Privacy Policy

The Mix takes your privacy very seriously

Under General Data Protection Regulation, The Mix is the “Data Controller”. In simple terms, this means that we determine what personal information about you is collected and what it will be used for. 

In a situation where information is collected, you will be told what it is being collected and for what purpose we will use it. 

We understand that anonymity is extremely important in some areas of The Mix. We have a general confidentiality policythat applies to all areas where young people interact with us.

How and why we collect user data

We collect and use the details you give us so that we can help you. Processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by The Mix by providing you with services, and so that we can run our charity in accordance with all applicable laws.  

If you don’t want to give us certain information, you don’t have to. 

Before using or accessing our services please read through our Privacy Policy. When you use or access The Mix services you acknowledge that we will use your personal information in the way set out in this Privacy Policy.  The specific services that you can access and an explanation of how your data is used for those services is outlined below.  

We collect and use your personal information to help solve your challenges, to build a better service, to better tailor information/advice to individual user’s situations and tackle wider issues in society that affect young people’s lives.  Personal information which you upload to our website (such as on our discussion boards) is processed in order to perform a contract with you, subject to our website Terms of Use (which you can review here).  Otherwise, most of our work is conducted on the basis of our legitimate interest in (i) providing confidential advice and counselling services to young people; and (ii) conducting research and analytics to understand the efficacy of our work.  In limited circumstances, we may be required to collect or disclose personal information under a legal obligation.  Our use of sensitive personal information (‘special category data’) is normally based on consent – see below for more information.  

We always let you decide what you’re comfortable telling us and treat it as confidential. 

On the occasions where we would like to use your information to communicate with you (for example, as a way to contact you about campaigns or content which we think you may like), we will always ensure your consent is actively sought. You will never be signed up for these automatically. 

You may contact The Mix by e-mail at [email protected] if you have any questions about our privacy policy. 

One-to-one webchat & email support

What information we ask for 

Depending on how you access our services, we may collect your surname, telephone number, email or IP address. In order to make the conversation between you and our volunteers flow more smoothly we may ask you to provide us with your first name. We also collect information like your age, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation, location, and details about your challenge and the nature of help you are seeking. 

When you are in conversation with us you may tell us things which involve the following topics: 

  • ethnic origin; 
  • religious or philosophical beliefs; 
  • trade union membership; 
  • health; 
  • sex life; 
  • or sexual orientation. 

This list isn’t exhaustive, and you can choose to talk with us about anything you would like or need to. However, under data protection law, the types of information listed above are classed as special category data. That means that we require your specific consent in order to store this information within the confidential record of our conversation with you.  In circumstances where you are unable to choose whether to give consent, or where we cannot reasonably be expected to obtain consent, the law permits us to process your special category information solely for the purposes of providing confidential counselling, advice or support. 

How we use your information 

The main reason we ask for your information is to help solve your challenges, and to better tailor information/advice to you. 

We access your information only when we need to, for example: 

  • for safeguarding reasons
  • for training and quality purposes 
  • to produce anonymised statistics about service use 
  • to get feedback from you about our services 
  • we may use aggregated, anonymised information such as age, gender, and the time of contact to better understand user behaviour and improve our services 

Your chats or emails are recorded and stored. We keep the webchat transcripts and emails for a few reasons. We use the information for internal purposes such as auditing and training. In addition, we use anonymised or aggregated data to conduct analysis of trends across our services, so that we can improve the services we provide to our users. Read more in our confidentiality policy for situations when this might change. 

 Understanding young people’s issues 

  • We use some information to create statistics about who we’re helping, what issues are the most common and to understand other trends. This information is always anonymised – you can’t be identified. 
  • We may share these with third parties such as funders or regulators and publicly on our blogs, website, through reports, social media and press releases. 
  • These insights also inform our campaigns or media work. 

When we share your information with Third Parties 

We have created a formal process for sharing information including transcripts with researchers at universities and other institutions. We take steps to de-identify any personal data which we process and minimise the instances in which such processing takes place. We only share this data with trusted researchers when it will result in insights that create a better experience for our service users or will help us better understand young people’s issues. We will always follow best practices for sharing data typically based on the guidance from the institution’s ethics committee, and any relevant legal limitations or security checks. 

Occasionally, someone outside The Mix is authorised to observe the chat. This could be in real time, or an anonymised playback. This could be someone who is looking to join The Mix so they understand the work we do. To do this they must sign a confidentiality agreement. 

If you do not ever want someone outside of The Mix observing your interaction with one-to-one webchat or email, please let us know. The Mix does not hand over transcripts unless they are anonymised (or will immediately be anonymised by the research institution) and used for research purposes, or unless it is necessary or legally required to do so. You can read more in Our Confidentiality Policy.  

Storing your information 

We store our data from these services in three places: Office365, AWS and SalesforceWe keep your information for 7 years. 

After this period, we anonymise the data that is extracted from our conversations with you. This anonymised data will be retained indefinitely. This data is independent of your conversation with us and cannot be attributed to you. We keep this data as it helps us to improve our own services and it contributes to our data set. 

We take the protection of your data very seriously. We take administrative, technical, and physical measures, to protect your Personal and Sensitive data from loss, theft, misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. We store all information on servers within the UK or EU and we only permit approved employees and third parties, such as our service providers, who are subject to contractual restrictions on their processing of your information, to access those servers. 

Counselling

What information we ask for 

Depending on how you access our services we may collect your telephone number, email or IP address. We also collect information like your age, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation, location, and details about your case and the nature of help you are seeking. 

When you are in conversation with us you may tell us things which involve the following topics: 

  • ethnic origin; 
  • religious or philosophical beliefs; 
  • trade union membership; 
  • health; 
  • sex life; 
  • or sexual orientation. 

This list isn’t exhaustive, and you can choose to talk with us about anything you would like or need to. However, under data protection law, the types of information listed above are classed as special category data. That means that we require your specific consent in order to store this information within the confidential record of our conversation with you. In circumstances where you are unable to choose whether to give consent, or where we cannot reasonably be expected to obtain consent, the law permits us to process your special category information solely for the purposes of providing confidential counselling, advice or support. 

How we use your information 

The main reason we ask for your information is to help solve your challenges, and to better tailor information/advice to you. 

We access your information only when we need to, for example: 

  • for safeguarding reasons
  • for training and quality purposes 
  • to produce anonymised statistics about service use 
  • to get feedback from you about our services 
  • we may use aggregated, anonymised information such as age, gender, and the time of contact to better understand user behaviour and improve our service 

Your calls or chats are recorded and stored. We keep the webchat transcripts and telephone recordings for a few reasons. We use the information for internal purposes such as auditing and training. In addition, we use anonymised or aggregated data to conduct analysis of trends across our services, so that we can improve the services we provide to our users. Read more in our confidentiality policy for situations when this might change. 

Understanding young people’s issues 

  • We use some information to create statistics about who we’re helping, what issues are the most common and to understand other trends. This information is always anonymised – you can’t be identified. 
  • We may share these with third parties such as funders or regulators and publicly on our blogs, website, through reports, social media and press releases. 
  • These insights also inform our campaigns or media work. 

When we share your information with Third Parties 

We have created a formal process for sharing information including transcripts with researchers at universities and other institutions. We take steps to de-identify any personal data which we process and minimise the instances in which such processing takes place. We only share this data with trusted researchers when it will result in insights that create a better experience for our service users or will help us better understand young people’s issues. We will always follow best practices for sharing data typically based on the guidance from the institution’s ethics committee, and any relevant legal limitations or security checks. 

The Mix does not hand over transcripts unless they are anonymised (or will immediately be anonymised by the research institution) and used for research purposes, or unless it is necessary or legally required to do so. You can read more inOur Confidentiality Policy 

Storing your information 

We store our counselling data in three places: Office365, AWS and SalesforceWe keep your information, notes and recordings for 7 years. 

After this period, we anonymise the data that is extracted from our conversations with you. This anonymised data will be retained indefinitely. This data is independent of your conversation with us cannot be attributed to you. We keep this data as it helps us to improve our own services and it contributes to our data set. 

We take the protection of your data very seriously. We take administrative, technical, and physical measures, to protect your Personal and Sensitive data from loss, theft, misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. We store all information on servers within the UK and we only permit approved employees and third parties, such as our service providers, who are subject to contractual restrictions on their processing of your informationto access those servers. 

Crisis Messenger 

This service is delivered in partnership with Crisis Text Line and Shout. Please read their Service and User Privacy and Confidentiality Policy. 

Discussion boards 

During the registration process, we collect your email address, IP address and date of birth. Your registration details are linked to your account and will be stored on our service provider’s forum software system, Vanilla, for as long as your account exists. If you have not logged into your account for 3 years, we consider your account inactive and delete your personal information.  In the extremely rare case that we need to break confidentiality, we may use this data to help identify you. Please see our confidentiality policy for more information. In such a case, we will keep a record of what happened and store all identifying information we hold on you on Office 365 in line with our confidentiality policy. Only the community, safeguarding and technical staff teams have access to this information. 

We use some information to create insights about who we’re helping, what issues are the most common and to understand other trends. This information is always anonymised – you can’t be identified. This data is stored on our internal Office 365. This is used to improve the services we provide. We may share these with third parties such as funders or regulators and publicly on our blogs, website, through reports, social media and press releases. These insights also inform our campaigns or media work.  

We have created a formal process for sharing information including transcripts with researchers at universities and other institutions. We take steps to de-identify any personal data which we process and minimise the instances in which such processing takes place. We only share this data with trusted researchers when it will result in insights that create a better experience for our service users or will help us better understand young people’s issues. We will always follow best practices for sharing data typically based on the guidance from the institution’s ethics committee, and any relevant legal limitations or security checks. 

Anecdotal data may also be included in feedback given to us by community members, as well as session summaries given to staff by moderators. This data is stored on our internal Office 365 and only the community staff team have access. 

Cookies are also used in connection with the discussion boards to provide users with a better experience by recognising the user and informing him or her of which postings are new since the previous visit. Cookies can be disabled by following the instructions in our Cookies Policy 

Group Chat

During the registration process, we collect your email and IP address. Your registration details are linked to your account and will be stored on our service provider’s ChatWee system for as long as your account exists. In the extremely rare case that we need to break confidentiality, we may use this data to help identify you. Please see our confidentiality policy for more information. In such a case, we will keep a record of what happened and store all identifying information we hold on you on Office 365 in line with our confidentiality policy. Only the community, safeguarding and technical staff teams have access to this information. 

We privately store transcripts of all group chat sessions. These are stored on Chatwee and Office 365. They are kept mainly for safeguarding purposes and to train our volunteers, as well as to reference if we need to address conflict between members of the community or any incidents where guidelines have been broken. Transcripts are held for seven years. Only the community, safeguarding and technical staff teams have access to this information.  

We use some information to create statistics about who we’re helping, what issues are the most common and to understand other trends. This information is always anonymised – you can’t be identified. This data is stored on our internal Office 365. This is used to improve the services we provide. We may share these with third parties such as funders or regulators and publicly on our blogs, website, through reports, social media and press releases. These insights also inform our campaigns or media work.  

We have created a formal process for sharing information including transcripts with researchers at universities and other institutions. We take steps to de-identify any personal data which we process and minimise the instances in which such processing takes place. We only share this data with trusted researchers when it will result in insights that create a better experience for our service users or will help us better understand young people’s issues. We will always follow best practices for sharing data typically based on the guidance from the institution’s ethics committee, and any relevant legal limitations or security checks. 

ChatBot

What information we ask for

We do not ask for personal information on our ChatBot. However, when you use the Bot or click through to attached surveys you may tell us things which involve the following topics:

  • ethnic origin;
  • religious or philosophical beliefs;
  • trade union membership;
  • health;
  • sex life;
  • or sexual orientation.

This list isn’t exhaustive, and you can choose to talk with us about anything you would like or need to. However, under data protection law, the types of information listed above are classed as special category data. That means that we require your specific consent in order to store this information within the confidential record of our conversation with you. In circumstances where you are unable to choose whether to give consent, or where we cannot reasonably be expected to obtain consent, the law permits us to process your special category information solely for the purposes of providing confidential counselling, advice or support.

How we use your information

The main reason we ask for your information is to help solve your challenges, and to better tailor information/advice to you.

We access your information only when we need to, for example:

  • for training and quality purposes
  • to produce anonymised statistics about service use
  • to get feedback from you about our services
  • we may use aggregated, anonymised information such as age, gender, and the time of contact to better understand user behaviour and improve our service

Your calls or chats are recorded and stored. We keep the webchat transcripts and telephone recordings for a few reasons. We use the information for internal purposes such as auditing and training. In addition, we use anonymised or aggregated data to conduct analysis of trends across our services, so that we can improve the services we provide to our users. Read more in our confidentiality policy for situations when this might change.

Understanding young people’s issues

  • We use some information to create statistics about who we’re helping, what issues are the most common and to understand other trends. This information is always anonymised – you can’t be identified.
  • We may share these with third parties such as funders or regulators and publicly on our blogs, website, through reports, social media and press releases.
  • These insights also inform our campaigns or media work.

When we share your information with Third Parties

We have created a formal process for sharing information including transcripts with researchers at universities and other institutions. We take steps to de-identify any personal data which we process and minimise the instances in which such processing takes place. We only share this data with trusted researchers when it will result in insights that create a better experience for our service users or will help us better understand young people’s issues. We will always follow best practices for sharing data typically based on the guidance from the institution’s ethics committee, and any relevant legal limitations or security checks.

The Mix does not hand over transcripts unless they are anonymised (or will immediately be anonymised by the research institution) and used for research purposes, or unless it is necessary or legally required to do so. You can read more inOur Confidentiality Policy

The Chatbot is powered by Futr AI (hyperlink https://futr.ai/privacy-policy/). Please see their statement on data collection:

We do not persist any personal data. We do persist the questions asked to run the analytics we provide but we do not request any user information against each question. We adhere to our customers cookies policies and we encrypt data in transit and at rest. The user does have the ability to clear their transcripts which will delete the messages provided but the metadata is stored so that we can offer seasonal analytics.

Storing your information

We store our chatbot data in two places: Office365 and Futr AI Platform. We keep your information, notes and transcripts for 7 years.

After this period, we anonymise the data that is extracted from our conversations with you. This anonymised data will be retained indefinitely. This data is independent of your conversation with us cannot be attributed to you. We keep this data as it helps us to improve our own services and it contributes to our data set.

We take the protection of your data very seriously. We take administrative, technical, and physical measures, to protect your Personal and Sensitive data from loss, theft, misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. We store all information on servers within the UK and we only permit approved employees and third parties, such as our service providers, who are subject to contractual restrictions on their processing of your information, to access those servers.

Your Voices

Your Voices allows users to share and upload their stories, photos, videos or playlists to The Mix. When registering for this service we require you to provide a valid email address, a user name and age. This information will not be passed onto third parties. 

We will always ensure that users are given the option to sign up for any newsletters we send out. If you submit any content to Your Voices that you want to be removed please contact our Digital Delivery team. 

Home Truths

When you register on our Home Truths platform we require you to provide a valid email address and a user name. This information will not be passed onto third parties. 

Polls, Triage Tool

When we run polls on The Mix we use “cookies”. These are small data files that we send to your Internet browser, which are stored on your computer’s hard-drive and subsequently “read back” if you visit The Mix again. This enables us to recognise you when you return and to know if you have already voted. The only information stored is your IP address, a numerical label assigned to each computer in a computer network. 

Our Triage Tool also use “cookies” to store your results so you can go back to them no matter what page you navigate to. 

You can set your Internet browser to reject cookies. However, if you do some functions of the site may not work properly. In order to do this, please follow the instructions in our Cookies Policy.

Comments

During the registration process, we collect your email address, IP address and date of birth. Your registration details are linked to your account and will be stored on the third party forum software system, Vanilla, for as long as your account exists. If you have not logged into your account for 3 years we consider your account inactive and delete your personal information.  In the extremely rare case that we need to break confidentiality, we may use this data to help identify you. Please see our confidentiality policy for more information. In such a case, we will keep a record of what happened and store all identifying information we hold on you on Office 365 in line with our confidentiality policy. Only the community, safeguarding and technical staff teams have access to this information. 

We use some information to create statistics about who we’re helping, what issues are the most common and to understand other trends. This information is always anonymised – you can’t be identified. This data is stored on our internal Office 365. 

This is used to improve the services we provide. We may share these with third parties such as funders or regulators and publicly on our blogs, website, through reports, social media and press releases. These insights also inform our campaigns or media work.  

Anecdotal data may also be included in feedback given to us by community members, as well as session summaries given to staff by moderators. This data is stored on our internal Office 365 and only the community staff team have access. 

Cookies are also used in connection with the discussion boards to provide users with a better experience by recognising the user and informing him or her of which postings are new since the previous visit. Cookies can be disabled by following the instructions in ourCookies Policy. 

Mailing lists and our newsletters

The Mix will only use your data to send you information relevant to the type of communication you signed up for. You can unsubscribe from our mailing list by clicking unsubscribe at the bottom of our emails. 

General newsletter (‘The Mix Newsletter’)

By signing up to the general newsletter you consent to receiving a newsletter up to once a month with all the latest news from across The Mix including new videos, articles, events and fundraising opportunities. We will only use your data to send you the general newsletter. 

We use MailChimp as our marketing automation platform. By signing up to receive this newsletter, you acknowledge that the information you provide will be transferred to MailChimp for processing in accordance with their Privacy Policy and Terms. 

We use Salesforce to store your proof of consent. By signing up to receive this newsletter, you acknowledge that the information you provide will be transferred to Salesforce for processing in accordance with their Privacy PolicyandTerms. 

You can unsubscribe from receiving the newsletter at any time by clicking unsubscribe at the bottom of the email. 

Surveys 

The Mix may run online surveys to evaluate our impact, to find out how we can improve our services or to find out our user’s views on topic areas connected with our work – for example drinking or self-harm. Users may be asked to provide some basic demographic information, as well as answers to a series of questions. 

Occasionally, we may incentivise surveys through the use of a promotion, such as a free prize draw, in which case we may ask for an email address so we can contact the winners. 

When survey results are reported, they are always aggregated—that is, individual survey results are combined together and presented as a group. Individual comments are never associated with a respondent’s name or other identifiable information. The information from surveys may be used to create new content for our website. Aggregated data may sometimes be passed on in the form of a press release. We may share insights and anonymous comments with third parties such as funders.  

When we share your information with third parties

We have created a formal process for sharing data with researchers at universities and other institutions. We take steps to de-identify any personal data which we process. We only share this data with trusted researchers when it will result in insights that will help us to create a better experience for our service users or will help us better understand young people’s experiences or issues. We will always follow best practices for sharing data, typically based on the guidance from the institution’s ethics committee, and any relevant legal limitations or security checks.

Events Newsletter 

In some cases where you have shown an interest in taking part in a fundraising event The Mix will add your name and email address to a third- party events console.
You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any email you receive from us. 

Skill Up E-learning 

When you register for our courses, we require basic information including: your name, email address and age. You will receive emails related to completing your registration, and will be notified via email when you are awarded a digital badge. You can request your account to be deleted by emailing the training team. 

Volunteering 

When you apply to volunteer with The Mix we will store your information on the 3rd party database, Salesforce. This data will be used to determine your suitability to volunteer with us, for all contact related to training and volunteering and for anonymised statistical reporting. If you don’t start volunteering, we will continue to store your data for a maximum of 12 months. When you stop volunteering with us we will continue to store your data for a maximum of 3 years.After this period your information will be deleted and you will need to resubmit your details in order to volunteer with us. As an applicant, trainee or volunteer we may contact you directly with operational updates on the basis of legitimate interest. During your volunteering with us we may transfer some of your data to 3rd party applications which are required in order to volunteer with us. (Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, 8×8, Moodle) 

Competitions 

The Mix may run competitions in which we ask users to supply us with postal address details in case they are chosen as a winner. 

Google Analytics, Fospha and Cookies 

The Mix uses Google Analytics and Fospha to gather non-personal information on our visitors. This information helps us understand where our website traffic is coming from, what articles and videos are being viewed and for how long. This is done through cookies and code which is embedded on our websites. For more information please see our Cookies Policy. 

When we share your information with third parties

We have created a formal process for sharing information with researchers at universities and other institutions. We work as much as possible with de-identified data, so we minimise the instances when we have to process personal data. We only share this data with trusted researchers when it will result in insights or improvements in services that create a better experience for our service users, or will help us better understand young people’s issues. We will always follow best practices for sharing data, typically based on the guidance from the institution’s ethics committee, and any relevant legal limitations or security checks.

Your rights 

Subject to certain exemptions, you have rights in relation to your personal information: 

  • To access personal information, together with an explanation about how and why we use your personal information 
  • To rectify / erase personal information 
  • To restrict the processing of your personal information 
  • To object to the processing of personal information (where the lawful basis is “legitimate interests”) 
  • To object to how we use your personal information for direct marketing purposes 
  • To obtain a portable copy of your personal information or have it transmitted to another organisation (where the lawful basis is “consent” or “performance of a contract”) 
  • To obtain a copy of personal information safeguards used for transfers outside your jurisdiction 
  • To lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority (in the UK, this is the Information Commissioner’s Office).  

We may ask you for additional information to confirm your identity and for security purposes, before disclosing the personal information requested to you. We reserve the right to charge a fee where permitted by law, for instance if your request is manifestly unfounded or excessive. 

Please note that it may be technically impossible to completely delete your information because of back-ups and records of deletions.  However, any remaining traces of your personal information will be stored securely and will not be subject to routine access.
We will only perform the activities outlined above to the extent that such activities will not compromise privacy, security or any other legal interests. 

iRights 

We follow the iRights initiative, which envisages a future where the fundamental rights of children and young people to access the internet creatively, knowledgeably and fearlessly is fulfilled. These rights are in addition to your rights under data protection law, as set out above.  The initiative includes: 

  • The right to remove: Every child under 18 has the right to easily edit or delete all content they have created. Under 18s have the right to own content they have created and to have an easily signposted way to retract, correct and dispute online data that refers to them 
  • The right to know: Children and young people have the right to know who is profiting from their information, what their information is being used for and whether it is being copied, sold or traded 
  • The right to safety and support: Children and young people should be confident that they will be protected from illegal practices and supported if confronted by upsetting scenarios online 
  • The right to make informed, conscious choices: children and young people should be empowered to reach into creative places online and also have the capacity and support to easily disengage 
  • The right to digital literacy: to access knowledge that the internet can deliver, children need to be taught the skills to use and critique digital technologies 

Contact Us 

If you need to contact us to exercise any rights, or if you have a query or complaint about how we use your personal information, please e-mail us at [email protected]