Data and Privacy Policy

The information below sets out how ALTE - the Association of Language Testers in Europe uses and stores the personal data collected via our website, marketing or market research. It is important to us that we protect your privacy and your personal data. ALTE uses some services from the host of its Secretariat, Cambridge University Press & Assessment, and as such some data may be shared with Cambridge University Press & Assessment. ALTE's Data Protection Officer is the Data Protection Officer for Cambridge Assessment English. If you have any questions about such matters you can contact us at secretariat@alte.org or privacy@cambridge.org 

It is important that this notice is read together with any other privacy notice we may provide when we are collecting personal data about you.

This notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

What personal data do we collect?

The personal information we collect from you will vary depending on the context of your interactions with us and the service that we are providing to you. It may include, but is not limited to, the following information:

• identity data including your name, date of birth and gender
• contact data including your home/work postal address, email address and phone number
• transaction data including your credit card number when you make a payment to us
• profile data including purchases made by you, preferences, feedback, survey responses and any usernames
• usage data including how you use our website, products and services
• marketing data including your preferences in receiving marketing from us
• technical data including internet protocol (IP) address, login data, location, browser type and technology used to access this website.

How do we collect your personal data?

We may collect information about you when you:

• sign up as an Individual Affiliate, become an Individual Expert Member, or through your employer as an Institutional Member (either Associate or Full)
• attend an event
• request products or services
• provide us with your personal information from your usage of our website and any other information you post on our website, email or otherwise send to us
• otherwise provide us with information in the course of our interactions with you.

How do we use your personal data?

We will only use your personal information in the following ways:

1. when it is necessary for our legitimate interests:
   • to enable us to supply you with the services and information that you have requested
   • to help us in the development of, and to improve our services
   • to provide you with information about  services that may be of interest to you, using the email address which you have provided or via social media
   • to invite you to participate in market research activities, such as responding to interview questions or completing online surveys
   • to send you communications, and show you communications on other websites (including social media sites where you are a member)
   • to ensure that content from our website is presented in the most effective manner for you and your computer
   • to automatically collect data about visitors to our site (for example browsing patterns) by using cookies
   • to maintain our website and ensure network and information security
   • to prevent and detect fraud and other criminal offences
   as long as, in each case, these interests are in line with applicable law and your legal rights and freedoms; or
2. where you have agreed to this for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes; or
3. where this is necessary for legal obligations which apply to us.

Marketing

We may contact you for marketing purposes relating to our products and services and our website, unless you let us know that you do not want to receive marketing communications. We will only contact you for these marketing purposes by electronic means (email) where you have agreed to this. Your agreement to the use of your personal information for these purposes is optional and if you decline to provide your agreement, your visit to and use of the website will not be affected.

Marketing opt out: you are entitled to opt out from receipt of marketing communications at any time and free of charge by using the contact details provided in this Privacy Policy or by using the “unsubscribe” option included in any marketing e-mail received from us.

Market research

If contacting you to invite you to participate in market research projects, such as questionnaires or interviews, we will only use your personal data for the purpose of the specific project to which you have consented. That personal data will, once the project has been completed, be removed from our systems (see retention below).

How do we share your personal data?

We may share personal data:

• with affiliated businesses and organisations
  
• with other people and/or businesses who provide services on our behalf or at our request
• with regulators and law enforcement agencies, where we are required to do so by law, where necessary for the purposes of preventing fraud and other criminal offences and to ensure network and information security
• with social media platforms, including but not limited to Facebook, X, Google, Google Analytics, LinkedIn, in pseudonymised or anonymised forms.

Our website offers the possibility to share content on social media channels, e.g. Facebook. The respective social media provider will directly gather your personal data only after you are registered as a visitor to their site. Please refer to the privacy policy of the social media providers to learn more about what personal data is collected and used.

Advertising Cookies

In addition, we may use advertising cookies. These allow sites across the internet to display to you relevant  advertising based on what you have viewed. This is done by placing a cookie on your device. Cookies allow us to display advertising that may be relevant to you. For information about other cookies and how to disable them please refer to the section on Cookies below.

Transferring personal data

The United Kingdom and countries inside the European Economic Area have specific laws which protect the way personal data is used. We may transfer personal data to countries outside of the UK and the European Economic Area where personal data is not protected in the same way (usually to other businesses who provide services on our behalf). In such cases we will make sure that suitable safeguards are in place to protect the personal data. What that means is that whoever we transfer data to will have to agree to protect the personal data in an appropriate way. 

Retention

It is our policy to retain your personal data for the length of time required for the specific purpose or purposes for which it was collected, which are set out in this Privacy Policy. We may keep data which has been anonymised for longer than this period to allow us to carry out analysis of our products and services.

Cookies

We may use cookies on this site. This enables us to personalise your experience of our site by recording details about use of the site as a file on your computer. You can disable the use of cookies but this may limit the functionality of web pages on our site, or your access to our site. For further information about how ALTE may use cookies, visit www.cambridge.org/legal/cookies. 

Your rights

You can check some of the data we hold on you by logging in to the ALTE website, if you are a representative of an ALTE Full Member or Associate Member organisation, or an Individual Expert Member, and checking your account.

You have the right to request to stop your data being used - this may result in the termination of your affiliation with ALTE.

Subject to applicable law, you may have the right to: obtain confirmation that we hold personal data about you, request access to and receive information about the personal data we maintain about you, receive copies of the personal data we maintain about you, update and correct inaccuracies in your personal data, object to the processing of your personal data, and have your personal data blocked, anonymised or deleted, as appropriate. The right to access your personal data may be limited in some circumstances by local law requirements. To exercise these rights, please contact us by emailing secretariat@alte.org.

Changes to this policy

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy and will let you know about these changes by displaying them on this website. Changes will begin to have effect at the time they are displayed. The version of the Privacy Policy that will apply to you is the one which is current at the time we contact you, you use this website or you use our services.

Last updated: March 2024