Let’s Talk has updated this Privacy Policy in line with what is needed for the GDPR (this is the law about how we should collect and use peoples’ personal information).

Why do we collect information and where do we get it from?

Let’s Talk sometimes collects and uses information about young people and others who use our services.  We always respect young people’s personal information and we always follow principles when we collect or use young peoples’ information:

  • We follow the law, we are fair and we are open about how we use your information,
  • We only collect the information we need for the work we are doing,
  • We make sure your information is correct and up to date – and we will correct it if you think it is wrong,
  • We only keep information as long as we have to by law and then we destroy it carefully,
  • We are always respectful and careful with your information and we always work to keep things private – we will only share information with others if we have your permission or if are worried about someone’s safety.  We would always try to talk to you about sharing before going ahead. 

Sometimes we will ask you for information, and we might get information from you if you email us or if you use our services. Sometimes we get information from parents, teachers or other workers.  Sometimes we guess information from how we see young people behaving – we might notice that something is wrong or that someone is upset and might need support.  

How do we look after your information?

When we collect personal information we are careful to keep the information safe:  

  • We use secure cases when we are out of the office,
  • We use locked filing cabinets in locked cupboards, in locked offices,
  • We keep information safe by making it anonymous or by using codes,  
  • We keep personal information separate from the codes,
  • We use encrypted computers and secure servers and backups and we do not use USB sticks for private information,
  • We do not share information unless it helps to keep young people safe,  
  • If we have to share information we always try to get permission from, or tell young people before we would do this and we only share the bits of information that need to be shared – and only with the people who need to know.  Everything else is private,  
  • Sometimes we collect sensitive information (like age, gender, sexuality, race etc).  We collect this information to make sure our services include everyone but we always make this anonymous so that no would know who had given the information,
  • If your information is accidentally lost, used or shared by mistake, we will always tell you and we will keep you informed while we find out what has happened,

Support Email

If you email our getsupport@lets-talk.scot email to get advice, information or help, we will keep your email until someone can reply and help you with your issue.  We will then keep your email on our central system to be accessed by staff to ensure that email operating systems are working, to record the number of messages we receive and to help monitor and improve our email support.  To comply with the law, we will keep your email for a period of time before we then delete it.   

Website

If you visit our website we might collect, store and use information about your computer and about how you use our website. You might email us a question or take our quizzes.  We will not give your personal information to anyone else without your permission, unless we have to do so by law.  

We use cookies on our website to keep track of how you use our site.  We use Google Analytics to look at how people use our site.  Google may use this use this information to create reports about how people use the site.  Google will store this information (see https://policies.google.com/privacy for Google’s privacy policy).  Information may be collected on our web forms and may be stored on servers outside the UK, but in Europe.  

We believe that it is very important to be respectful of your private information. Our website has security measures in place to protect your information against loss, misuse and alteration of the information we control.  This website complies to all UK national laws and requirements for user privacy.  

It is your own decision to visit our website and/or contact Let’s Talk.  If you give any personal information this is at your own risk.  Your personal information is kept private and stored securely until a time it is no longer required or has no use (as detailed in the Data Protection Act 1998 and as required by the General Data Protection Regulations). Every effort has been made to ensure a safe and secure form to email submission process but we advise users using such form to email processes that they do so at their own risk.

Our site has links to others sites – we are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of any external web sites. Although this website only looks to include quality, safe and relevant external links, we would advise you to be careful when clicking any external web links online.  We are not responsible for other websites and so you use them at your own risk.

Social Media 

When you use our social media platforms we would advise that you are always careful about sharing your private information. When you use different social media platforms, you should check their privacy policies to make sure you are only sharing the information that you want to. 

We use the following platforms and here are some links to their privacy policies:

  • Facebook – https://en-gb.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy
  • Twitter – https://twitter.com/en/privacy
  • Instagram – https://help.instagram.com/155833707900388
  • Snap chat – https://www.snap.com/en-GB/privacy/privacy-policy/
  • Tik Tok – https://www.tiktok.com/legal/privacy-policy?lang=en

Our website might use social sharing buttons which help share web content directly from web pages to the social media platform in question. You are advised that it is your choice to use social sharing buttons and please note that the social media platform may track and save your request to share a web page afterwards through your social media platform account.

Shortened Links in Social Media

We may share web links to relevant web pages. By default some social media platforms shorten lengthy URLs (this is an example: http://bit.ly/zyVUBo).

You are advised to be careful and use good judgement before clicking any shortened URLs published on social media platforms. We try to make sure that only genuine URLs are put on our site but many social media platforms are prone to spam and hacking and so we cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any shortened links.

Evaluation

We also ask young people and professionals to tell us what they think about our services – we collect this evaluation information to make sure our services are relevant for young people and to make sure that our services are the best they can be.  We make this information anonymous so that no one knows who said it.  We share this anonymous information on our website, with our funders, in our social media posts and tweets and sometimes in presentations.  We use Survey Monkey so that young people and professionals can tell us what they think online.   You can Click here for Survey Monkey Cookies Policy  https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/legal/privacy-policy/#pp-section-6  and here for Survey Monkey Respondents Cookie Policy to find out how they use and keep your information  https://help.surveymonkey.com/articles/en_US/kb/About-the-cookies-we-use?uid=N_2B8rEPMo89Xt5qvBRjRcmHC5HtvfJdoApE1eQ5Pj9pjb_2FOTeS8Yt3pPjKGaH6S1CVbi45sIjqDkxy0BuKIwbIzEQ2LJmdLxLgzezCJLvV3Q_3D

You have the following rights:

  • You can take away your permission for us to use your information at any time (although we may have to keep some information by law), just email, phone (see below for information) or talk to your worker if you want to change your permission to share,
  • You can ask us to correct your information if you think it is wrong.  We won’t use your information until we are sure that it is correct,
  • You can ask questions about how we process your information and you can ask to have copies of information that we hold about you, or send copies to other agencies.  We will not give copies our workers notes from one-to-one or Drop-in files but we can type up information from these files if you ask for this,
  • You can refuse to let us use your information for certain things (like research or marketing) if it is not needed by law,
  • You have the right to know if we are going to use your information for profiling or automatic processing – at the moment we don’t do any profiling or automatic processing,
  • You can make a complaint if you think we have not been careful with your information (see below for contact information)

Let’s Talk has a list of all the information we collect and we have secure systems for keeping everyone’s information safe and secure.  We do regular checks to make sure all information is safe and secure.

The table below shows how long we keep some types of information: