Privacy

WHO WE ARE

ESFConnect is run by the Alumni Relations & Advancement team at ESF Centre, the corporate office of the English Schools Foundation (ESF) alongside the Communications Offices at our 8 secondary/all-through schools including ESF Discovery College, ESF Island School, ESF Jockey Club Sarah Roe School, ESF King George V School, ESF Renaissance College, ESF Shatin College, ESF South Island School and ESF West Island School. We maintain a database of all alumni who have studied at our 8 secondary schools and our database additionally holds information about those staff, faculty, friends, supporters, parents and professionals who have voluntarily selected to sign up to ESFConnect. We aim to stay in touch with our community and keep you updated about news, events, careers initiatives and fundraising activities related to ESF secondary schools.

Some of our alumni choose to join our online community by registering on this website and creating an online profile. In both instances (alumni with offline database records and all individuals with online profiles), we collect and store personal information (or “data”) about you. We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and this Policy sets out what information we collect about you, where and how we use it.

We may change this Policy from time to time. If we make any significant changes we will advertise this on the website or contact you directly with the information. Please take a moment to read the following Personal Information Collection Statement (PICS), which relates to the handling of personal data collected at any point by ESF and ESF’s Personal Data Handling & Data Privacy Policy.

WHAT TYPE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT

The information we have about you includes:

First name
Last name
Email
Address
Photographs
Gender
Date of birth
Family relationships
Years at an ESF school
Higher education and work details
Participation in our events, emails, competitions, surveys and other activities
Donations made to ESF Centre or ESF school
Geo-location data (your geographical location based on your IP address)
Log-ins and activity on the website
Consent options and communication preferences
Content (such as announcements, stories, photos, documents, comments, events, jobs) that you post on this website or provide to us by other means
Messages that you send to other community members via the direct messaging system when logged in to this website

WHERE WE COLLECT INFORMATION FROM

We collect personal information when you:

visit this website
create or update your online profile
post content on to this website or other websites and social media sites managed by English Schools Foundation
take part in an event
attend a meeting with us and provide us with information
contact us in any way including online, email, phone, SMS, social media or post
open an email sent from this website
send a message via the direct messaging system on this website
you leave English Schools Foundation and we transfer some basic details about you from ESF Gateway to our alumni database

PURPOSE OF DATA COLLECTION

We will use your personal information in a number of ways, which may include:

providing you with the information or updates that you have asked for
sending you communications (with your consent if required) that may be of interest, including invites to events, newsletters and fundraising campaigns
seeking your views on the services or activities we carry out, so that we can make improvements
updating our database records and ensuring we know how you prefer to be contacted
analysing your engagement with our website and other content to help us improve our services for you
running our mentoring programme/ club activities/ reunion events

UPDATING YOUR CONSENT PREFERENCES

If you have an online profile on this website you can update your consent options by logging-in and clicking on “My Settings” in your profile. Scroll down to find your ‘Consent options’ where you will see a list of consents and the options “opt-in”, “opt-out” and “unspecified”.

Via ‘My Settings’ you can also choose to hide your profile from Google, limit access to your profile so that it’s only viewable to your connections and adjust some of the automatic notifications that you receive from this website. Please note that your name (but not full profile) may appear in various places around the community website, such as a ‘Recent Joiners’ box and in ‘Search’ results irrespective of the privacy settings you have selected.

If you click ‘Unsubscribe’ at the bottom of one of our emails sent you will be automatically opted-out of these types of email communications in the future.

If you want us to update your consent preferences, please contact us by email at alumni@esfcentre.edu.hk.

KEEPING YOUR INFORMATION UP TO DATE

Please let us know if your contact details change. Online members can update your details directly by logging-in to the website and clicking on ‘My Settings’ under your profile. You can also update your details by contacting us at alumni@esfcentre.edu.hk.

HOW WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION SAFE

The English Schools Foundation (ESF) complies with the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance effective in Hong Kong from December 1996. In doing so, we will ensure compliance by our staff with the strictest standards of security and confidentiality.

Your data is stored on a dedicated, secure cloud server hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the AUS and managed by our website provider, ToucanTech. Industry standard firewalls, anti-virus, encryption and back-up methods are in place, as well as strict data handling protocols.

We always ensure only authorised persons have access to your information, which means only our approved employees and contractors, and that everyone who has access is appropriately trained in data management.

If you have an online profile for this website you are responsible for keeping your login details (email and password) confidential and we ask that you do not share your password with anyone.

No data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be completely secure. So, whilst we strive to safeguard your information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you provide online and you do this at your own risk.

HOW LONG WE KEEP INFORMATION FOR

Data will be kept by ESF indefinitely. However, if the data is no longer required for the purposes for which it was collected/used, the data may be destroyed.

Where we rely on your consent to contact you for direct email marketing/ fundraising purposes, we will treat your consent as lasting only for as long as it is reasonable to do so. This will usually be for two years. We may periodically ask you to renew your consent.

If you ask us to stop contacting you, we will keep a record of your contact details and limited information needed to ensure we comply with your request.

WHO HAS ACCESS TO YOUR INFORMATION

Alumni relations teams at ESF Centre and Communications Offices of ESF secondary schools have access to their respective alumni data. Additionally,

Web hosting, email hosting, analytics and search engine providers that enable us to run our community database and improve our website and its use

Other than this, we do not share your information with third-party organizations without your consent.

YOUR RIGHTS

You have the right to request details of how we use your personal information through making a subject access request. Such requests have to be made in writing by contacting privacyofficer@esfcentre.edu.hk.

You have the following rights:

obtain a copy of your Personal Data held by us
require us to correct or update any Personal Data which is inaccurate; and,
be informed of the kind of Personal Data held by us through obtaining a copy of this Policy
request for personal data to be withdrawn from ESF, in accordance with Hong Kong law.

All of these rights are subject to certain safeguards and limits or exemptions. All requests for access to data or correction or withdrawal of data must be either made in writing in either English or Chinese and be addressed to the Personal Data Privacy Officer/s at the below address:

Personal Data Privacy Officer,
ESF Centre, 25/F, 1063 King’s Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

If an individual believes that English Schools Foundation has not complied with this policy or acted otherwise than in accordance with Data Protection Laws, please contact ESF Personal Data Privacy Officer/s immediately. Upon receipt of a written data access/ correction/ withdrawal request from a Data Subject, the Personal Data Privacy Officer/s shall comply with the request within 40 days.

----------------------------------------------------

This policy was last updated in June 2020.