Privacy Statement

Last Updated: March 2019

This site is one of the family of digital tools operated by various ministries related to Agape Europe e.V. and governed by this Privacy Statement. When we use the terms “we” “us” or “our,” we refer to Agape Europe e.V. and affiliated ministries.

We are committed to protecting and appropriately handling your private and personal information. We take your privacy seriously. Our Organization processes the information of users of our digital tools. We are publishing this Privacy Statement to let you know how we collect, process, use and share your personal information. We may, from time-to-time, update this Privacy Statement, so we encourage you to periodically review this statement. We will notify you (by email or notice on this site) about material changes in the way we treat personal information and how those changes are likely to impact you.

If you have any questions about this policy or the way we use your personal information, you may contact:

Email: info@agapeeurope.org

Mailing Address:

Agape Europe e.V.
Am Unteren Rain 2
D-35394 Giessen
Germany

1. USING OUR DIGITAL TOOLS.

Please read our Terms and Conditions to find out more about the requirements for using our digital tools. Please note that individual applications may be governed by terms of use customized for that specific application.

2. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION.

We will generally only collect and use your personal information when it is necessary to achieve our legitimate interests of fostering spiritual growth and providing you with tools and resources relevant to that end. We may also use your personal information when it is needed to perform the services we provide or to comply with our legal obligations.

You can find more information on the data types we collect below.

3. HOW WE COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION.

We obtain personal information from you via:

• direct interactions: when you enquire about our activities, engage in an activity with us, make a donation, register through one of our sites or at an event, or otherwise give us your personal information. If you meet with us for discipleship or spiritual advice, we may take confidential notes for spiritual guidance and support. If you prefer that we do not take notes, please let us know. The information you disclose is entirely at your discretion.
• cookies and other automated technologies: when you interact with our Digital Tools we may use cookies and similar technologies to track activities (for more information, see “Cookies and Information Collected by Technology” below). We also track usage of mobile apps through analytics.
• third parties [or other publicly available sources]: we may from time to time obtain personal information about you from third parties [and public sources] (e.g. Census Data). We will only collect personal information from third parties if they have obtained that information in a legal and proper way.
• Referral of information by individuals. Your name and contact details may have been passed to us by someone you know, who indicated that you might be interested in hearing about our ministry, according to the chart in section 2.

4. TYPES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION THAT WE COLLECT.

We collect the following types of personal information:

• application data including employment history, qualifications and references, if applicable;
• contact details including email address, postal address, email, telephone number and instant messaging details;
• demographics including information that allows us to better understand who you are and the services in which you are most interested;
• financial data including bank account and payment bank details;
• financial transaction data including details about payments and donations from you and details of products and services you have purchased from us and activities you have participated in;
• historical transaction data including communication history, your past donations, purchases, applications and interactions with us;
• identity data including name, date of birth, gender, marital status;
• information about beliefs and circumstances including religious information; information you disclose about your personal circumstances;
• location data that is information about your physical location, including IP address, and lat/long coordinates and country of origin (where applicable);
• marketing and communication data including your preferences in receiving marketing from us and communication preferences;
• requests and preferences including communication preferences, your interests and prayer requests;
• security credentials including username and password;
• system data including information about how you use our Digital Tools;
• tax status; and
• travel information including your travel details, delegate information, dietary requirements, and room preferences.

5. HOW/WHEN WE DISCLOSE PERSONAL INFORMATION.

Generally, we will not disclose or share your personal information (including your email address) with anyone outside our organization without your permission. However, we may need to use or share your information with our partners and agents who provide goods and services to you on our behalf. Your information may be disclosed for one of the following reasons:

To share your information with other parts of our organization to service your requests or provide you with information or other ministry opportunities.

To disclose your information to the government as part of tax filing or other legal and regulatory requirements.

To Third Party Service Providers:

We take steps to safeguard your information and we have contractual provisions requiring all third-party service providers to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with our data protection policies and all applicable laws. These providers include:

• Cloud Service Providers for the hosting of apps and sites
• Direct and email marketing service providers (e.g. MailChimp)
• Companies that assist us in processing your donations.

We do not sell, rent or lease its customer lists to third parties. We may, from time to time, contact you on behalf of external partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you. In those cases, your unique personally identifiable information (e-mail, name, address, telephone number) is not transferred to the third party. In addition, we may share data with trusted partners to help us perform statistical analysis, send you email or postal mail, provide customer support, or arrange for deliveries. All such third parties are prohibited from using your personal information except to provide these services to us and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information.

We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information, such as race, religion, or political affiliations, without your explicit consent.

We will disclose your personal information, without notice, only if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to:

(a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on our organization or the site;

(b) protect and defend rights or property of our organization; and,

(c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users or the public.

6. YOUR RIGHTS.

The following rights under the GDPR are available to you if you are located in the EEA. If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please email info@agapeeurope.org. We will respond to your request within 30 days of receiving it.

A. Editing and updating personal information

If you find that your information needs to be edited or updated, you can change your information directly on the site. Our websites offer different options for you to access, change, and modify the information you previously provided, such as your email address and telephone number.

If one of our websites does not give you the option to edit personal information yourself, you can ask us to update it by contacting us at info@agapeeurope.org. Please make sure to provide us with all the information we need to be able to address your request, including both the old and new information.

B. Accessing personal information.

You have the right to obtain details of your personal information we hold. We will confirm whether your personal information is being processed and provide additional information including what kind of information we have about you, where we collected it, how we use it (including the legal basis for our processing) and how long we expect to keep it.

If you ask us, we will provide you with a copy of your personal information free of charge. We may charge you a fee to cover our administrative costs if you request multiple copies of the same information.

C. Deletion of personal information.

You have the right to request for us to delete your personal information if there is no good reason for us to continue processing it or the legal basis for holding your information no longer applies. You can also ask us to delete your information if you have objected to processing (see below), if we have processed your information unlawfully, or if we are required to delete your information to comply with our legal obligations.

We will review on a case by case basis and we might not be able to comply with your request if we need to retain the information for legal reasons. If this is the case, we will notify you of the reasons why your request was rejected and we will remove your information from our active databases.

D. Restriction of processing of personal information.

You have the right to request us to limit the processing of your personal information if you feel our legitimate interests for using the information impact your rights and freedoms or if our processing was unlawful.

To the extent needed, we may still keep some of your data to ensure we comply with your request to limit processing, or for other legal purposes.

E. Objecting to processing of personal information.

Where we process your personal information based upon our legitimate interests, you have the right to object to this processing on grounds relating to your particular situation if you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms.

Where we process your personal information based upon our legitimate interests and where decisions are made by automated processing which has legal or other significant effects on you, you may also object to such automated decision making.

If we process your personal information for the exercise or defence of legal claims or if we can demonstrate compelling grounds that override your rights and freedoms, we may not be able to comply with your request. In that case, we will notify you of the reasons why your request was rejected.

F. Portability of personal information.

You can request us to send you your personal information in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format so that it can easily be transferred and used by a third-party if:

• you provided us with the personal information;
• the processing of your personal information is based on your consent or required for the performance of a contract; or
• the processing is carried out by automated means.

G. Withdrawing consent.

We primarily rely on legitimate business interests to process your data, but to the extent that we use consent to process your data, you have the right to withdraw any consent you may have given us at any time. We will comply with your request promptly.

If you withdraw your consent, we might not be able to provide some of our products and services to you. At any point, you have the right to object to the processing of your personal information for direct marketing purposes and we will promptly comply with your request.

H. Filing a complaint with the supervisory authority.

We will try to resolve any problems that you have but you are always able to contact your local data protection authority for assistance or to make a complaint.     

7. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFER OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION.

We are an international organisation and we might need to transfer your personal information to other countries. If you are in the European Economic Area (EEA), please be aware that we may need to transfer your data to countries outside the EEA to process it. We will only transfer your personal information outside the EEA with adequate safeguards in place and in full compliance with applicable laws. For example, we will only transfer your personal information to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection. We have established standard contractual clauses with our service providers to ensure they protect your information and to enforce legal transfers of data internationally.

8. SECURITY.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to protect your personal information from being accidentally lost, misused or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. These include technical, administrative and physical security measures to ensure that any information we collect is stored and processed securely.

For example, for digital tools that require personal or sensitive data to be collected or displayed, a Secured Socket Layer (SSL) connection is required, to ensure that the data is encrypted as it is transferred to the browser. Credit card payments are processed using PCI compliant technology, to ensure that your credit card number is securely passed to the merchant/service provider. We do not store your credit card details.

We have procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and we will promptly notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach in accordance with our legal obligations.

We cannot guarantee that the security measures we implement in connection with the operation of the site will absolutely prevent others from accessing or acquiring any information that you provide while using the site. You can help us protect your personal information by properly protecting your password and remembering to sign out of your account and close your browser window when you finish visiting our site, especially if you are on a shared or public computer.

9. COOKIES AND INFORMATION COLLECTED BY TECHNOLOGY.

We use cookies to keep track of web site activities, save your password or deliver content specific to your interests. A cookie is a small data file that certain websites write to your hard drive when you visit them. A cookie file can contain information such as a user ID that the site uses to track the pages you’ve visited. The only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. You can find out more about cookies here. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience certain interactive features of the site or access all of the services provided through the site.

You can find a list of the cookies used on our site here.

10. HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION.

We keep your information as long as it is needed to achieve our purposes listed above, as well as for the amount of time necessary to meet any legal, tax, or reporting requirements.

We do not keep your data longer than necessary and up to seven years after your last interaction with us (e.g. making a donation, registering for an event, or using one of our digital tools). We may keep your data for longer than 7 years if we cannot delete it for legal or technical reasons. We may also keep it for statistical purposes. However, if we do, we will ensure that your privacy continues to be protected and only use it for these purposes.

11. THIRD-PARTY SITES AND INFORMATION.

The site may contain links to websites that are run by third parties such as other organizations, sponsors, content providers and advertisers. Once you’ve clicked on a link or button activator for an outside website, you will leave the site and be taken to sites that we do not control, and our privacy policy no longer applies on those sites.

You must read the privacy policy of the third-party website concerning how personal information will be used. We also provide content created by third-parties on some of our websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such content providers or third-party sites.

12. SPECIAL RULES FOR CHILDREN.

We do not collect personal information from children under the age of 13 beyond what is necessary for them to participate in our online or other activities, such as registering for a conference or downloading materials. If we discover that we have accidentally collected personal information from a child below the age of 13, we will remove that child’s personal information from our records as soon as reasonably possible.

In situations where a child under the age of 16 attempts to register with one of our sites, purchase products or materials, or participate in an activity requiring the submittal of personally identifiable information,a parent or guardian must give permission and consent for that child to provide information and register. The only personal information we collect from a child is information that is necessary for the child to participate in activities, such as an address for making a purchase. Parents have the right to request at any time that the information collected about their child is removed from our database.

If you would like to review the information your children have provided to us as registered users, please send your request to Agape Europe e.V. by mail or email info@agapeeurope.org. We will need your child’s log-in name and proof of your identity in relationship to the child in order to process your request.

On some of our digital tools, we occasionally host or offer access to chat rooms or other forums, where no personal information is collected or posted. Children can visit these forums without having to first provide any personal information.

13. AFFILIATED MINISTRIES.

As mentioned above, this privacy statement applies to Agape Europe e.V. and affiliated ministries. Agape Europe e.V. is the umbrella organization of Student-led ministry, Shine and national ministries.

14. CHANGES TO THIS STATEMENT.

We will occasionally update this Statement of Privacy to reflect organization and customer feedback. We encourage you to periodically review this statement to be informed of how we are protecting your information.