Personal information we collect

We collect personal information from you and any devices (including mobile devices) you use when you: use our Services, register for an account with us, provide us information on a web form, update or add information to your account, participate in a survey, or when you otherwise correspond with us (including by post). 

Some of this personal information, such as a way to identify and contact you, is necessary to provide you with membership and professional registration. The provision of all other personal information is voluntary, but may be necessary in order to use our Services, such as event registration, surveys, purchasing books and merchandise via our eShop.

Personal information you give us when you use our Services or register for an account with us

• Identifying information such as your name and email addresses when you register for an IMarEST web account with us.
   
• Additional information as necessary to apply for relevant grades of membership and/or professional registration, including addresses, telephone numbers or gender, date of birth, a certified copy of your degree certificate and your curriculum vitae.
   
• Additional information as necessary to register your attendance for an event, or apply for funding or an award.
   
• Financial information (such as credit card or bank account details) in connection with a transaction – for membership and/or professional registration, event attendance, funding, purchase of publications, e-learning or merchandise.
   
• Postage, billing and other information used to purchase or send an item, as well as, information required to clear customs (such as Tax ID or other identification numbers) and relevant postage information (such as tracking numbers and tracking updates).
   
• You may also provide us other information through a web form, or by updating or adding information to your account, through your participation in community discussions, member-to-member communications, and other content that you generate, or when you otherwise communicate with us regarding our Services.
   
• Additional information we are required or authorised by applicable national laws to collect and process in order to authenticate or identify you or to verify the information we have collected.

Personal information we collect automatically when you use our Services or register for an account with us

• We collect information about your interaction with our Services, your advertising preferences and your communications with us. This is information we receive from devices (including mobile devices) you use when you access our Services. This information could include the following: Device ID or unique identifier, device type, ID for advertising and a unique device token.

• Location information, including location information from your mobile device. Keep in mind that most mobile devices allow you to control or disable the use of location services by any application on your mobile device in the device's settings menu.

• Computer and connection information such as statistics on your page views, traffic to and from the sites, referral URL, ad data, your IP address, your browsing history and your web log information.

Personal information we collect using cookies and similar technologies

We use cookies, web beacons, unique identifiers and similar technologies to collect information about the pages you view, the links you click and other actions you take when using our Services, within our advertising or email content.

For more information about our use of these technologies, and how to control them, see our full User Cookie Notice.

Personal information collected from other sources

• We will process personal information that has been provided to us in order to provide Services to you. For example, an employer who purchases Services from us for a group of its employees, or an intuition enrolling its students.
   
• We supplement the personal information we collect directly with information collected from third parties and add it to your account information. For example, we collect and use demographic and other information that is publicly available in an applicable jurisdiction, additional contact information, credit check information, and information from credit bureaus, as allowed by applicable national laws

• If you give us personal information about someone else, you must do so only with that person’s authorisation. You should inform them how we collect, use, disclose, and retain their personal information according to this Privacy Notice.

How we use your personal information

We use the personal information we collect from you for a range of different business purposes and according to different legal bases of processing. The following is a summary of how and according to which legal bases we use your personal information.

We use your personal information to fulfil our contract with you and provide you with our Services, to comply with our legal obligations, or as may be required to meet our charitable purposes. This includes:

• To provide payment processing and account management, operate, measure and improve our Services, keep our Services safe, secure and operational, and customise site content that includes items and services that you may like in response to actions that you take.

• To contact you regarding your account, to troubleshoot problems with your account, to collect fees or monies owed or as otherwise necessary to provide you customer service.

• When contacting you for such purposes as outlined above, we may contact you via email, telephone, SMS/text messages, postal mail and via mobile push notifications.

• To provide other services requested by you as described when we collect the information.

• We use general location information to provide you with location based services (such as advertising, search results and other personalised content).

• To prevent, detect, mitigate, and investigate fraud, security breaches or other potentially prohibited or illegal activities.

• To enforce our by-laws and Code of Conduct, this privacy notice, or other policies, and to monitor for violations of our policies or applicable laws.

We use your personal information to pursue our legitimate interests where your rights and freedoms do not outweigh these interests.  We have implemented controls to balance our interests with your rights.  This includes to:

• Improve our Services, for example by reviewing information associated with issues experienced by users, allowing us to identify and fix problems and give you a better experience.

• Contact you via email or postal mail in order to inform you about our Services. For example when renewing your membership and/or professional registration, or providing you with governance or other information related to your grade of membership of the Institute.

• Deliver targeted marketing, Institute and local branch updates and third party content based on your communication preferences.

• Measure the performance of our email marketing campaigns (e.g. by analysing open and click rates).

• Monitor and improve the information security of our site and mobile applications.

With your consent, we may use your personal information to:

• Provide you with marketing via email. You can review and update your preference at any time.

• Provide you with marketing from IMarEST Group members.

• Provide you with marketing from third parties.

• Provide you with local branch activities. If you have consented, via My IMarEST or by contacting the membership team, to join one or more local branches of the IMarEST, we may transfer some of your personal information to officers of your branch(s) in order for them to deliver local branch activities to you as a member of the branch.

You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

Profiling

Profiling is a common technique that involves analysing data to improve the targeting of communications. The IMarEST uses technologies considered as automated decision making or profiling to help ensure our communications are relevant. When building a profile we may analyse geographic, demographic and other information relating to you, as well as your previous responses to our communications. This helps to improve the effectiveness of our Services to you and the efficiency with which we deliver them.

We will not make automated-decisions about you that would significantly affect you, unless such a decision is necessary as part of a contract we have with you, we have your consent, or we are required by law to use such technology.

Your choices about how we use your personal information

Communication preferences

You can control your email communication preferences in the “Email Preferences” section of your IMarEST Web Account. There, you can choose which IMarEST email communications you want to receive.

Marketing

If you do not wish to receive marketing communications from us, you can unsubscribe via the link in an email you received, or change your “Email Preferences” for your IMarEST Web Account at any time. Note that we do not sell, rent or otherwise disclose your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes.

Advertising

We use your personal information to provide you with customised and relevant online advertising, and we may collect your personal information as otherwise described in this Privacy Notice. We do not allow third parties to track or collect your personal information on our sites for their own advertising purposes.

Staying Signed in

If you are using a public or shared computer, we encourage you not to choose to stay signed in. You or any other user of the computer/browser you signed in on will be able to view and access most parts of your account and take certain specific actions during this signed in period without any further authorisation. The specific actions and account activities that you or any other user of this computer/browser may take include:

If Registered User only:

• Edit your IMarEST Web Account to change the email address and password.
   
• View and change your Email Preferences.
   
• Apply for membership of the IMarEST via a web form.
   
• Access an IMarEST TV live-stream and post discussion comments which other views can see.
   
• Access “My IMarEST” (if also already signed in) to edit contact information, interests, expertise and view or pay invoices.

In addition to the above, if also an IMarEST member:

• Access “Nexus”, the IMarEST’s members-only professional network, and edit your profile, post comments as you, join and leave groups, view your contact list and send member-to-member messages.
   
• Access IMarEST TV and post discussion comments on videos which other members can view.
   
• Depending on your grade of membership, access “Echo”, the IMarEST’s professional development platform, and edit your continuing professional development (CPD) record, comment on content items and complete tasks that have been assigned to you.
   
• Complete member-only web forms.
   
• View your Member Dashboard and your membership number.

You can typically end your signed in session by either signing out and/or clearing your cookies. If you have certain browser privacy settings enabled, simply closing your browser may also end your signed in session. If you are using a public or shared computer, you should sign out and/or clear your cookies when you are done using our Services to protect your account and your personal information.

Ways you can access, control and correct your personal information

Access, correction and deletion of your personal information

You can see, review and change most of your personal information by signing in to your My IMarEST account. Please, update your personal information immediately if it changes or is inaccurate.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, there are several rights you hold in relation to the processing of your data.

• You have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you. We will require forms of identification from you before releasing this information. We will provide the information within one month of the receipt of your request. An administrative fee may apply.
   
• You have the right to have your data erased from our databases in certain circumstances. These include when your personal data is no longer necessary for the purpose it was originally collected and when you withdraw your consent for us to process your data for certain purposes.
   
• You have the right to object to your data being processed under legitimate interests, upon which the processing will cease, unless there are compelling legitimate grounds such as fulfilling a contract between us.

If you request that we stop processing some or all of your personal information or you withdraw (where applicable) your consent for our use or disclosure of your personal information for purposes set out in this privacy notice, we will not be able to provide you all of the Services and customer support offered to our users and authorised under this Privacy Notice.

How we might share your personal information

We may disclose your personal information to the following parties for the following purposes:

IMarEST Group members, who may use it to:

• Provide you with content and Services (like membership and professional registration, member benefits, events, funding and awards, transactions and customer support)

• Provide you personalised advertising

• Improve our Services, sites, applications, platforms, products, tools and marketing communications.

• Members of the IMarEST Group will use your personal information to send you marketing communications only if you have consented to receive such communications.

• Help detect, investigate, mitigate and prevent potentially fraudulent and illegal acts, violations of our by-laws and Code of Conduct and data security breaches

Third Party Service Providers as follows:

• Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf to provide our Services, payment processing services and other business operations, which may include sending you email notifications or marketing communications (if you have consented to receive these). When we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service, and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes.

• Third party postage providers (e.g., couriers, mailing house) with whom we share delivery address, contact information and shipment tracking information for the purposes of facilitating the delivery of purchased products, requested or necessary communications (e.g. a membership certificate or a renewal letter).

Law enforcement, legal proceedings and as authorised by law

• To comply with our legal requirements, respond to claims that content violates the rights of others, or protect anyone's rights, property or safety.

How long we keep your personal information

We will never keep your information longer than is necessary for the purposes which the information was provided. How long we keep personal information can vary based on context of the Services we provide and on our legal obligations. The following factors typically influence our retention periods:

• How long the personal information is needed to provide our Services - This includes such things as maintaining and improving the performance of our Services and products (for example grades of membership and members benefits), keeping our systems secure.

• If the personal information is sensitive - A shortened retention time is generally appropriate.

• If you have you provided consent for a longer retention period - We will retain data in accordance with your consent.

• If we are subject to a legal, contractual, or similar obligation to retain your personal information - Examples include to comply with legal obligations (including law enforcement requests) and meeting our regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, maintain security, and prevent fraud and abuse.

After it is no longer necessary for us to retain your personal information, we will dispose of it in a secure manner according to our data retention and deletion policies.

The list of the members, officers, members of Council, Trustees and recipients of awards and funding of the IMarEST is a historical record which is maintained for posterity with the limited amount of information we require to achieve this.

How do we protect your Personal Information

We have implemented technical and organisational measures designed to secure your personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorised access, use, alteration or disclosure. However, the Internet is an open system and we cannot guarantee that unauthorised third parties will never be able to defeat those measures or use your personal information for improper purposes. We ask that you do your part by maintaining in strict confidence any computer passwords you use to access the Internet or our websites and Services.

Transfer of your Personal Information outside the European Economic Area (EEA)

• We may transfer some of your personal information to Singapore, where we have an IMarEST office, as part of the IMarEST Group.
   
• Applications for our funding and awards are judged by volunteers of the Institute who may be located around the world, so it may be necessary to transfer some of your personal information to them for this purpose.
   
• Applications for higher grades of membership and/or professional registration may require a ‘professional review interview’ (PRI), conducted by volunteers of the Institute (PRI Assessors) who may be located around the world, so it may be necessary to transfer some of your personal information to them for this purpose.
   
• Where the IMarEST organises an event outside the EEA, it may be necessary to transfer some of your personal information in order to provide registration at the venue for the event.
   
• If you have consented, via My IMarEST or by contacting the membership team, to join one or more local branches of the IMarEST, we may transfer some of your personal information to elected officers of your branch(s) in order for them to deliver local branch activities to you as a member of the branch.

These countries may not have equivalent data protection legislation to the UK. However, when we transfer your personal information in this way, we do so securely, where appropriate with written contract terms in place between parties, and only for the purposes outlined in the Privacy Notice.

Data Controllers and Contacting Us

This Privacy Notice relates to Personal Information which is processed by the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST).

The IMarEST is your data controller, and is responsible for the collection, use, disclosure, retention and protection of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Notice, and the General Data Protection Regulation. You can contact us at:

The IMarEST
1 Birdcage Walk
London
SW1H 9JJ

Email: [email protected]

The IMarEST strives to uphold the best standards of practice in collecting and using any personal data. Therefore, we take complaints very seriously and advise anyone to contact us if they believe our system of collecting and processing data is unfair, misleading or inappropriate. Any suggestions for improving our policy are always welcome.

You also have the right to make a complaint direct to the UK's data protection authority, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The ICO can be contacted at: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/

Concerns can be also be logged via the ICO website.

Other important privacy information

Content provided by Third Parties published on our website

We often publish and link to reports, blogs and articles written by IMarEST members and others who are not members of staff at the IMarEST. We are not responsible for the accuracy of either the content or any personal data contained within such content.

Email Disclaimer

The information in any e-mail (and/or document attached) sent by or on behalf of the IMarEST is confidential and may be legally privileged and/or contain copyright material of the IMarEST. This information is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. If you are not the named addressee of an email from the IMarEST, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose, copy or distribute the contents to any other person.

Whilst the IMarEST takes all reasonable precautions to ensure that e-mails from the Institute are malware free, no responsibility will be taken for malware transmitted from its systems.

We scan messages automatically and check for spam, malware, phishing and other malicious activity, illegal or prohibited content or violations this Privacy Notice or our other policies.

Unwanted or threatening communications

We do not tolerate abuse of our Services. You do not have permission to add other users to your mailing list (email or postal), call, or send communications for commercial purposes, unless the user has given his/her explicit consent. Sending unwanted or threatening communications is against our Code of Conduct. To report IMarEST-related spam or spoof emails please forward the email to [email protected].

Under 18s

There are times when we collect data from under 18s, including applications for Student membership, and as part of the administration of competitions, awards and events.

The personal information that we collect in these circumstances is held securely and only used in relation to the purpose for which it was collected.

Consent from parents/guardians is requested from competition and award winners before personal information is used in our information and marketing communications. Consent can be withdrawn at any time.

Third Party Privacy Practices

This privacy notice addresses only our use and handling of personal information in connection with providing you our Services. If you disclose your information to a third party, or visit a third party website via a link from our Services, their privacy notices and practices will apply to any personal information you provide to them or they collect from you. We cannot guarantee the privacy or security of your personal information once you provide it to a third party and we encourage you to evaluate their privacy and security policies before choosing to share your personal information.

Social Media

We enable you to share information with social media sites. We may also use plug-ins or other technologies from various social media sites. If you click on a link provided via a social media plug in, you are voluntarily establishing a connection with that respective social media site.