(For our Children’s Privacy Notice, please see below towards the end of this page)

Swimathon.org (the “Website”) is operated by Swimathon Foundation on behalf of Swimathon (Trading) Ltd (a company registered in England with number 06706774) which is owned and controlled by Swimathon Foundation (a charity registered in England with number 1123870) and a company limited by guarantee (registered in England with number 04684234). Swimathon Foundation and Swimathon (Trading) Ltd (together “we”/“us”/, “our” or “us”) are committed to protecting the privacy of our users. This privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) is intended to inform you about how we gather, define, and use your personal information, such as your name, email address, address and other contact details (“Personal Information”). Please use this Privacy Policy to help you decide whether and how you wish to use our site and our products and services. Please take a moment to read it carefully.

All your Personal Information shall be used in accordance with the applicable UK law (the “Act”). If you want to know what information we collect and hold about you, please email us on info@swimathon.org.

The Swimathon Foundation are the data controllers of your Personal Information for the purpose of the Act. This Website is hosted by square space with the registration platform being hosted by Njuko. The data is located in a secure datacentre in London.

What information do we collect?

When you visit our Website, or contact us by email, we may collect the following information:

·       Personal Information that you choose to share with us when you register for Swimathon or use of the Swimathon dashboard;

·       Sensitive Personal Information that you choose to share with us if you provide us with medical details when you are deciding whether to take part in Swimathon;

·       If you choose to correspond with us through email or by text, we may retain the content of your email or text messages together with your email address or phone number (as the case may be) and our responses;

·       Information about the way our Website has been used by you and others – collected on an aggregate basis; and

·       Your IP address and other information (e.g. the browser you are using) may be collected when you interact with our Website e.g. when you subscribe to our emails.

It is important that all the Personal Information you give us when you register as a user is correct and accurate. This includes, by way of example only, ensuring that we have your correct contact (including email) details at all times.

Once we have received your Personal Information we will use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access.

How do we use the information you provide to us?

In general terms, we use Personal Information to provide you with the services you request, process payment, for key event updates, for customer research and to send you marketing and promotional emails. We may also use the Personal Information we collect to notify you about important changes to our Website.

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)/Data Protection Act 2018, the lawful bases we may rely on for processing this information are:

·       Where you have consented before the processing;

·       Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you;

·       Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests; and/or

·       Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Marketing

We may use Personal Information we collect to notify you about new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. We may share your Personal Information with our respective group companies. and with Swimathon Foundation and its group companies. We ensure your Personal Information is protected by requiring our respective group companies and Swimathon Foundation and its group companies to follow the same rules when processing it.

We may also pass your Personal Information to our third party partners for marketing purposes. Please note that this will only be done if you have consented to receiving such communications at the point of registration (via an opt-in box) or at any time. If you do not wish to receive these communications from our third party partners you must not tick the opt-in box at registration, or you may notify us at any time by emailing us at info@swimathon.org or by clicking the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of email communications, which we or the third party partner send you.

If you think that the data we hold about you is incorrect, or outdated, email us at info@swimathon.org and we will ensure it is changed or removed.

We keep Personal Information for 36 months from the later of (i) the event date that you participated in or (ii) your last interaction or engagement with us (which includes the opening of any email we have sent you). We will then dispose your information by anonymising the data and removing all identifiable information from our systems.

Opt out of receiving emails

You can unsubscribe from our emails at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the footer of the email you have received. Alternatively, email us at info@swimathon.org. Please allow 48 hours for your email address to be removed from our system.

Your data protection rights

 Under data protection law, you have rights including:

·       Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your Personal Information.

·       Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify Personal Information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.

·       Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to erase your Personal Information in certain circumstances.

·       Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your Personal Information in certain circumstances.

·       Your right to object to processing - You have the the right to object to the processing of your Personal Information in certain circumstances.

·       Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the Personal Information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any fee for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

Please contact us at [info@swimathon.org] if you wish to make a request.

How to complain

If you have any concerns about our use of your Personal Information, you can make a complaint to us at info@swimathon.org.

You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

The ICO’s address:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk

Our policy on Cookies

In common with other commercial websites, our Website utilises a standard technology called “cookies” and web server logs to collect information about how our Website is used. Information gathered through cookies and web server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent on our Website, and the websites and apps visited just before and just after visiting our Website.

We use cookies to:

·       remember you when you visit this Website to keep track of your browsing patterns and to build up a profile of how you and other users use the Website;

·       make our Website work as efficiently as possible; and

·       facilitate transactions and administer services to you and to our partners.

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a very small text document, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier. When you visit a website, that site’s computer asks your computer for permission to store this file in a part of your hard drive specifically designated for cookies. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser’s preferences allow it, but in order to protect your privacy, your browser only permits a website to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites. Find out more about the use of cookies on https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/online/cookies/.

How do we use information we collect from cookies?

As you browse our Website, the site uses its cookies to differentiate you from other users to prevent you from seeing unnecessary advertisements or requiring you to log in more often than is necessary. Cookies, in conjunction with our web server’s log files, allow us to calculate the aggregate number of people visiting our Website and to determine which parts of the Website are most popular. This helps us gather feedback to constantly improve our Website and better serve you.

Cookies do not allow us to gather any Personal Information about you and we do not generally store any Personal Information that you provided to us in your cookies.

Third Party Cookies

Most of the cookies we use are ours, however, on occasion, we will issue a cookie by a third party to help us operate the Website – these are sometimes known as “web beacons” or “clear gifts”. These cookies cannot be used to identify an individual as they are completely anonymised; they can only be used for statistical purposes, for example, in providing you with advertisements that are more relevant to your interests.

For example, third party vendors such as Google and Facebook, show our ads on sites on the internet and use cookies to serve ads on such sites (including your Facebook account) based on your relationship with us or prior visits to our Website and to determine which advertisements and promotions users have seen and how users responded to them and to serve advertising onto our Website. Analytics data may also be used to this effect.

For this purpose, we may disclose:

·       generic, aggregated or anonymised data relating to your visits and use of our Website, but we will not disclose any of your Personal Information which identifies you or from which you may be identifiable i.e. we will not disclose your contact details such as your email address, name, address or telephone number; or

·       information in a pseudonymised form such as a browser cookie ID / code or cryptographic hash of your email address to help us tailor and display our ads to you on other services. This ID or code is matched against your equivalent unique code similarly generated by our ad partners to tailor advertising to you.

The third party companies that generate these cookies have their own, very strict, privacy policies but we don’t have access to these cookies; other than allowing them to be served, we have no role to play in these cookies at all (although we may use statistical information arising from these third party cookies and provided to us by third parties, to improve our Website and apps experience).

You may opt out of Google's use of cookies by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page (https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ads). For more information on opting out of third party vendors’ use of cookies please visit Your Online Choices (http://www.youronlinechoices.com/uk).

We use Facebook services to deliver our ads to you during your browsing experience / whilst you are online. You can control how Facebook uses data to show you ads by turning off ads which may be based on interests and / or your relationship with specific advertisers, in your ad preference settings. For further information, please visit Facebook which allows you to learn more about Facebook ads and cookies and to update your settings (www.facebook.com/policies/cookies).

If you have opted out of receiving our marketing communications when you register with us, we will not share your details with Facebook in a pseudomnyised form and we will not appear as a named advertiser in your settings. Please note however that where you have opted out of receiving our marketing communications via the methods described above, you may still see our non-targeted adverts whilst you are online if your interests settings on Facebook are aligned to an audience segment (pre-defined by Facebook) which our business is also associated with. We do not control whether these ads are displayed to you. Please see the relevant link above for details on how to learn more and manage Facebook ad settings.

Further, to learn more about adverts which are displayed to you whilst you are online, please consult the applicable website’s privacy and cookies policy and the Your Online Choices link above.

How do I remove or block cookies?

Most browsers allow you to remove any cookies and/or block any new cookies being set. To turn off cookies, look at the “help” menu on your browser. However, please note that switching off cookies may restrict your use of the Website and/or delay or affect the way in which they operate. 

Duration of Cookies

Except for essential cookies, all cookies will expire after the browser session is terminated, ie. when you close the browser that you are using.

Sharing Personal Information with third parties

We treat the security and method of processing your Personal Information very seriously, and we will never sell your Personal Information under any circumstances.

However, we may disclose your Personal Information to selected third parties in the following situations:

·       if we buy or sell any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your Personal Information to the seller or buyer of such business or assets, as appropriate;

·       if we are under a duty to disclose or share your Personal Information to comply with any legal obligation or in order to enforce or apply our terms and conditions and other agreements or protect the rights, property, or safety of our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

We may also disclose your Personal Information to third parties in accordance with your authorisation as expressed via “opt-ins” e.g. at the point of registration.

Sharing Personal Information with third party delivery parties 

If required for the operation of Swimathon, we may share the following information with the Swimathon venues to allow them to organise an event: 

·                Your name;  

·                Your date of birth; 

·                Your contact information (for functional purposes only e.g. a session change); 

·                Your medical information; 

·                Your selected distance challenge; 

·                Your swim speed. 

How can you access and correct your Personal Information?

Should you have any queries about any Personal Information which we hold about you, you may submit a request to us by sending an email to info@swimathon.org and we shall endeavour to respond to any such request as soon as we are able.

Your consent and changes to our Privacy and Cookie Policy

By using our Website and/or Apps you consent to our collection and use of your Personal Information as described in this Privacy and Cookie Policy. If we change our privacy policies and procedures, we will post those changes on our Website to keep you aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we may disclose it. By continuing to access our Website after any change is posted, you agree to any such change to our Privacy and Cookie Policy.

Where we store your Personal Information

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to and stored at a destination outside the UK. By submitting your Personal Information you agree to this transfer, storage and processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your Personal Information is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Whenever we transfer your Personal Information out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

·       We will only transfer your Personal Information to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for Personal Information;

·       where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give Personal Information the same protection it has in the UK.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your Personal Information out of the UK.

Partners

When you register with us, there will be an option to “opt-in” to receiving communications from one of our partners. If you chose to “opt-in” to these communications, then only your email address and contact details will be passed on to the relevant partner. By choosing to “opt-in”, you are agreeing to our partners’ terms and conditions and privacy policies, which can be found at https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/, https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/, https://www.givengain.com/ , https://www.better.org.uk/, http://www.fusion-lifestyle.com/, https://www.parkwoodleisure.co.uk/, https://www.everyoneactive.com/, https://www.placesforpeople.co.uk/, https://www.freedom-leisure.co.uk/, https://www.swimming.org/swimengland/, https://www.swimwales.org/, https://www.scottishswimming.com/

Children’s Privacy Notice

Hi! We are Swimathon Foundation and we are responsible for this site. Thank you for visiting us and reading our privacy notice!

First things first: If you are under 16 years old, you must make sure you have your mum, dad or other guardian’s approval to use this site.

When you use our site, we may end up with some information about you. This notice lets you know what information we receive, and what we do with it.

You have rights to ensure that if you don’t like what we are doing with your Personal Information, you can tell us to stop. If you want to do this, or if you want to know more about the information we collect and hold about you, please email us on info@swimathon.org.

For more detailed information on the below please have a look at our ‘Privacy Policy’ above.

What information about you do we collect?

There are a few different types of information we might receive of yours, depending on how you use our site. For example, we may collect the following information:

·       If you choose to contact us by email, we may retain the content of your email messages plus your email address and our responses;

·       Information about the way our Website has been used by you and others – collected on a combined basis. Some of this information is provided by cookies (little bits of computer software) that operate on our site. For more information about cookies, how they work, and the ones we use on our site, please see our Cookies Policy; and

·       technical information your computer, tablet or phone tells us, like where you are and the device (e.g. your phone or PC) or web browser you are using.

If you set up a Swimathon account, we might receive Personal Information about you including:

·       your name, your date of birth and your gender

·       your post code and your county;

·       your username; and

·       your email address and password.

If you use the MySwimathon dashboard, we might also receive information about you on:

·       your selected swimming distance;

·       the swim times you have achieved;

·       the venue you participate at; and

·       the date of the swim(s).

How we use information about you

We use the information listed above because:

·       we have asked you and you or your guardian have agreed; or

·       we have thought about it and we think it is fair on you (and us) to do so. 

We use your information:

·       to recognise you when you come back to our site, and provide you with content that is better suited to you;

·       to respond to you when you contact us, or otherwise deal with any of your requests;

·       to do our homework on who is using our site and our services;

Who we share your information with

·       We occasionally need to share your details with the people that we work with to keep our site up to date and to make it better.

·       If we sell all or part of our business to another company, all of the information we have collected about you will be sold with it and may have to be disclosed.

·       We may also need to provide your information to people who advise us (like lawyers and accountants), or organisations who regulate what we do.  

·       In order to run a safe and lawful business we may share information with those who help us to do this.

·       If you are under 16, we will never contact you directly or share your details with any other person or company for marketing purposes.

·       If you are 16 or over:

o   we may use the information we receive from you to contact you about services and offers we think you will like and we also may pass your information to persons or companies we work with for the same reason. We will only do this if you agreed to this at registration (via an opt-in box) or at any time.

If you don’t want to receive these communications don’t tick the opt-in box at registration, or tell us at any time by contacting us at info@swimathon.org. You can also click the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of the email communication which was sent to you; and

o   we may share your general, unidentifiable data about your visits and use of our Website with people we work with, such as social media sites (like Facebook) so that adverts you are interested in can be sent to you but we will never disclose any of your Personal Information which identifies you or from which you may be identifiable.

This information about you is provided via cookies on our site. For more information on the cookies and how you can stop them working, see our Cookies Policy).

How we look after your information and how long we keep it for

We take a number of steps to ensure that any of the information we hold of yours is secure and protected. We will only hold onto your information for as long as we need it to provide the services you have requested from us. We may hold onto your information for longer if we think we will need it for legal claims that could be made against us.

Transfers of your information outside the UK

We are based in the UK and generally we will only hold your information in the UK.

Sometimes we may share your Personal Information with companies outside the UK who provide services to us, for example companies that help us look after the information on our Website. If we do, we make sure that your information is protected in the same way as if it were still with us in the UK, this may include using special contracts to guarantee the security of your Personal Information.

Your rights to the information we hold about you

You have the right at any time:

·       to ask us to delete any information (like your email address) that we hold in certain circumstances;

·       to request a detailed summary of the information we hold about you free of charge;

·       to ask us to correct any of your Personal Information that is incorrect;

·       to ask us to stop or limit using any of your Personal Information;

·       to change your mind about our holding your information; and

·       to ask that we transfer your Personal Information to someone else.

Please contact us at info@swimathon.org if you wish to make a request.

You also have the right at any time to complain about us to the person who protects your privacy rights in the UK: the Information Commissioner’s Office (https://ico.org.uk);

Changes to this information

We may make changes to this notice from time to time. We will post any changes to our site, or let you know by sending you an email.

Updated 21/10/2024