Data Protection, Confidentiality, and Anonymity

Data Protection

We are exempt from registering with the Information Commissioners Office and the details of this can be found here.  We will continue to check with the ICO and update our policies as required by law.

When sending a submission to our site, the only information we hold is your name (the one you choose to give to us). When your submission is published, only the name that you have chosen to share with us is publicly visible.  We do not hold any other information, such as email or IP addresses.

If you comment on a submission, we hold your IP & email address on a confidential server accessible only by our website administrators. We need this information to manage content and it helps us keep the site spam-free.  We do not share this information with any other organisation or agency.

We take our website security seriously, and have strict regulations in place in order to limit who has administrator privilege.

If you wish us to remove your comment or submission, we will endeavor to do this within 24 hours and all of your personal information (IP & email – applicable for comments only) will be deleted at the same time, so it will no longer be accessible to our web admin.  You can ask us to remove content by clicking here.

Confidentiality

The information you share with us will not be shared with any other organisation.  We do not share emails, submissions or comments with any other organisations without your express, written consent.

If we feel that anyone, particularly a child, is at risk of significant harm, we may be required by law to share the personal information that we hold about you.  The relevant section of The Children Act 1989 is Section 47. We will endeavor to discuss this issue with you first.

Please contact us if you require any further information.

Our Code of Practice is available here.

Anonymity

Many of us working on this campaign are survivors of some form of domestic or sexual abuse, which we are still managing the after effects of.

We have decided to remain anonymous in order to manage our risk.  We are all aware that our private details, such as names are valuable 'currency' to those who perpetrated abuse against us.

Until we feel safe enough to manage the risk of further abuse, we are working anonymously. It is one of the reasons that we allow anonymous submissions - we know how easy it is to track information online, and how calculating abusers and stalkers can be in order to continue to abuse.

Our policy on confidentiality has not changed - everything you share with us, is published on our website for others to read as long as you have given express consent for this.  Those who communicate with us by email are requested to confirm that they give consent for the contents of the email to be published.

Your information (including email addresses) is not, and will not be shared with any other organisations. We are in the process of writing a 'Terms Of Service' policy for this site, which will expressly state that we do not share your personal data; however your submissions may be shared with organisations that we are working with.  These provide anecdotal evidence of the need for change within the media and professional organisations and will help us to achieve our campaign goal of language, culture and attitude change around victim blaming.

In addition to our personal experiences, we have all undertaken professional domestic abuse training - including (but not limited to) Freedom Programme for professionals, Freedom Programme for survivors; Safeguarding (Adults & Children); Information Sharing & Confidentiality. This list is not exhaustive.

We hope this is enough reassurance - if you have any questions, queries or comments, you can contact us here.

Update 12th August 2013:

One of our volunteers, Jo, has opted to waive her anonymity in order to discuss the Neil Wilson case with the media. You can see Jo discussing this issue with Eamonn Holmes on Sky New Sunrise on 7th August 2013 (apologies for the advertising, we can't find a link without any!).  Jo is aware of the implications of this, and is fully supported by other members of the EVB Team.

Update October 2014: 

Our founding member and training officer Jo Costello and media analyst Louise Pennington have waived their right to anonymity.The anonymity of all other volunteers with this campaign will be maintained.