Last updated 24 January 2023
A quick summary
Our website runs on Drupal, which collects short-term data and uses cookies, and we use Matomo as our long-term website analytics reporting tool. All the data we collect, process and store on the website is purely for the running, functioning and monitoring of the website. We don't use the data for any other purposes. We don't disclose or share the data with any third party beyond those organisations working directly on the website, such as our website developers. Our privacy policy has separate sections below for those of you who are members of EIN and for those of you who are experts with a listing in our Experts Directory.
Our cookies
This website is built on the popular Drupal open source platform and uses standard Drupal cookies in order to function fully. Our website analytics reporting tool, Matomo, sets cookies. We also use some custom cookies to remember features you set whilst using the website. We don't use cookies for any other purpose.
The SESS... cookie is a Drupal session cookie used when an authorised user (in other words, an EIN member) logs in. An initial SESS... cookie is used to see if you are logged in.
The _pk_ref..., _pk_id ... and _pk_ses... cookies are used by Matomo for our web analytics.
The cookie-agreed-version cookie is used if you clicked 'OK, I agree' to the cookie information popup at the foot of the page (expires in 365 days).
The collapsiblock cookie is used to remember the last state of expandable/collapsible blocks used on the EIN website.
The bundle_list cookie is used to remember the last state of the 'show/hide non-active bundles' function in your Content Bundles block used on the EIN (expires in 365 days). You won't get this if you are an anonymous user.
Third-party cookies
We sometimes link to externally hosted images (from websites such as Wikipedia and GOV.UK) in our News and Blog sections and these may place their own cookies. We also host some of the images used in our News and Blog on the popular Imgur image hosting website, which also places its own cookies.
None of these cookies are essential to the functioning of EIN so your use of EIN will be unaffected if you choose to block third-party cookies in your browser.
Stripe cookies are placed by our card payment provider Stripe, which is why you will see these cookies when using EIN. Stripe currently encourages including its Stripe.js JavaScript library on every page to prevent fraud.
Collecting information
The standard Drupal logs used on the EIN website collect a range of information on usage by all website visitors for the purpose of the monitoring of the website and to enable us to check and rectify any website errors. The logs may record actions performed (e.g., searches), URLs visited, and IP addresses. Data in these logs lasts for a limited period and is constantly overwritten so it is not stored long-term. On average, the data lasts for a couple of days before it is overwritten.
Data in these logs is only accessible to EIN staff or to organisations working on the EIN website. In practice, the other organisations working on EIN website are our website developers – Femonic and GreenNet – and the creators of the country reports database – HJT Research.
For an authorised user (in other words, an EIN member who is logged in), Drupal logs the date and time that you last accessed the website.
We also collect and store long term usage data using the popular Matomo open source web analytics reporting tool. This records data for URLs visited, numbers of page views, numbers of visitors and other related information, including IP addresses, and lets us monitor the usage of the website. Data in these logs is password protected and is only accessible to EIN staff or the other organisations working on the EIN website as mentioned above. We keep our web analytics data for several years so we can monitor increases or decreases in website traffic.
All the data we process and store on EIN is purely for the running, functioning and monitoring of the website for EIN's own purposes. We don't use the data for any other purpose and we don't share the data with any third party beyond those organisations listed above working directly on the website.
Your personal data on EIN
EIN members
This part of our privacy policy is only relevant if you are, or have been, a member of EIN.
If you sign up and become a member of EIN, the website stores your name and email address in your profile. You can edit your profile at any time to change these.
Address information will be held by the EIN website if you use the sign up or renew forms. Credit card payment details are handled separately and securely by Stripe and no credit card details are held or stored on the EIN website.
The contact details you provide when you sign up on the website will be copied and recorded on our QuickBooks accountancy software in the EIN office. We will keep your details on our accountancy records as required by company and charity law, and your details may be viewed by our accountants and our auditors.
If you use the bundle function on the EIN website, the bundles you create are associated with your profile and are stored on our website until such a time as they are deleted. You can delete your bundles individually at any time.
Your profile and your bundles are private to you and cannot be viewed by other EIN users (apart from EIN staff and other technical staff working on the website).
If you want your profile and all your bundles deleted, please contact us to request this.
If you have been a member of EIN in the past and you no longer renew your subscription, we will normally keep your personal data (your profile and your bundles) on our website for approximately two years after you last accessed the website. After this period, we will then delete your data from our website. The reason we keep your data for this period is because we have had requests in the past from people rejoining EIN who want to access their old bundles. If you let your membership lapse, but would like us to keep your bundles for longer than the normal two years, please contact us to request this.
As we rely on individual memberships for our income, we have a system in place that monitors if an EIN username appears to be logged in more than once at the same time, as this may indicate password sharing. The system sends emails which include IP address and browser details (so that we can identify and ignore false positives). The emails are only viewable by EIN staff.
Experts in our Experts Directory
This part of our privacy policy is only relevant if you are, or if have been, an expert listed in our Experts Directory.
If you are an expert listed in the EIN Experts Directory, the website stores all of the personal details that you sent us when you filled in the application form. This will include your name and email address, and it may include your address and telephone number if you included these. If any of your details need changing at any time, please contact us to request this.
If you are an expert listed in the EIN Experts Directory and you no longer want your entry to be stored or displayed on the EIN website, please contact us to request this and we will delete your entry from our website.
If you have been an expert listed in the EIN Experts Directory in the past and you no longer pay the fee to have your entry included, your entry will be unpublished so that it is no longer listed as a current entry, but it remains on our website. We will then contact you to check whether you wish to pay to have your entry relisted. If you confirm that you will not want your entry to be relisted, we will then delete your entry. If we are unable to contact you via the details your provided, or if we are unable to establish whether you want to be relisted, we will normally delete your entry after a couple of months. We hold your information for a short time as previously we have had experts ask that their details be relisted.
Once we have deleted your entry, the EIN website will no longer hold any information on you.