Privacy Policy

The Scottish Energy Forum Data Protection Policy

The Scottish Energy Forum respects your right to privacy and data protection. To help you understand how we protect your privacy we provide this notice explaining The Scottish Energy Forum’s data protection practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used.

The Scottish Energy Forum is also obligated to conform to relevant standards and laws. Our software and business processes comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which commenced on May 25, 2018.

The purpose of this document is to publish a policy and describe practices and processes of The Scottish Energy Forum for managing the privacy of data.

If you have any questions or concerns, or suggestions for improvement to this policy and these practices, please contact the Executive Secretary of The Scottish Energy Forum.

Your Rights as an Individual

The EU provides individuals certain rights, implemented and controlled by the GDPR, about their own information, including:

  1. The right to be informed
  2. The right of access
  3. The right to rectification
  4. The right to erasure
  5. The right to restrict processing
  6. The right to data portability
  7. The right to object
  8. Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

The Scottish Energy Forum is fully aware of and respects these rights. Nothing in this Policy nor in the actions of The Scottish Energy Forum are intended to usurp these rights.

Designated Data Controller

Per the requirements of the GDPR, our designated Data Controller for The Scottish Energy Forum is the Executive Secretary. If you have questions about this policy or are concerned about the risk to your data privacy contact the Executive Secretary. How You Can Access or Correct Your Information

Contact the Executive Secretary via email to get Summary Report of information we hold about your membership—individual or corporate. You can then provide updates as required. To protect your privacy and security, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections.

Opt-In is Formal

There are three existing procedures for people to ‘opt-in’ formally to The Scottish Energy Forum communications:

  1. When you join The Scottish Energy Forum as a member, you sign a membership form where you agree under the terms of Data Protection Act, and now GDRP, to receive emails from The Scottish Energy Forum.
  2. When you add your email address to the distribution list (using the dialogue box in the upper right corner of every web page), you also reply to the mailing list supplier (MailChimp) confirming your agreement to have your email on the distribution list.
  3. When you send emails to The Scottish Energy Forum for business purposes, including booking requests, you are giving your tacit approval for The Scottish Energy Forum to reply to that email as part of standard business processes, and for The Scottish Energy Forum to use that information on booking lists with your name and company/affiliation exposed to other participants.

If you wish to renew or change any of these formal ‘opt-in’s’, please inform The Scottish Energy Forum Executive Secretary.

Withdrawing Consent

You can withdraw your consent for The Scottish Energy Forum to hold and process data about you and/or your organisation. If you do that, then it will become impossible for The Scottish Energy Forum to manage interactions with you and/or your organisation which effectively means you will be unable to participate in The Scottish Energy Forum events and, if a Member, will be required to resign your membership.

If you send us an email asking a question or requesting something after withdrawing consent, you are tacitly giving The Scottish Energy Forum permission to send you an email. We will not re-start your email on the distribution list just because you send us an email.

Complaints

If you wish to complain about the data management practices of The Scottish Energy Forum, please contact The Scottish Energy Forum Executive Secretary. Alternatively, you can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

How We Use Your Data

We use the personal and corporate information you provide when joining as a member or when booking an SEF event to enable completing those instructions and managing the information related to those functions. We do not release this information to Third Parties, other than with your permission (as described in this document) in the member directory.

Email

We use email header ‘reply-to’ email addresses in your emails to reply to the email we receive as part of routine The Scottish Energy Forum business operations. We do not use these email addresses for any other purpose. Other than email addresses published in the Member Directory (with the member’s permission), these email addresses are not shared with third parties. When addressing emails, we minimise the use of “reply-all” to further reduce the proliferation of emails and email addresses to non-involved parties. We avoid using “BCC” emails and when used it is done only to inform someone else and help prevent those on the ‘to’ and/or ‘cc’ list needlessly “reply-all” to our emails.

We take sending The Scottish Energy Forum email and asking a question or making a booking request as ‘tacit’ consent for us to reply in an email to the sender and/or cc’s.

We do not release emails to third-parties, except sometimes emails will be in a CC list on emails we send–if appropriate. Our practice is to never release email addresses to someone just because they ask for it. We will inform the other person of the interest in getting in contact, leaving it to them to get in contact with the requestor. If you want to contact the speaker or another guest after an event, get the contact information from that person at the event.

Phone Number

We collect and store your phone number for your membership for publishing in the Member Directory for other members to phone you if they chose. You can ask us to keep your phone number private and not put into the Member Directory.

We also collect–most often from the email signatures you put in your email or Eventbrite bookings you make where you provide that information–individual’s phone numbers.

While we rarely phone anyone for any reason, for individuals, we do collect these phone numbers to have them on-hand just in case there is a last-minute event cancellation and we need to contact the people who have booked to inform them of the unfortunate circumstances.

We do not release phone numbers to third parties.

Email Distribution List

The Scottish Energy Forum uses MailChimp as the vendor to provide mailing list services. Upon initial “joining” the mailing list, that person is sent an automatic email from MailChimp asking them to “opt-in”. Every mail sent via MailChimp has a “unsubscribe” link for the person to remove their email from the distribution list.

To sign up to the mailing list, see the sign-up dialogue box on the top right corner of every The Scottish Energy Forum web page. Therefore, that person has full control of their email address to “opt-in” and/or “opt-out” by unsubscribing. The Scottish Energy Forum does not interfere with this process.

Bookings and Booking History

To manage bookings for The Scottish Energy Forum events, we collect for each attendee: Name, affiliation/company, email address, and information about the billing entity if that information is not already known to The Scottish Energy Forum. We also keep track of the name and email address of the person making the booking.

Some booking information may be disseminated on a “need-to-know’ basis to the venue, caterers, speakers, speaker’s contacts, the booker, etc. Control of data about you that we transfer to our suppliers for business purposes then falls under the supplier’s jurisdiction and data protection policies.

Membership and Contact Information

Name, Address, affiliation/company, email address are used for billings in The Scottish Energy Forum financial system. Access to The Scottish Energy Forum financial system is limited only to those on The Scottish Energy Forum management team, Board of Directors, and Accountant (external) who require that that access for business purposes. The financial system is based on an internet service provided by Xero who as a company is fully responsible for data security of their servers.

The above information is collected by a form filled in by the member. The form includes a reference to data protection and asks for formal confirmation that the signee agrees that The Scottish Energy Forum will use this data and that the member will accept communication from The Scottish Energy Forum.

Member Directory

We publish, and release to only members, a Directory of Members which is given new members upon joining, and updated at intervals (or as requested) to current members. The Directory of Members is published in electronic form (PDF and HTML format) and sent to members via email. The Directory of Members is not currently published on The Scottish Energy Forum web site.

The directory is labelled “For exclusive use by Members of The Scottish Energy Forum” and is not released to non-members. It is accepted that very few members probably do unethically give this document to non-members.

The directory includes corporate details and contact information (contact email, website, Twitter, etc.) We show for corporate members names of people belonging to that corporate member but not any contact info for those individuals. Corporate Members are listed on The Scottish Energy Forum web site without contact information other than a link to the member’s web site.

For individual members, we show the name, email, and postal address for the member. Individual members are not currently listed on The Scottish Energy Forum web site.

Members can “opt-out” of having their contact information displayed in the Member Directory. Corporate members can “opt-out” of showing corporate contact information. All members can “opt-out” from having their membership shown on the web site and/or Member Directory.

Booking with Eventbrite

The Scottish Energy Forum will increasingly use the third-party service Eventbrite for taking bookings from members and guests, collecting money for paid events, and managing event information. The Scottish Energy Forum has no influence on Eventbrite on how they manage their services. You can read more about how Eventbrite manages and protects data at Eventbrite and EU Data Protection. If you have concerns about your data at Eventbrite, then please do not use Eventbrite.

Changing your Data

At membership renewal time, The Scottish Energy Forum will send to the member contacts a summary of the information held by The Scottish Energy Forum. At that time, the member contact can submit changes to the Executive Secretary. All changes will be confirmed by reply email.

Members can request at any time a summary of the information held by The Scottish Energy Forum about them as individuals or corporate entities.

How We May Share Personal Information

In general, we don’t. The Scottish Energy Forum does not and will not sell or release personal information about our members and guests. We only disclose your data as described in this document for business purposes related to bookings, membership, and ‘business as usual’.

Data Security

While no data service is or can be completely secure, The Scottish Energy Forum takes precautionary and prudent measures to help prevent personal information from loss, theft, misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration, and un-wanted destruction. To prevent unauthorised access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect. Our computer files are on computers which are behind internet firewalls and thus are not easily accessible by unauthorised users via the internet. The Scottish Energy Forum maintains minimal paper records holding personal data.

Information NOT collected or Managed by The Scottish Energy Forum

Credit card information, e.g. card details, is held only by the credit card processor Stripe and is not available to anyone at The Scottish Energy Forum. The Scottish Energy Forum does not take credit card payments over the phone or via any other communication method. Therefore The Scottish Energy Forum never hears nor must manage credit card details. The Scottish Energy Forum is aware of and conforms with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

Bank account details for our vendors or for occasional refunds to members are by necessity (to enable payments) held only by The Scottish Energy Forum’s banker (Bank of Scotland). That information is protected by the Bank’s systems and procedures and The Scottish Energy Forum has little influence on those systems and procedures.

Bank account details for payments to The Scottish Energy Forum via BACs are not made visible to The Scottish Energy Forum by the Bank.

When payments are made by bank cheque to The Scottish Energy Forum, the entity’s bank details (sort code and account) are printed on that cheque and therefore will be seen by The Scottish Energy Forum staff.

Data Retention

The Scottish Energy Forum will retain your data and transactional information for as long as we deem it necessary, to comply with applicable laws related to document retention, resolve disputes and otherwise as necessary to allow The Scottish Energy Forum to conduct business.

Use of Cookies and Other Similar Technologies

A ‘cookie’ is standard and ‘ancient’ internet technology and is a small data file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer when you visit a website. When you visit the website again, the cookie allows that site to recognise your browser. The length of time a cookie will stay on your computer or mobile device depends on whether it is a ‘persistent’ or ‘session’ cookie. The Scottish Energy Forum use two persistent types of cookies. Persistent cookies stay on your computer or mobile device until they expire or are deleted. We use the following cookies on our website.

  • The Scottish Energy Forum web site uses analytical cookies as part of using Google Analytics to help us understand things like how long a visitor stays on our website, what pages they find most useful, and how they arrived at www.www.scottishenergyforum.org To learn more about Google Analytics and your data, visit this Google webpage.
  • We also use a cookie for your computer to remember your preference for the change interval (in seconds) for images on the top of the home page.