location: Your general location includes country, region or state. We may learn this from technical data (e.g. your IP address). We need this to:
|
Collected through your use of SHEilds telephone communications.
| Categories | Description |
| Call Recording Data | Calls may be recorded for training and quality assurance and may be retained for up to 6 months. Individuals have rights to access or erasure. Upon a request, call recording will be suspended immediately, allowing the call to proceed without recording. |
Additional data you may choose to give us.
| Categories | Description |
| Payment and Purchase data | If you make any purchases from SHEilds, we will need to process your payment data. The exact personal data collected and used will vary depending on the payment method. It will include information such as:
Note: All payments made to SHEilds are processed through a third-party provider. |
| Survey and Research Data | When you respond to a survey or take part in user research also referred to as ‘Feedback’, we collect and use the personal data you provide for analytical purposes and decision making. We may also contact you to provide you support. |
Third party sources that we receive your data from
| Categories of third parties | Description | Data Categories |
| Technical service partners | We work with technical service partners that give us certain data. This includes mapping IP addresses to non-precise location data (e.g., country or region, city, state). This allows us to survey the geographic origin of users and protect users accounts. | User Data Usage Data |
| Payment partners | If you choose to pay through a third-party provider (e.g. Paypal), we may get data from our payment provider.
This allows us to:
|
Payment and Purchase Data |
| Advertising and marketing partners | We receive information from certain advertising or marketing partners. The information provided are our partners’ understanding of your interests and preferences. This allows us to deliver more relevant ads and marketing. |
Usage Data |
5. Our purpose for using your personal data
The table below sets out:
- Our purpose for processing your personal data.
- Our legal justifications, under data protection law for each purpose.
- Categories of personal data which we use for each purpose. See more about these categories in Section 4 ‘Personal data we collect about you’.
Here is a general explanation of each legal justification to help you understand the table:
- Performance of a Contract: When it’s necessary for SHEilds (or a third party) to process your personal data to:
- comply with obligations under a contract with you. This includes SHEilds’ obligations under the Terms of Use to provide SHEilds Services to you, or
- verify information before a new contract with you begins.
- Legitimate Interest: When SHEilds’ or a third party has an interest in using your personal data in a certain way. For example, using your Usage data to improve SHEilds’ services for all users.
- Consent: When SHEilds’ asks you to actively indicate your agreement to SHEilds’ use of your personal data for a certain purpose.
- Compliance with Legal Obligations: When SHEilds must process your personal data to comply with law.
| Purpose for processing your data | Legal justification that permits the purpose | Categories of personal data used for the purpose |
| To provide SHEilds services in accordance with our contract to you.
For example, when we setup an account for you, register you on an exam. |
Performance of a Contract | User Data Street Address Data Usage Data Payment and Purchase Data |
| To diagnose, troubleshoot, and fix issues with the SHEilds Service. | Performance of a Contract | User Data Usage Data |
| To evaluate and develop new features and improvements to the SHEilds service. | Legitimate Interest. We want to develop and improve our products and features for our students. |
User Data Usage Data Survey and Research Data |
| For marketing or advertising where the law requires us to collect your consent. For example, when the law requires consent for email marketing. |
Consent | User Data Usage Data |
| To comply with a legal obligation that we are subject to. | Compliance with legal obligations | User Data Street Address Data Usage Data Payment and Purchase Data Survey and Research Data |
| To comply with a request from law enforcement, courts, or other competent authorities. | Compliance with legal obligations | User Data Street Address Data Usage Data Payment and Purchase Data Survey and Research Data |
| To take appropriate action when SHEilds’s content is infringed. | Legitimate Interest. We want to protect our content that we’ve worked hard on. |
User Data Street Address Data Usage Data |
| To establish, exercise, or defined legal claims. | Legitimate Interest Our legitimate interests here include: Seeking legal advice Protecting ourselves and others. |
User Data Street Address Data Usage Data Payment and Purchase Data Survey and Research Data |
| To process your payment. For example, when we use your personal data to let you purchase a course. |
Performance of a Contract, and consent. | User Data Payment and Purchase Data Street Address Data |
| To keep SHEilds Services secure and to detect and prevent fraud. | Legitimate Interest We want to protect SHEilds Services and our users against fraud and other illegal activity. |
User Data
Payment and Purchase Data Street Address Data |
| To conduct research and surveys
For example, when we contact our users to ask for feedback or you fill in one of our feedback forums. |
Legitimate Interest
We use this information to understand how we can improve our products. |
User Data
Usage Data Survey and Research Data |
| Call Recording Data | Quality and Training Data | To improve customer service and staff training via recorded calls. |
6. Sharing your personal data
Information we may share:
| Categories of recipients | Categories of data | Reason for sharing |
| Third-party Service Providers | User Data Street Address Data Payment and Purchase Data |
So, they can provide services to SHEilds.
These service providers include those we hire to:
|
| Payment partners | User Data Payment and Purchase Data |
So, they can process your payments, and for anti-fraud purposes. |
| Debt Collectors | User Data Payment and Purchase Data |
So, they can pursue legal action against those in debt with SHEilds. |
| Advertising partners | User Data Usage Data |
So, they can help us deliver more relevant advertising and measure the effectiveness of ads. |
| Marketing partners | User Data Usage Data |
To promote SHEilds services. We disclose certain usage data to these partners where necessary to provide anonymous user information to SHEilds’s advertisers. |
| Law enforcement and other government agencies | User Data Usage Data |
When it’s necessary for us to do so, for example:
|
6a. Use of customer data for advertising
We use customer data collected through our website and services to show personalised advertising on several platforms, including but not limited to Google Ads, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Microsoft Bing, and other marketing partners.
We follow all relevant UK data protection laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), along with each platform’s advertising policies.
- We share customer data with advertising and marketing service providers to help personalise ads, measure ad performance, and target the right audience.
- We ask for your explicit consent before sharing your data with these third parties for personalised advertising when required by law.
- For more information about how each platform handles your data, you can visit:
- Google Customer Match policies – https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6334160?hl=en
- Meta’s GDPR guidance for businesses – https://www.facebook.com/business/gdpr
- Microsoft Bing GDPR compliance documentation – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/compliance/regulatory/gdpr
- Whenever we upload data files to these platforms, they only use the data to match you with accounts and serve ads, acting as data processors under legal agreements.
- Under these agreements, our advertising partners including Google, Meta, Microsoft, and others act as “processors” of the personal data we share for advertising purposes, and are contractually required to use this data solely for matching and serving ads in compliance with their policies and applicable law.
- For other advertising activities not involving these platforms, we apply the same strict principles of lawful processing, transparency, and user consent.
- We keep our data protection officer’s contact details up to date in all advertising platform accounts as required.
If you want to withdraw your consent for personalised ads or opt out of targeted advertising, you can do so anytime through your cookie settings or through each platform’s systems.
7. Data retention
We may retain information as required or permitted by applicable laws and regulations, including:
- to honour your choices.
- for our billing or records purposes.
- to fulfil the purposes described in this privacy statement.
- complying with our legal obligations.
We take reasonable measures to destroy data or de-identify personal data when it is no longer required.
8. Keeping your personal data safe
We’re committed to protecting our users’ personal data. We have put various safeguards in place to guard against unauthorized access and unnecessary retention of personal data in our systems. These include but are not limited to, access levels, firewalls, and strong credentials.
To protect your user account, we recommend that you:
- use a strong password which you only use for your SHEilds account.
- never share your password with anyone
- limit access to your computer and browser
- log out once you have finished using any SHEilds Services on a shared device.
It’s your responsibility to ensure that your login credentials are kept safe.
9. Cookies
This website www.sheilds.org uses cookies to distinguish you from other users, some cookies are necessary for this website to function correctly, others are optional. By using cookies, we provide you with a better experience. Your acceptance of website cookies occurs when you visit this website or expressly use the “Accept” button displayed to visitors on the cookie notice banner. If you do not agree to the use cookies for this website, please stop using our site immediately or reject cookies. As stated above, please note due to technical or other limitations it is not always possible for SHEilds to exert control over third-party cookies. Users can learn how they can effectively control cookies behaviour by visiting the following link – https://cookies.insites.com/disable-cookies/.
Below we have generated a dynamic list of cookies in use for your current session on this website that our technologies are able to detect for transparency.
10. Changes to this policy
We will update this Privacy Statement from time to time in response to changing legal, regulatory or operational requirements. We will provide notice of any such changes at the top of this page (including when they will take effect) in accordance with law.
Your continued use of any SHEilds service after any such updates take effect will constitute acknowledgement and (as applicable) acceptance of those changes.
11. Contact us
For any questions or concerns about this Policy, you can contact our Data Protection Officer Rebecca Rusling in the following ways:
- email privacy@sheilds.org
- post: West Court, Hesslewood Hall, Ferriby Road, Hessle, HU13 0LH, UK.
Payment Plans
