Privacy Policy

For example, we may obtain information about you when you take part in one of our events, make a donation, play our Age UK Weekly Lottery, apply to volunteer for us, call our National Advice Line, call The Silver Line Helpline, respond to one of our petitions or campaigns, or when you register to receive one of our weekly newsletters.

In some circumstances, it may be mandatory to collect and process some of your personal details to deliver the service or provide the support you are looking for.

For example:

• we need your contact details to respond to your enquiry or complaint.
• if you kindly choose to make a one-off or regular donation to us and allow us to claim Gift Aid or purchase an item via the Age UK Shop website, we need to ask for your card details and full address.
• If you call The Silver Line Helpline, your telephone number will be captured and stored by our telephony system.

Your information may be shared with us by third parties, for example where you have consented for them to do so or where there is an agreement/contract in place between us and the third party. These might include: 

• independent event organisers, for example the London Marathon and fundraising sites like Just Giving
• professional fundraisers; and
• subcontractors acting on our behalf who provide us with technical, payment or delivery services, our business partners, advertising networks analytics providers and search information providers.
• Referrals made to us from another organisation or individual, such as your GP, if they think the service would be helpful to you.

You should check any privacy policy provided to you where you give your data to a third party.

We, like many companies, automatically collect the following information:

• technical information, including the type of device you're using, the IP address, browser and operating system being used to connect your computer to the internet. This information may be used to improve the services we offer.
• information about your visit to this website, for example we collect information about pages you visit and how you navigate the website, i.e., length of visits to certain pages, products and services you viewed and searched for, referral sources (e.g., how you arrived at our website).

We collect and use your personal information by using cookies on our website. Some of these cookies can be enabled/disabled by selecting your preferences in the preference centre you are presented with when first interacting with this site. More information on cookies can be found under the 'Use of Cookies' section below.

When you interact with us on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, we may obtain information about you (for example, when you publicly tag us in an event photo). The information we receive will depend on the privacy preferences you have set on those types of platforms. If you interact with us in this way, we encourage you to read the Privacy Policy of the social media platform(s) you use.

As mentioned above, we collect and use your personal information by using cookies, including social media cookies (i.e., third party cookies). We use social media cookies to enhance the functionality of this website and provide you with personalised content (see our Cookie Policy for more information).

We supplement information on our supporters with information from publicly available sources such as annual reviews, corporate websites, public social media accounts, the electoral register, Mint UK, Google and Companies House in order to create a fuller understanding of someone’s interests and support. For more information, please see the section on ‘Building Profiles’ below.

We may use your contact details to provide you with information about the vital work we do for older people, our fundraising appeals and opportunities to support us, as well as the products and services you can buy if we think it may be of interest to you.

Email, text and phone

We will only send you marketing and fundraising communications by email text and telephone if you have explicitly provided your prior consent. This does not apply to service communications (see below).

We’ll always ask for your permission to contact you about our products and services in this way, for example:

• when you sign a petition
• when you make a donation
• when you fundraise for us
• when you contact the Age UK Advice Line
• when you contact the Silver Line Helpline
• when you enquire about, or purchase, one of our products or services.

If you have signed up for one of our fundraising events, such as the Leeds Abbey Dash or the Run Your Age Challenge, then we may contact you by email to tell you important information about the event (such as location details and what to bring on the day), provide information about similar leisure activities or events we think you will be interested in, share stories from our community of fundraisers, and provide useful fundraising tips to help you raise important funds for Age UK.

You can opt out of our marketing communications at any time. Please see “Your Choices” for further information.

Post

We may send you marketing and fundraising communications by post that we think may be of interest to you, unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us in this way.

If we contact you by post with marketing and fundraising information, we do so under the lawful basis of legitimate interest.

This means that we send postal communications to achieve our charitable and/or organisational aims and ideals, whilst ensuring that doing so does not impinge on your privacy rights.

We believe that we have a legitimate interest to do this to raise vital funds, including via our trading subsidiaries, to sustain our charitable work to be there for older people who need us most.

We ask you if you would prefer not to hear from us in this way the first time you contact us, and you can opt out of postal communications at any point going forward. Please see ‘Your Choices’ for more information.

We may send you certain communications, without your consent, if we are under a legal obligation to do so; if we feel sending the communication is in both yours and our interests; and/or it would be a disadvantage to you if we didn’t send you the communication.

These communications may include:

• ‘Thank you’ emails to confirm receipt of your kind donations made to us online
• Order confirmations
• Registration confirmation, such as when you sign up to one of our events
• Reminders to renew your lottery entry or entries with us.

We advertise on Facebook and Google as well as some other online platforms such as Instagram. We also place adverts on other websites to promote general awareness of Age UK our fundraising and products and services that we offer. We do this by:

1. Advertising on particular types of websites - for example newspapers and magazines' websites.
2. Advertising to people signed up with an online platform (such as Facebook or Google) based on what the platform knows about them.

We may use the following re-marketing processes on some or all of specific online platforms.

1. 'Look-alike' / 'Similar' audiences: We send a list of 'hashed' email addresses to an online platform such as Facebook or Google (hashing is a security measure whereby the personal information is turned into a code).
2. 'Custom audiences'/ 'Customer matches': We use a similar method as above to send information and support about our fundraising campaigns/ marketing campaigns to people who have already signed up for these.
3. 'Saved' audiences to remember which supporters on Facebook are most likely to respond to our fundraising, campaigning, and marketing requests.
4. Tracking people's interactions with our adverts so that we know when an individual has clicked on an advert. This allows us to measure the effectiveness of our campaigns.

In some of the above instances, this means that if you have already visited our website, we can direct you back to it through ads shown on sites you visit across the internet by third party vendors. These third-party vendors include Google and Facebook. All parties may use cookies to serve these ads based on your past visits to our website.

You can object to your information being used by withholding permission on our cookie preference centre when you visit our site.

We research, and profile potential or existing high-value donors, to allow us to identify and engage with appropriate high-value donors. This allows us to focus our fundraising resources, and to ensure that our requests for support are tailored to each individual, ultimately helping us to maximise the efficiency of our fundraising. If you would prefer that we do not carry out this type of analysis, please contact us at contact@ageuk.org.uk.

We may analyse your personal information to create a profile of your interests and preferences so that we can tailor and target our communications in a way that is timely and relevant to you. We may make use of additional information about you when it is available from external sources to help us do this effectively. This allows us to be more focused, efficient, and cost-effective with our resources and also reduces the risk of someone receiving information they may find inappropriate or irrelevant.

We're committed to putting you in control of your data so you’re free to opt out of your information being used in this way at any time by contacting contact@ageuk.org.uk.

We may also use your personal information to detect and reduce fraud and credit risk.

Our website may also use technologies to monitor your use of our site. The types of information these technologies record may include IP address, mouse clicks, mouse movements, page scrolling and any text keyed into website forms. The information collected does not include bank details or any sensitive personal data and is stored and used for aggregated and statistical reporting. This information will be accessed by Age UK and trusted third-party agencies working on our behalf for the purpose of monitoring and improving the usability of the Age UK website.

We may pass your information to our third-party service providers, suppliers, agents, subcontractors, and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process donations and send you mailings). However, when we use these third parties, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the services and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and prevents them from using it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.

Our trusted third-party product providers provide a range of products and services designed to help people make the most of later life. When you enquire about or purchase one or more of these products, the relevant third-party product provider will use your details to provide you with information and carry out their obligations arising from any contracts you have entered with them. They will be acting as either a joint or independent controller of your information and therefore we advise you to read their Privacy Policy. These third-party product providers will share your information with us which we will use in accordance with this policy.

We may transfer your personal information to a third party as part of a sale of some or all of our business and assets to any third party or as part of any business restructuring or reorganisation, or if we’re under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation or to enforce or apply our terms of use or to protect the rights, property or safety of our staff, supporters, customers, users of the website or others. However, we will take steps with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected.

At the time of writing, we work with the following Third Parties:

• Home Insurance: New policies purchased from 9 February 2023 are provided and underwritten by LV= (Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company Limited). Existing policies purchased prior to this date are administered by Ageas Retail Limited.
• Car Insurance: New policies purchased from 28 February 2023 are provided and underwritten by LV= (Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company Limited). Existing policies purchased prior to this date are administered by Ageas Retail Limited.
• Motor Breakdown Insurance: New and renewing policies from 1 August 2023 are provided and underwritten by LV= (Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company Limited). Britannia Rescue is a trading style of LV=. Existing policies purchased prior to this date are arranged and administered by Ageas Retail Limited. Benefits and services are provided by Call Assist Ltd.
• Age Co Funeral Plans are provided by Dignity Funerals Limited.
• Age Co Legal Services, provided by Irwin Mitchell LLP.
• Age Co Incontinence Products, provided by Vivactive Limited.
• Age Co Personal Alarms, provided by PPP Taking Care Limited.
• Age Co Stairlifts, Homelifts and Bathing Solutions, provided by Handicare Accessibility Limited.
• Age Co Travel Insurance is provided by IES Limited, trading as AllClear.
• Age UK website hosted by Optimizely AB.
• Age UK website Chatbot provided by Disruption Works Limited.

We work in partnership with around 130 local Age UKs that provide support and services to older people within their community. Each local Age UK is a separate Data Controller and legal entity and is therefore responsible for their own staff and services. On occasion and only with your explicit consent, we may share your personal details with a local Age UK for the following reasons:

• So they can contact you about a service or support you have asked for and that they may be able to provide.
• So they can investigate a complaint you have made about that local Age UK.

Where you have provided specific consent to us using your personal information in a certain way, such as to send you email, text and/or telephone marketing. Your specific consent is also used where you have agreed for us to use your personal information in case studies to promote our work. You can withdraw your consent at any time. Please see ‘Your Choices’ for more information.

Where we are entering into a contract with you or performing our obligations under it, like when you buy Age Co named products and services, purchasing an item via the Age UK Shop website, playing the lottery or entering our raffles, or participating in events, such as the Leeds Abbey Dash.

Where necessary so that we can comply with a legal or regulatory obligation to which we are subject, for example where we are ordered by a court or regulatory authority like the Charity Commission or Fundraising Regulator.

Where it is necessary to protect life or health (for example in the case of medical emergency suffered by an individual at one of our events) or a safeguarding issue which requires us to share your information with the emergency services.

Where it is reasonably necessary to achieve our or others’ legitimate interests (as long as what the information is used for is fair and does not duly impact your rights).

We consider our legitimate interests to be running Age UK as a charitable organisation in pursuit of our aims and ideals. For example to:

• send postal communications which we think will be of interest to you
• send email communications about, and related to, fundraising events you have signed up for to help you raise important funds for our charitable work
• conduct research to better understand our supporters and to improve the relevance of our fundraising
• understand how people choose/use our services and products
• determine the effectiveness of our services, promotional campaigns and advertising
• Sharing personal data amongst relevant teams within Age UK to ensure we communicate with our supporters in the most effective way
• Purchase marketing lists to promote our fundraising activity
• monitor who we deal with to protect the charity against fraud, money laundering and other risks
• record and monitor interactions for quality and training purposes
• enhance, modify, personalise or otherwise improve our services and communications for the benefit of our customers; and
• better understand how people interact with our website.
• Retain records and call recordings as evidence in defence of a legal claim.

When we legitimately process your personal information in this way, we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. We will not use your personal information where our interests are overridden by the impact on you, for example, where use would be excessively intrusive (unless, for instance, we are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

When we use sensitive personal information, we require an additional legal basis to do so under data protection laws, so will either do so on the basis of your explicit consent or another route available to us at law (for example, if we need to process it for employment, social security or social protection purposes, your vital interests, or, in some cases, if it is in the public interest for us to do so).

You have a right to request access to the personal data that we hold about you.

You also have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you, and we will provide you with this unless legal exceptions apply.

If you want to access your information, contact us using our details below. Please be aware that we will ask you for proof of identity or alternative proof of authority before sharing any information we may hold.

You have the right to have inaccurate or incomplete information we hold about you corrected. The accuracy of your information is important to us so we're working on ways to make it easier for you to review and correct the information that we hold about you. In the meantime, if you change email address, or if you believe any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us via email or post (see below). Alternatively, you can telephone 0800 169 87 87.

You have a right to ask us to restrict the processing of some or all of your personal information if there is a disagreement about its accuracy, or we're not lawfully allowed to use it.

You may ask us to delete some or all of your personal information and in certain cases, and subject to certain exceptions; we will do so as far as we are required to. In many cases, we will anonymise that information, rather than delete it.

If we are processing your personal information (1) based on your consent, or in order to enter into or carry out a contract with you, and (2) the processing is being done by automated means, you may ask us to provide it to you or another service provider in a machine-readable format.

You have the right to object to processing where we using your personal information (1) based on legitimate interests, (2) for direct marketing or (3) for statistical/research purposes.

If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please email us at contact@ageuk.org.uk or write to Supporter Engagement, One America Square, 17 Crosswall, London EC3N 2LB. We may be required to ask for further information and/or evidence of identity. We will endeavour to respond fully to all requests within one month of receipt of your request, however if we are unable to do so we will contact you with reasons for the delay.

Please note that exceptions apply to a number of these rights, and not all rights will be applicable in all circumstances. For more details we recommend you consult the guidance published by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office.