Privacy Policy
Note: This page is under review. Please contact us if you have any concerns.
Who we are
Our website address is: https://global-ocd.org.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Contact forms
The contact forms and the study participation forms on our website sends an email with the information you supplied to the relevant person(s). This information is also saved in our database for communication purposes and so that we can respond to your enquiry. We do not share or sell your personal information with any third parties. It is only used for the purposes as set out on this website. To prevent spam being submitted via our forms, we make use of Akismet, their privacy policy is available here.
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Cookies
This website uses cookies – small text files that are placed on your machine to help the site provide a better user experience. In general, cookies are used to retain user preferences, store information for things like shopping carts, and provide anonymised tracking data to third party applications like Analytics. As a rule, cookies will make your browsing experience better. However, you may prefer to disable cookies on this site and on others. The most effective way to do this is to disable cookies in your browser. We suggest consulting the Help section of your browser or taking a look at the About Cookies website which offers guidance for all modern browsers.
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
We make use of Piwik/Matomo for tracking visitors and aggregating information about the traffic to our website. It is independently hosted by the University of Stellenbosch. The following data is collected: IP address, geographical area, date and time, pages visited and duration, device used, operating system, browser. If you do not want to be tracked consult the Help section of your browser or visit the About Cookies website which offers guidance for all modern browsers.
Who we share your data with
We do not share or sell your personal information with any third parties. Please see each country’s page on this website regarding their study data privacy policy.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. We make use of Akismet, their privacy policy is available here.
Your personal information
We disclose potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organisations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on our behalf, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organisations may be located outside of your home country; by using our website, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. We will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organisations, as described above, we disclose potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when we believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect our property or rights, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of an our website and have supplied your email address, we may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback If you send us a request (for example via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. We takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorised access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.
Additional information
How we protect your data
See wordpress.org/about/security for details on the security of the WordPress core itself. We have a SSL certificate for our website, it ensures secure data transfer between user browsers and the server, making it difficult for hackers to breach the connection or spoof your info. We have a firewall and security software installed with regular scans for malware and security breaches.
What data breach procedures we have in place
Should any event occur where customer data has been lost, stolen, or potentially compromised, our policy is to alert those affected via email no later than 48 hours of our team becoming aware of the event. We will also report such incident to any required data protection authority. We will work closely with those affected to determine next steps such as any end-user notifications, needed patches, and how to avoid any similar event in the future.
What third parties we receive data from
We do not receive data from third parties.
Privacy Policy Changes
We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. We encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.