Privacy & Data Protection

BeLoveCurious & the GDPR

At BeLoveCurious, we are committed to keeping your personal information safe and being clear about how we collect your data, how we store it and what we do with it.

This privacy policy applies to the BeLoveCurious.com website and its associated domains whether you want information or support from us, buy products or use our services, or work for us.

BeLoveCurious services governed by this policy are all webcam counselling services offered via Skype or Zoom and by ‘facetime’ telephone apps FaceTime & WhatsApp.

BeLoveCurious is registered under the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 as a data controller with the number ZA187771. Full details of this listing can be seen on the Information Commissioner’s Office website. Our company number is 394221 (registered in England and Wales).

This privacy notice, along with our website terms and conditions and our cookies policy lets you know how we collect, use and keep your personal information safe.

If you have any queries about our Privacy Notice, please get in touch.

What information do we collect about you?

Information you give to us directly

We will collect and store information that you give us when you do the following things on our website(s):

  • Register for a counselling service
  • Make an enquiry
  • Buy products online
  • Take a quiz
  • Complete a survey
  • Through a donation
  • Tell us your story (for example, as a ‘true love story’ or media case study)
  • Give us feedback or make a complaint
  • Apply for a job or work with us
  • Enter into a contract with us.

Information you give to us indirectly

  • We store data about your visits to our website, for example, the IP address when you contact us.
  • We store information about how you navigate our website, although this cannot be used to personally identify you.
  • We may also collect and store your personal information if you interact with us on our social media channels: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This will depend on your own privacy settings on these individual channels, so make sure you check these first.

Other sensitive information will only be collected where it informs the provision of the service to you. Whenever we do this, we will state clearly at the time, why this information is required. We may also gather sensitive personal information if you choose to share your experiences with us for a case study, but we will only do this with your explicit consent.

Such types of personal information may include: name, email address, date of birth, mobile or telephone number, relationship status, gender, sexual orientation, financial details, credit/debit card information, details about your education and career. 

Certain types of personal information are recognised by data protection law as being more ‘sensitive’. Things like sexual orientation, racial or ethnic origin, religious or political opinion, data concerning your health (mental or physical) or your sex life fall into this category.

How we use your personal information

We will use your personal information to do the following:

  • Provide you with information, products or services you’ve requested or that we feel might be of interest to you.
  • Respond to direct requests where you contact us with a query – we will use your personal information to respond.
  • Carry out general administrative tasks like dealing with complaints and feedback, essential record-keeping.
  • Transact: we will use your personal information to take payments from you when processing orders and payments for goods and services.
  • Keep you safe: in the event that we reasonably think you (or someone else) is at risk of serious harm or abuse.
  • Conduct polls, surveys and market research: we may invite you to take part so that we can improve our website, services and/or strategic development.
  • Monitoring and evaluation: we use your personal information to inform and develop our service delivery.
  • Improve your experience of our website, so that we may offer you a more user-friendly navigation of our website.
  • Process applications to work at BeLoveCurious: for example, if you fill in an application form or send us your CV or send us information speculatively in respect of possible contract opportunities.
  • We may also use your personal information to help us better target communications, so that you are more likely to receive communications relevant to your interests.

How long we keep your personal information

At BeLoveCurious, we are committed to retaining your personal information for no longer than necessary in relation to the purpose for which it was first collected. This is in line with guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office. BeLoveCurious may hold some types of data for up to seven years.

For example, in the case of financial transactions like donations and purchases, we will keep your personal information for as long as legally required in respect of tax or accounting purposes, which could be anything up to six years after a transaction has taken place.

Information sharing

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which it was obtained in the first place. We won’t share it with any third parties and you won’t receive any communications from other organisations.

However, there are two very explicit ways in which your data might be shared:

  • In the event that we use third party suppliers to help deliver our services, fundraising activities and campaigns. For example, we use Mailchimp to send out newsletters via email.
  • Where we are legally bound to disclose your personal information, for example, to further criminal investigation or to keep you safe if we believe you (or someone else) is at risk of serious harm or abuse. 

Keeping your personal information safe

We have both digital and operational safeguards to make sure your data is secure at BeLoveCurious. Access to information is reviewed on a regular basis and limited to those people who actually need to access it and are assigned the permission to do so.

All BeLoveCurious online webforms are protected by secure end-to-end encryption. Where we pass highly sensitive data over the internet such as credit or debit card details, BeLoveCurious uses TLS to encrypt data between the client and our partners.

BeLoveCurious is PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant and uses PCI compliant providers to collect this data on our behalf; we don’t store this data on our own systems.

There are, however, inherent risks to passing information over public networks and BeLoveCurious cannot 100% guarantee the security of data handled in this way.

BeLoveCurious’s web servers are located in England.

Your rights and managing your own data

You have the right to request access to the personal information that BeLoveCurious stores and processes about you. You can ask for corrections to be made to the information we hold or for your personal information to be deleted. You can also ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information or to object to the processing of it altogether.

We will not charge you for either considering or complying with a request unless it is deemed to be excessive in nature. We will ask you for proof of identity and upon this being successfully verified, you are entitled to obtain the following information about your personal information:

  • The purposes of the collection, processing, use and storage of your personal data.
  • The source(s) of the personal information, if it was not obtained from you.
  • The categories of personal data stored about you.
  • The recipients (or categories of recipients) to whom your personal data has been or may be transmitted, along with the location of those recipients.
  • The envisaged period of storage for your personal data or the rationale for determining the storage period.
  • The use of any automated decision-making and/or profiling

If you’d like to make a request relating to any of the rights above, please email us via an online Contact Us form.

Cookies Policy

Cookies are little text files downloaded by and stored on your device (phone, laptop, tablet, etc.) when you visit a website. Cookies are used to help the website owner (in this case, BeLoveCurious) to provide you with a smooth experience while you browse.

BeLoveCurious uses cookies to:

  • Make our website work
  • Collect anonymous data to gain insight into how visitors use our website
  • Help us show advertisements about our services to those people who might be interested in them
  • Allow you to share content with social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

BeLoveCurious does not use cookies to collect any information that could personally identify you. Neither do we use cookies to pass on any personally identifiable information to third parties.

Privacy – Web-based services

Zoom

Zoom is our preferred technology option for delivering online (webcam) counselling. Zoom will not collect your personal information and sessions are not recorded. Video calls take place using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption to ensure they remain confidential. When you make a booking you will be asked for an email address, if you want to keep these details private, please use an email address that only you have access to.

Zoom uses cookies. However, these will not contain identifiable information about you or your counselling session.

If you want to delete all traces of Zoom you’ll need to:

  • uninstall Zoom
  • delete your internet history for the day you had counselling
  • delete any cookies Zoom has left on your device. You can get more information about deleting cookies on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

Skype

We also offer the option to have sessions via Skype.

Skype is encrypted and so ‘safe’ at point of delivery, but because of the way its owners Microsoft operate, it’s not generally considered ideal for confidential therapeutic work. Skype does not meet the USA’s HIPAA regulations which govern the transmission of sensitive health information over the internet.

Skype calls take place using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption to ensure they remain confidential. When you make a booking you will be asked for an email address, if you want to keep these details private, please use an email address that only you have access to.

Skype uses cookies. However, these will not contain identifiable information about you or your counselling session.

If you want to delete all traces of Skype you’ll need to:

  • uninstall Skype
  • delete your internet history for the day you had counselling
  • delete any cookies Skype has left on your device. You can get more information about deleting cookies on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

FaceTime

FaceTime is an Apple service that makes video or audio calls to someone who’s also using an iOS or iPadOS device or a Mac, or audio calls using an Apple Watch. These calls don’t count against your cellular minutes.

FaceTime uses end-to-end encryption, so there’s no way for Apple to decrypt the content of your conversations when they are in transit between devices.

Apple states that: We never store the content of FaceTime calls.

Apple may record and store some information related to your use of FaceTime to operate and improve Apple’s products and services:

  • When you use FaceTime, Apple may store information about your use of the services in a way that doesn’t identify you.
  • Apple may record and store information about FaceTime calls, such as who was invited to a call, and your device’s network configurations, and store this information for up to 30 days. Apple doesn’t log whether your call was answered, and can’t access the content of your calls.
  • Some apps on your device (including FaceTime) may communicate with Apple’s servers to determine if other people can be reached by iMessage or FaceTime. When this happens, Apple may store these phone numbers and email addresses associated with your account, for up to 30 days.

By using these features, you agree and consent to Apple’s and its subsidiaries’ and agents’ transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of this information as described above.

Information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/privacy

How to make a complaint

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or the way in which BeLoveCurious handles your personal information, or if you wish to make a complaint, please email us via an online Contact Us form.

If you’re unhappy with our response, you may then raise your concern directly with the Information Commissioner’s Office: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF

Alternatively, you can visit the ICO website.

BeLoveCurious is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a Data Controller under number ZA187771.

Changes to our privacy policy

Our Privacy Notice may change from time to time, so please check this page occasionally to see if we have included any updates or changes, and that you are happy with them.

Last updated: 14 July 2020