AWS Privacy Policy

At AWS International Women’s Group (‘AWS’, ‘our’, ‘the club’, ‘us’ or ‘we’) we are committed to handling any personal data of members and guests of the club, users of this website (the ‘Club Website’ or the ‘Site’) and visitors to club events and activities in accordance with law. Whether you are a first-time visitor to the club or Site or a regular user, we take your data privacy seriously. To better protect your data privacy, we are providing information explaining our online information practices.

This Privacy Policy describes how we gather and use information for visitors of this Site. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy and our data privacy practices or if you wish to file a complaint, please email itchair@awsurrey.org.

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) if you believe your personal data has been processed in a way that does not comply with applicable data protection laws. You can do so by calling the ICO helpline on 0303 123 1113 or via their website, www.ico.org.uk.

Who are we?

AWS is a not-for-profit club founded in 1975 to provide a welcoming atmosphere for expatriates and their families living in Surrey. The club offers social, cultural and philanthropic opportunities to enhance its members’ expatriate experience.

What is Personal Data?

Personal data is information that can be used to help identify an individual, such as name, address, phone number or email address. It's important that you read the full Privacy Policy to understand what information we collect and store, how we may use it, and what your rights are in relation to it.

Data Protection

Any personal data which is collected, gathered or processed by AWS including via this Site will be processed by us in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

By registering to be a member of the Club, completing a registration for an event, and/or to use the Club Website, you consent to the collection, use and transfer of your information under the terms of this Policy.

For the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018, AWS International Women's Group will be a data controller of any personal data collected by us.

We rely on various legal bases under applicable data protection legislation in order to process your personal data (e.g., name, title, address, email, date of birth, IP address, username, password, etc.) including our legitimate interests and contractual necessity. We use the personal data we collect to operate the club and provide you with the services we offer.

Further information about the legal bases under which we process your personal data is included in the section headed “How is your information used?”

You do not need to take any action as a result of this Privacy Policy, but you do have certain rights as described below in the section headed “Your rights”.

How do we collect information from you?

We collect your personal data when you decide to interact with us and we only collect the information necessary to operate the club and in accordance with the purposes set out below. You can provide us with personal data via email, post and telephone and when you use our Site, for example, when you sign-up to become a member of AWS, or register for any member activities.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal data we collect might include – but is not limited to – your name, address, email address, telephone number, IP address and other information relevant to running the club. If you pay your membership dues or purchase a ticket to an event from us, your credit / debit card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third-party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit / debit card transactions.

How is your information used?

We use the information we collect from you for the following purposes:

Purpose	Legal Basis
For registered members
To register you as a member of the club and/or provide you with the services or information you have requested	Contractual necessity and legitimate interests
To provide you with access to all parts of the Club Website	Contractual necessity and legitimate interests
To communicate with you with respect to User Name and Password changes specific to the Club Website	Contractual necessity and legitimate interests
To process event orders that you have submitted	Contractual necessity and legitimate interests
To seek your views or comments on the activities we provide	Legitimate interests or consent (as applicable)
Notify you of changes to our activities	Legitimate interests and consent
Create a membership directory which will be visible to other members	Consent
For other Club communications	Legitimate interests or consent (as applicable)
For processing financial transactions	Contractual necessity and legitimate interests
For users of the Club Website (whether registered members or not)
To communicate with you regarding the subject on which you have contacted us	Legitimate interests

For members, guests and users of the Site, the personal data we collect will only be used by us for purposes consistent with the aims of AWS.

Where we rely upon our legitimate interests for processing your personal data, our interests include furthering our cause by helping to welcome and assist new families moving to Surrey through the administration and operation of our registered members group, while providing philanthropic support to local charities through fundraising and other charitable efforts. Where we rely upon contractual necessity for processing your personal data, the contractual necessity arises from registering you as a member of the AWS group, as per your request for membership. Please note that failure to provide certain personal data when registering as a member means that we may not be able to provide certain membership services to you.

Who has access to your information?

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Your personal data will be shared with and processed by certain service providers as necessary to fulfil the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, including third-party payment processors and data/website hosting providers. We make sure anyone who provides a service to, or for us, enters into an agreement with us and meets our standards for data security.

We reserve the right to disclose your personal information as required by law, or when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, request from a regulator, national security, for the purposes of public importance or any other legal or investigatory process involving us.

Security & Storing Data

Information is stored by our Site and our membership management system application provider, Wild Apricot, on Amazon Web Services’ secure cloud hosting service. For more information on hosting, see https://www.wildapricot.com/data-protection. We may also store information in paper files or individual board member’s computers.

The Club's IT Systems and Club Website use security systems that protects your information from unauthorised use. Unfortunately, the transmission of information and data via the Internet (such as via email or through a website) is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal data and prevent unauthorised access by enforcing strict procedures and security features to protect your information, we cannot 100% guarantee the security of any information or personal data transmitted to us through our Site. Any transmission of information or personal data by you or through this Site is therefore at your sole risk.

AWS will keep your information only for as long as is reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy, to comply with the law, or to ensure we do not communicate with people that have asked us not to. In particular, for registered members, we will hold your personal information for the duration of your membership and for the following 2 years.

When we no longer need information, we will always dispose of it securely, using specialist companies, if necessary, to do this work for us.

Transferring your information outside of Europe

The information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the UK or EEA to third party service providers such as the application provider, Wild Apricot, and the hosting service provider, Amazon Web Services. All information is encrypted in transit and is encrypted on the application servers. Currently, Wild Apricot applications, including our Site and membership management system, run on Amazon Web Services data centers located in Dallas, TX and Phoenix, AZ. For further information about the safeguards used to protect your personal data throughout this transfer, please refer to AWS documentation on EU-US Privacy Shield at https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/eu-us-privacy-shield-faq/. Amazon.com Inc.’s certification can be found on the EU-US Privacy Shield website at: https://www.privacyshield.gov/list.

Capacity

This Site is only intended for individuals who are 18 years of age or older. We do not knowingly encourage or solicit visitors to this Site who are under the age of 18 or knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 18. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from an individual under the age of 18 we will delete that information.

Cookies

To enable features of the Club Website, we may assign one or more "cookies" to your Internet browser. Cookies, among other things, speed navigation through our Site, keep track of information so that you do not have to re-enter it each time you visit our Site, and may provide you with customized content. A cookie is an Internet mechanism composed of a small text file containing a unique identification number that permits a web server to send small pieces of information or text by means of your browser and place them on your computer's hard drive for storage. This text lets the web server know if you have previously visited the web page. Cookies by themselves cannot be used to find out the identity of any user. You may wish to visit https://www.aboutcookies.org, which contains comprehensive information about types of cookies, how they are used, and how you manage your cookie preferences.

We use cookies to collect and maintain aggregated data (such as the number of visitors to our Site) to help us see which areas are most popular with our users and improve and update the content on our Site. We use this aggregated data only as explained in this Privacy Policy. We do not connect aggregated data to any name, address, or other identifying information.

The Site also uses Google Display Advertising cookies which allows Google to infer information about visitor demographics and interests. We use this information to enhance the Club Website's performance in a number of ways including providing a secure way for us to verify your identity during your visit to the Club Website and to personalise your experience on the Club Website. We use the aggregated demographics and interests data collected by Google, alongside data collected via Google Analytics regarding what content visitors are accessing, provide more engaging content and to improve the visitor experience.

AWS also uses this information to track your movements through the Club Website. The cookies do not collect any personally identifiable information and we do not facilitate the merging of personally identifiable information collected such as membership information, with non-personally identifiable information in any way. We may use information for internal marketing analysis, for example, to assess trends amongst Club Website visitors or to measure the amount of traffic to the Club Website. The Club Website does not use Web Beacons. To find out further information, please email aws_website_support@awsurrey.org.

You may occasionally receive cookies from unaffiliated companies or organisations, to the extent they place advertising on our Site or are linked to the Site. These third-party cookies may collect information about you when you "click" on their advertising or content or link. This practice is standard in the Internet industry. Because of the way in which the Internet operates, we cannot control collection of this information by these third parties, and these cookies are not subject to this Privacy Policy.

Links to other websites

Our Site may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This Privacy Policy applies only to our Site‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our Site.

In addition, if you linked to our Site from a third-party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third-party site and recommend that you check the privacy policy of that third party site.

Your Rights

You have the right to access the personal information we hold about you, and there are a number of ways you can control the way in which and what information we store and process about you, as further detailed below.

• Access: You have the right to ask for a copy of the personal information that we hold about you free of charge, however we may charge a ‘reasonable fee’, if we think that your request is excessive, to help us cover the costs of locating the information you have requested.
• Correction: You may notify us of changes to your personal information if it is inaccurate or it needs to be updated.
• Deletion: If you think that we shouldn’t be holding or processing your personal information any more, you may request that we delete it. Please note that this may not always be possible due to legal obligations.
• Restrictions on use: As an alternative to requesting that we delete your personal data, or in certain circumstances where we are not able to delete your personal data, you may request instead that we stop processing your personal data (other than storing it), if: (i) you contest the accuracy of it (until the accuracy is verified); (ii) you believe the processing is against the law; (iii) you believe that we no longer need your personal data for the purposes for which it was collected, but you want us to keep your personal data to establish or defend a legal claim; or (iv) you object to the processing, and we are verifying whether our legitimate grounds to process your personal data, override your own rights.
• Object: You have the right to object to processing, including: (i) for marketing; (ii) for research or statistical purposes; or (iii) where processing is based on legitimate interests.
• Portability: If you wish to transfer your personal information to another organisation (and certain conditions are satisfied), you may ask us to do so, and we will send it directly if we have the technical means.
• Withdrawal of consent: If you previously gave us your consent (by a clear affirmative action) to allow us to process your personal information for a particular purpose, but you no longer wish to consent to us doing so, you can contact us to let us know that you withdraw that consent.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

You can make a request to exercise any of these rights by emailing itchair@awsurrey.org or writing to:

The Club Secretary
AWS International Women's Group,

Suite 172 Wey House

15 Church Street

Weybridge, Surrey, KT13 8NA

England

Review of this Policy

We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated in October 2024.