Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting the website of the Guild of Professional Toastmasters (the Guild)

We are committed to respecting and protecting the privacy rights of our website users and clients. This policy describes the types of information that the Guild or its members may collect from you or that you may provide when you visit our website and complete the enquiry form.  It describes our practices for collecting, using, protecting and disclosing that information. By visiting our website, you are accepting the practices described in this policy.

In simplified form (greater detail is provided below), our policy can be summarised as follows:

1. We may collect some information about you, as described in this policy, but you can control how much you share about yourself.

2. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 18 years of age.

3. We will not sell your personal information but may share such information with third-party service providers, with whose identity you may have provided us or in order to administer functions on your behalf.

4. We may collect, use and share aggregate, anonymous information about our users.

5. In certain legal situations, we may be compelled to disclose your personal information.

6. If you are outside the United Kingdom, you understand and agree that we store your information in the United Kingdom.

What personal information do we collect?

When you contact the Guild or its members, either through our website or by other means, we will collect personal data as necessary to provide information, quotations or a service to you. Typical information required may be your name, postal address, telephone number, email address and date and nature of function at which you may wish to engage us.

We may ask you to provide us with additional information including:

• Information that you provide by completing the form on website. This includes information provided to share your stories, post events, leave comments, or request further services.
• Records and copies of your correspondence (including email addresses), if you contact us.
• Your responses to surveys that we might ask you to complete for research purposes.
• Details of transactions you carry out when booking our services.
• Your search queries on our website.

There may be features that are developed in the future that may result in the collection of additional new information.

For example, you provide information when you search for a content;  communicate with us by phone, email, or otherwise; complete a questionnaire; or use other features.  As a result of those actions, you might supply us with such information as your name (or another person’s), address, and phone numbers; content of emails to us;  and financial information.

You can choose not to provide certain information or to have it deleted, by contacting us, but then you might not be able to take advantage of our services.  We use the information that you provide for such purposes as responding to your requests, customising your future visits to our website, improving our website, and communicating with you.

Any information we collect automatically is statistical data, and does not identify any individual. It helps us to improve our website and to deliver a better and more personalised service by enabling us to:

• Estimate our audience size, browser statistics, and popularity of content and usage patterns.
• Speed up your searches.
• Recognise you when you return to our website.

Why do we retain personal data?

We retain personal data to fulfil any legal or regulatory obligations and for legitimate business purposes.  We may save personal data for longer periods than required by law if it is in our legitimate business interests and not prohibited by law.  We will continue to use and disclose such personal data only in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

How does the Guild of Professional Toastmasters use collected information?

We use information that we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information:

• To provide you with information, products or services as part of your enquiry or booking.
• To offer and fulfil our legitimate business purposes.
• To fulfil any other purpose for which you provide it.
• To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection.
• To notify you about changes to our website or any products or services we offer or provide.
• To present our website and its contents to you.
• To store information about your preferences, allowing us to customise our website according to your individual interests.
• In any other way we may describe when you provide the information including service testimonials.
• For any other purpose with your consent.

What about cookies?

Cookies are small information files which are saved to your website browser to collect certain information about your use of the Guild of Toastmasters website. Some of these cookies are essential so as to make the web site work properly and to enhance your experience. We would like to inform you that the cookies we use do not store personal data and therefore we do advise that you keep cookies active whilst visiting our website as you may experience issues with pages not working or displaying correctly if you disable them.

We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of this website. Google Analytics generates statistical and other key user experience information by means of cookies, which are stored on users’ computers. The information generated relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of the website. Google will store this information. Google’s privacy policy is available at: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html.

We also use JavaScript to speed up your experience while you are visiting our website.

Cookies are used by us to collect anonymous information to enhance your experience with our website in the future and to assist us in identifying your particular needs or requirements.

You have the option to change your browser settings to accept or reject cookies. If cookies are already on your computer you can delete them.

If you delete either the cookies or the JavaScript this may impair the functionality of our website.

Most browsers automatically except cookies but you can choose not to. To do this you will need to update your individual browser settings.

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select "Remember Me", your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Do I have choices about sharing my information?

You may choose not to provide data and opt out of services and communications along the way, but certain services, may be unavailable to you as a result.

You can opt out of receiving non-essential communications via email, postal mail, or telephone.  Even if you opt out of getting messages, we will still send you transactional messages such as booking confirmations, receipts and communications necessary to further our legitimate business interests.  To opt out of receiving any type of communication please send your request via email to info@guild-of-toastmasters.co.uk

How secure is my information?

The Guild is committed to protecting the security of your personal information and maintains physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that meet industry standards to guard your personal information. We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorised access, use or disclosure. We protect your information by using firewalls and other security technology to protect our network and systems from external attacks.

We urge you to be careful about giving out information in public areas of our website. The information you share in public areas may be viewed by any user of our website. It is important for you to guard against unauthorised access to your password and to your computer. When using a shared computer, be sure to sign off when finished.

Effective May 25, 2018