Provincial Grand Lodge of Sussex

1. Introduction and General Terms

The Provincial Grand Lodge of Sussex (PGLSx) is committed to protecting your personal information when you are using our website. This Privacy Policy relates to our use of any personal information you provide to us through our website.

This privacy policy explains the following:

• what information we may collect about you;
• how we will use information we collect about you;
• when we may use your details to contact you;
• whether we will disclose your details to anyone else;
• your choices regarding the personal information you have provided to us;
• the use of cookies on our website and how you can reject these cookies.

Whenever you provide us information, we are legally obliged to use your information in line with all laws concerning the protection of personal information, including the Data Protection Act 1998 (these laws are referred to collectively in this Privacy Policy as the "data protection laws").

Our website may contain hyperlinks to websites owned and operated by third parties. These third party websites have their own privacy policies, including cookies, and we urge you to review them. They will govern the use of personal information you submit or are collected by cookies whilst visiting these websites. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of such third party websites and your use of such websites is at your own risk.

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2. What information will the PGLSx collect about me?

When you sign up to participate in or receive a service from our website, such as newsletters, competitions, updates, or message boards, we may ask for personal information about you. This can consist of information such as your name, e-mail address, postal address, telephone or mobile number or date of birth. Different web pages may ask for different personal information.

By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable us to provide you with the services you select.

We also use cookies (see paragraph 13 below for details) and collect IP addresses (an IP address is a number that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on the Internet). We may use analysis software to look at IP addresses and cookies for the purpose of enhancing your user experience. This information is not used to develop a personal profile of you and the log files are regularly purged.

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3. How will the PGLSx use the information they collect about me?

We will use your personal information for a number of purposes including the following:

• for 'service administration purposes', which means that we may contact you for reasons related to the service you have signed up for, as set out in paragraph 4 below (e.g. to provide you with password reminders or to notify you that a particular service has been suspended for maintenance);
• to contact you about a submission you have made to our website, including any content you provide;
• to personalise the way our content is presented to you (e.g. if we notice that the first thing you look at every day is the News, then we may present this information or a link to it on your homepage);
• IP addresses are used to identify the location of users, the number of visits from different countries and also to block disruptive use; and
• to analyse and improve the services offered on our website. e.g. to provide you with the most user-friendly navigation experience.

Where we propose using your personal information for any other uses we will ensure that we notify you first. You will also be given the opportunity to withhold or withdraw your consent for your use other than as listed above.

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4. When will the PGLSx contact me?

We may contact you:

• in relation to the functioning of any service you have signed up for in order to ensure that we can deliver the services to you;
• where you have opted to receive further correspondence;
• in relation to any contribution you have made to our website;
• to invite you to participate in surveys about the website (participation is always voluntary); and
• for marketing purposes where you have specifically agreed to this (see paragraph 5 below)

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5. Will I be contacted for marketing purposes?

We will not contact you for marketing purposes, or promote new services to you unless you specifically agree to be contacted for these purposes.

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6. Will the PGLSx share my personal information with anyone else?

We will keep your information confidential except where disclosure is required or permitted by law (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies) or as described in paragraph 7 below. Generally, we will only use your information within the PGLSx. However, sometimes we may use third parties to process your information. We will require these third parties to comply strictly with its instructions and we will require that they do not use your personal information for their own business purposes.

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7. Offensive or inappropriate content on the PGLSx website

If you post or send offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content anywhere on or to our website, or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on our website, we may use your personal information to stop such behaviour.

Where we reasonably believe that you are or may be in breach of any of the laws of England or Wales (e.g. because content you have posted may be defamatory), we may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your employer, school, E-mail & Internet provider, or law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour.

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8. What if I am a user aged 16 or under?

If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide personal information to our website. Users without this consent are not allowed to provide us with personal information.

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9. How long will the PGLSx keep my personal information?

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant service, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.

Where you contribute to our website, we will generally only keep your content for as long as is reasonably required for the purpose(s) for which it was submitted.

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10. Can I find out what personal information the PGLSx holds about me?

Under the Data Protection Act you have the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. (We will require you to prove your identity with 2 pieces of approved photographic identification.) We will use reasonable efforts to supply, correct or delete personal information about you on our files. We also reserve the right to charge an administration fee (not exceeding £10) for this service.

Please address requests and questions about this or any other question about this Privacy Policy to the Provincial Grand Secretary.

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11. What if I am accessing the PGLSx website outside the UK?

All personal information submitted by you to our website will be processed in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

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12. Changes to our Privacy Policy

This privacy policy may be updated from time to time so you may wish to check it each time you submit personal information to our website. The date of the most recent revisions will appear on this page.

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13. Cookies Policy - Information the PGLSx collects from you

a. What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer or mobile phone (referred to here as a "device") browser from a website's computer and is stored on your device's hard drive. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser's preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a website to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites. Many sites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows.

Cookies record information about your online preferences and allow us to tailor the websites to your interests. 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. The last of these means that certain personalised services cannot then be provided to that user and accordingly you may not be able to take full advantage of all of our website features. Each browser is different, so check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences.

During the course of any visit to our website, the pages you see, along with a cookie, are downloaded to your device. Many websites do this, because cookies enable website publishers to do useful things like find out whether the device (and probably its user) has visited the website before. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.

b. How does the PGLSx use cookies?

We use a cookie to store any preferences you have made on our website, such as the font size. Information supplied by cookies can also help us to analyse the profile of our visitors and help us to provide you with a better user experience. For example: if on a previous visit you went to our Royal Arch Chapter pages, we might find this out from your cookie and highlight Royal Arch Chapter information on your second and subsequent visits.

We do not use cookies to:

• collect any personally identifiable information
• collect any sensitive information
• pass personally identifiable data to third parties

c. Granting us permission to use cookies

If your web browser settings are set to accept cookies, we understand because of that and your continued use of our website, you are in agreement of how we use cookies. Should you wish to remove or disable cookies please follow the instructions below, however doing so will likely mean that our site will not work as you would expect.

d. Turning cookies off

You can usually switch cookies off by adjusting your browser settings to stop it from accepting cookies. Doing so however will likely limit the functionality of this, and a great many more websites as cookies are a standard part of most modern websites. If you own a smartphone or tablet, please also check the manufacturer's documentation for specific details for each device.

Internet Explorer

To block cookies or change cookie settings in Internet Explorer, select Tools (or the gear icon), Internet Options, Privacy. You can choose from a number of security settings including Accept All Cookies, Block All Cookies and intermediate settings that affect cookie storage based on privacy and whether cookies set allow third parties to contact you without your explicit consent.

Safari

To block cookies or change cookie settings in Safari 5.0 and earlier, go to Preferences, Security and then Accept Cookies. You can choose from Always, Only from sites you navigate to or Never. In Safari 5.1 and later go to Preferences, Privacy. In the Block cookies section choose Always, Never or From third parties and advertisers.

Mozilla Firefox

To block cookies or change cookie settings in Firefox, select Options, then choose Privacy. Since Firefox accepts cookies by default, select 'Use Custom Settings'. This will bring up additional options where you can decide how cookies will be stored. Permissions for blocking or allowing cookies for single sites can also be set via the Permissions tab.

Google Chrome

To block cookies or change cookie settings in Google Chrome, click on the spanner icon on the browser toolbar. Select Settings, then Under the Hood. Find the Privacy section and click on Content Settings. Then click on Cookies, and you will get four options allowing you to delete cookies, allow or block all cookies by default or set cookie preferences for particular sites or domains.

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Last Updated : 25^th May 2012