Privacy Policy

This is one of the boring bits of websites, that you probably never read but we – the people who make websites – have to write them. Why do we write things that you don’t want to read? Well, we don’t generally but in this case, we have to because of a data privacy law called GDPR.

What does GDPR stand for and why should kids even care?

 

 

It actually stands for General Data Protection Regulation and yes, it’s actually quite good and not only for kids. I’m going to explain why and I hope you’ll find it just a little bit interesting, and even maybe worth reading!

What is data anyway?

When we talk about ‘data’ we mean bits of information. This website explains what data is really well.

“Data is a collection of facts, such as numbers, words, measurements, observations or even just descriptions of things.”

When we are talking about data privacy, we mean the information about a person kept by organisations such as businesses, schools, shops, and charities. Say you’re a member of the Scouts or Guides. They keep data about you, like your name and your date of birth, your address. Some businesses might keep more personal information about you. For instance, your dentist or your doctor. And you’d want them to keep that information secure and not allow other people access to it.

Left to their own devices, a lot of companies would just add all the names to a list or into a computer program and not bother making sure that it couldn’t be hacked. That’s why the European Union decided to update the data protection laws that were written long before the internet was invented. Back then, you could secure all the patient files by putting a big padlock on your filing cabinet. (If you don’t know what a filing cabinet is, then go ask your granny or an elderly aunt or uncle!)

Anyway, with all that information stored online nowadays, we website and company owners have to make sure that we are careful and considerate of the data we keep. We also need to ensure that if you are a bit concerned about the data that we have stored, that you can get in touch.

 

Contact Details

Want to get in touch with us? Email the editor: lynn@jumpmag.co.uk

 

Kids and Data Privacy

The good thing about the GDPR law is that there is a specific section that deals with children. The lawmakers recognise that some adults will try to take advantage of kids by getting them to sign up to stuff, or trying to sell them stuff. We don’t do any of that, and we are totally on board with lawmakers being tougher on anyone who tries to trick or scam kids.

We do though have to stick to the law, and the law in the UK says that we may not collect data from anyone under 13 years of age. If you are under that age, you’ll need permission from a parent or guardian. Or you can just ask your parent or guardian to sign up for our newsletter, and let you know when we post something new. That’s the easiest way!

 

What data do we collect, why do we collect it, and what do we do with it?

Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual. We collect:

Communication Data

If you send us any message through our contact form on the website, via email, social media messaging, social media posting or any other communication that you send us. Basically, any way that you get in touch with us.

We process this data (which means we use this data) to send you a response to your email or to let you know about new articles that we’ve published on the site. Sometimes we might send details of interesting events or books that we’ve discovered but we never accept money for advertising stuff.

The law says that we have to prove that there is a good reason to send you this info, a ‘lawful ground’, and in this case, it’s because if you’ve emailed us, you want a response. And if you’ve signed up to receive our newsletter, you have told us that you want to get the information we promised!

User Data

This includes data about how you use our website or online services. If you want to leave a comment on our articles or send us an article to be posted in Written by You. We process this data to operate our website and to bring you cool new articles. Our lawful ground for this is that we need to be able to administer our website.

Technical Data

When you read Jump! Mag, we have lots of little ‘cookies’ follow you around. No, not the good kind of cookies. These are little bits of computer code that record what you are doing on our website. It’s not as weird as it sounds, but basically, it’s handy for us to be able to track what readers do on our website.

If we know that a LOT of you like articles about poo, then we can ask our writers to write more about poo. Knowing your IP address and your location means that we can see where most of our readers live – not exactly. You won’t wake up to find us camped out on your front lawn. That would be weird. But if we know, e.g. that a lot of you are in the UK, then we know that the Brexit article will be of interest to you.

Most of this information is anonymous, we don’t know who YOU are, or where you are exactly because we don’t ask readers to log in to our site.

So we process, or use, this information to learn what our readers like to read and to schedule more interesting stuff in the future.

Sensitive Data

 

 

There is some information that is handled differently under the law. This includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, political opinions or your health. We do not collect any sensitive data at all.

We will only use your personal data for the purpose it was collected or for a similar purpose. So, we definitely won’t use your email address to send you daily gifs of dogs and cats (even though I suspect some of you would like that!) If we do want to send you something that we haven’t been doing before, then we will get in touch beforehand and explain why we are doing this, and give you a chance to say you don’t want the dog and cat gifs.

We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, where this is required or permitted by law.

We DO NOT pass on your data to other people so that they can send you dog and cat gifs. Or any other marketing or sales stuff.

 

Sharing Your Data

There are a lot of you on our mailing list and I’m sure you’ll forgive us for not emailing you individually. That would take a LONG TIME. And we’d rather be writing articles about science or poo.

In order to send out a lot of newsletters at one time, we use a company called MailChimp, which isn’t based in the European Economic Area. They are, however, clever little chimps and have made sure that they too comply with the GDPR law.

Data Security

We’ve put in place security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed or accessed without authorisation. This includes limiting the people who have access to this data to those who need it to help run the website.

If something was got go wrong, and someone got access to the personal data we hold on you, we will report to the relevant authorities and get in touch with you if they tell us that we should do this.

Data Retention

We will only keep a hold of your personal data as long as necessary in order to do what we told you we were doing – e.g. if we were to stop sending the newsletter, we’d delete the data. We will regularly check that we don’t keep data for too long and that we aren’t keeping any data that is sensitive or is at risk of unauthorised use or disclosure.

 

Your Legal Rights

A cool part of this new law is that you have a lot more rights about the data that is collected, and what happens to it. You have the right to request access – to see what information we have about you. You can also ask for data to be corrected, erased, restricted or transferred. You can also tell us if you don’t want us to use your data, and withdraw consent.

You don’t have to pay a fee to access your personal data, but we may ask you to pay a reasonable sum if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. We may also refuse to comply with your request in this case.

If you want to get access to your data, we may need to request specific information to confirm your identity. We can’t just hand over information when someone asks for it – we have to make sure it is YOU and not that annoying kid from the year above you in school!

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within a month.

If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK authority who makes sure that organisations and businesses are behaving themselves, and complying with the data protection laws. (www.ico.org.uk). We should be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.

 

Third Party Links

Sometimes we link to other websites or applications, such as in our list of Science Resources. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties (other websites or organisations) to collect or share data with you. We try to ensure that we only link to decent websites that are suitable for children but we do not control these websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements.

When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy statements of the other websites you visit (and to let us know if they provided decent dog gifs).

 

Cookies

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our cookie policy.