1. Introduction and General Terms

The Tang Ting Twinning Association (“we” or “us”) is committed to protecting you and your family's personal information when you are the Website. We want our services to be safe and enjoyable environments for our audience. This Privacy Policy relates to our use of any personal information you provide to us through www.tangting.org (the “Website”).

In order to provide you with the full range of our services, we are sometimes required to collect information about you.

This privacy policy explains the following:

• what information we may collect about you;
• how we will use information we collect about you;
• when we may use your details to contact you;
• whether we will disclose your details to anyone else;
• your choices regarding the personal information you have provided to us;
• the use of cookies on the Website and how you can reject these cookies.

As set out above, we are committed to safeguarding your personal information. Whenever you provide such information, we are legally obliged to use your information in line with all laws concerning the protection of personal information, including the Data Protection Act 1998 (these laws are referred to collectively in this Privacy Policy as the "data protection laws").

The websites contains hyperlinks to websites owned and operated by third parties. These third party websites have their own privacy policies, including cookies, and we urge you to review them. They will govern the use of personal information you submit or are collected by cookies whilst visiting these websites. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of such third party websites and your use of such websites is at your own risk.

2. What information will we collect about you?

When you sign up to participate in or receive a service from any the Website, such as newsletters, competitions, live chats, message boards or register with the Website we may ask for personal information about you. This can consist of information such as your name, e mail address, postal address, telephone or mobile number or date of birth. Different webpages may ask for different personal information.

By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable us and our service providers to provide you with the services you select.

Please note that sometimes on particular webpages we will require you to provide additional personal information, and sometimes sensitive personal information (e.g. if you're sending in an application to be a contributor on a political party we may need to know your political leanings). When we do this we will specify further on these webpages why we are collecting your information and how we will use it.

We also use cookies and collect IP addresses (an IP address is a number that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on the internet). We use analysis software to look at IP addresses and cookies for the purpose of enhancing your user experience. This information is not used to develop a personal profile of you and the log files are regularly purged.

We also use your IP address to determine whether you are accessing the services from the UK or not.

3. How will we use the information they collect about you?

We will use your personal information for a number of purposes including the following:

• for "service administration purposes", which means that we may contact you for reasons related to the service you have signed up for (e.g. to provide you with password reminders or to notify you that a particular service has been suspended for maintenance);
• to contact you about a submission you have made to the websites, including any content you provide, see especially the UGC FAQ’s
• to personalise the way our content is presented to;
• IP addresses are used to identify the location of users, the number of visits from different countries and also to block disruptive use; and
• to analyse and improve the services offered on the Website. e.g. to provide you with the most user-friendly navigation experience.

Where we propose using your personal information for any other uses we will ensure that we notify you first. You will also be given the opportunity to withhold or withdraw your consent for your use other than as listed above.

4. When will we contact you?

We may contact you:

• in relation to the functioning of any service you have signed up for in order to ensure that we can deliver the services to you;
• where you have opted to receive further correspondence;
• in relation to any contribution you have made to the Website, e.g. on our message boards;
• to invite you to participate in surveys about our services (participation is always voluntary); and
• for marketing purposes where you have specifically agreed to this (see paragraph 5 below)

Local pages will give you detailed information about how we will contact you in relation to specific services.

5. Will I be contacted for marketing purposes?

We won't contact you for marketing purposes, or promote new services to you unless you specifically agree to be contacted for these purposes.

6. Will we share your personal information with anyone else?

We will keep your information confidential except where disclosure is required or permitted by law (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies). Generally, we will only use your information within our company. However, sometimes we use third parties to process your information. We will require these third parties to comply strictly with its instructions and we will require that they do not use your personal information for their own business purposes.

Please note that if you are accessing the website from outside the UK and you make a comment or complaint regarding any element of advertising then we may forward your correspondence to Advertiser only for the purposes of responding to you.

7. Offensive or inappropriate content on the Website

If you post or send offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content anywhere on or to the Website, or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on the Website, we may use your personal information to stop such behaviour.

Where we reasonably believe that you are or may be in breach of any of the laws of England or Wales (e.g. because content you have posted may be defamatory), we may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your employer, school e-mail/Internet provider or law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour.

8. What if I am a user aged 16 or under?

If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide personal information to our website. Users without this consent are not allowed to provide us with personal information.

9. How long will we keep your personal information?

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant service, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us or our corporate retention schedule (this is a database that defines which documents should be kept and for how long). In the case that you wish to cancel your registration as a the Website member, once an account is deleted a red flag goes on the database and, while people cannot use the personal information, it stays on the system for a period of one year for administration purposes before being deleted automatically.

Where you contribute to the Website we will generally only keep your content for as long as is reasonably required for the purpose(s) for which it was submitted. For example, we will only keep copies of entries to a photographic competition for the duration of the competition. However other projects are likely to have a longer, or even permanent, duration.

10. Can I find out what personal information we holds about you?

Under the Data Protection Act you have the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected. (We charge £10 for information requests and will require you to prove your identity with 2 pieces of approved photographic identification.) We will use reasonable efforts to supply, correct or delete personal information about you on our files.

Please address requests and questions about this or any other question about this Privacy Policy to the Data Protection Officer,

Tang Ting Twinning Association
PO Box 44
Saffron Walden
Essex CB11 3ND

Tel: 01799 540881
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

11. What if I am accessing the website outside the UK?

The Website is published in the UK by The Tang Ting Twinning Association.

12. Changes to our Privacy Policy

This privacy policy may be updated from time to time so you may wish to check it each time you submit personal information to any the Website website. The date of the most recent revisions will appear on this page.

13. Cookies Policy -Information we collect from you

a. What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer or mobile phone (referred to here as a "device") browser from a website's computer and is stored on your device's hard drive. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser's preferences allow it, but (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. Many sites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows.

Cookies record information about your online preferences and allow us to tailor the websites to your interests. Users have the opportunity to set their devices to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The last of these means that certain personalised services cannot then be provided to that user and accordingly you may not be able to take full advantage of all of the Website’s features. Each browser is different, so check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences.

During the course of any visit to the Website, the pages you see, along with a cookie, are downloaded to your device. Many websites do this, because cookies enable website publishers to do useful things like find out whether the device (and probably its user) has visited the website before. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit.

b. How does we use cookies?

Information supplied by cookies can help us to analyse the profile of our visitors and help us to provide you with a better user experience. For example: if on a previous visit you went to our education pages, we might find this out from your cookie and highlight educational information on your second and subsequent visits.

We also uses a number of independent measurement and research companies. They gather information regarding the visitors to our sites on our behalf using cookies, log file data and code which is embedded on our website. We use this type of information to help improve the services it provides to its users. We strictly require that third parties do not use any information for their own business or other purposes. Certain other areas of the Website may use cookies for a specific reason - for example, to help an online game work effectively on your device. If this is the case, the local terms for that area of the website will make this clear and you should refer to those local terms for additional information.

14. Contacting us about this Privacy Policy

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy please contact;

Nikki Callway
Tang Ting Twinning Association
PO Box 44
Saffron Walden
Essex CB11 3ND

Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it