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Privacy Statement

Who we are

Helplink Mental Health is a charitable organisation that provides accessible Mental Health & Conflict Resolution services (locally in the West of Ireland and nationally/internationally online). Our website address is: https://helplink.ie.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

  • When visitors leave comments on the site, we collect the data shown in the comments form, and 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

  • 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.

A full list of themes, plugins etc. for this website, with their relevant GDPR information, is available in Appendix 1 below.

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 tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

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.

Contact information

To contact us about privacy issues please email helplinksupport@helplink.ie  or call 091 759887

How we protect your data

Our ‘Privacy Policy’ is written in accordance with the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the standards it sets with regards to a person’s data rights. Click here to access our Privacy Policy.

Industry regulatory disclosure requirements

Our ‘Privacy Policy’ states that we must report any data breaches within 72 hours to the Data Protection Commissioner of Ireland. Click here to access our Privacy Policy.

Appendix 1

The Helplink website, which is found at helplink.ie is built by Transpose Digital using the following CMS, theme, and plugins that may fall under the GDPR legislation…

● WordPress CMS
● Helplink Bespoke Theme built by Transpose DigitalLogin
● MailChimp for WordPress Plugin
● Contact Form 7 Plugin
● Complete Analytics Optimization Suite (CAOS) Plugin
● Cookie Notice
● Yoast SEO Plugin
● Custom Facebook Feed
● Custom Twitter Feeds
● PayPal Donations

WordPress CMS
Automatic, the creators of WordPress say the following about their adherence to GDPR:

  • “Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (aka GDPR) is a new and far-reaching privacy regulation. We are committed to operating in accordance with the GDPR, and to giving you tools and resources to help you better understand and comply with the law on your own site. We value the privacy and security of our users’ data. We’ve always had privacy protection in place to help you control your content, keep it secure, or even move your site to another WordPress host. We’ve put a lot of time, thought, and effort into building tools and documentation to help our products comply with the new law”
  • Resource: https://en.support.wordpress.com/automattic-gdpr/

Helplink Bespoke Theme

We can vouch here at Transpose Digital that the theme itself we built for Helplink to
install on their WordPress installation does not collect any data in any way or form
from the users of the site.

We have however installed some necessary plugins on behalf of Helplink to cater for
functionality required by the Helplink team. These plugins were not developed at
Transpose Digital. As they may impact on your compliance they are as follows:

PayPal Donations
The Helplink site currently offers the functionality for users to donate through
PayPal.

This offering is made possible by the PayPal Donations plugin. The transaction occurs on the PayPal site and not your website, as the user is directed away from the site to PayPal.

For this reason, Transpose Digital do not feel that this plugin compromises the Helplink website under the GDPR legislation.

MailChimp for WordPress Plugin
This plugin is used to connect the Newsletter signup form to Mailchimp.

Transpose Digital have followed suggestions from the plugin authors on how to comply with
GDPR:

  • Transpose Digital have enabled the double opt-in option so users will receive an email after
    signing up, where they are asked to confirm that they wish to be added to the mailing list.
  • Therefore, details are stored with the user’s consent
  • The information passed to Mailchimp will be strictly used for promotional or informative emails regarding Helplink products.
  • The plugin passes the following details to MailChimp:
    • First Name
    • Last Name
    • Email

Contact Form 7 Plugin
This plugin allows users to send emails to helplinksupport@helplink.ie from the online form on the site. The plugin itself does not store any information; it just sends an email. However, as can be seen in the resource link, the author of the plugin states…

“We’ve been getting a lot of inquiries like this about GDPR, but unfortunately I don’t have a precise answer. Since I’m not a lawyer, I’m not able to say whether a WordPress plugin is compliant with specific legislation or not. “

Complete Analytics Optimization Suite (CAOS) Plugin
This plugin is used to load the script used by Google Analytics to track activity on the site, mainly the IP address for location. Transpose Digital have enabled the ‘Use Anomymize IP’ option provided in the plugin which hides the later part of the IP address so it cannot identify a user.

As a Data Processor, Google states the following with regards their Data Protection compliance:

  • “Keeping users’ information safe, secure and private is among our highest priorities at Google. Over the years, we have worked closely with Data Protection Authorities in Europe and have implemented strong privacy protections that reflect their guidance. We are committed to complying with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and to doing so in dialogue and collaboration with our partners”

Cookie Notice Plugin
Cookie Notice allows us to elegantly inform users that our site uses cookies and to comply with the EU cookie law regulations. It does not gather and store any user data.

The current setup provides the following text…

  • “We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you
    continue to use this site, we will assume that you are happy with it.”

Currently one button is provided with this notice…

  • OK – Users can accept the use of Cookies

Two Additional buttons can be added…

  • READ MORE This would then be linked to a Terms and Conditions page on your site. This page would need to inform the user that Google Analytics are used to track users IP on the site to help you offer a better service. Let them know that you are currently using the Anonymize IP functionality so that they cannot be identified. Just enough of the IP address to determine their location.
  • ‘NO’ button option can be added to this notice. In this case we would remove the above CAOS Plugin (This plugin helps with our Google Page Speed ranking) mentioned above and include the Google Analytics script in the ‘Script blocking’ section of this plugin. If this ‘NO’ button is selected the Google Analytics script is never loaded, so no information is provided. This setup would also mean that the Analytics script will not be loaded until the user accepts the Cookie policy by pressing the ‘YES’ button. The plugin does not currently store the consents. The resource provided links to a recent support thread where it has been suggested by users that this would be a great addition to help with GDPR Compliance.

Yoast SEO Plugin
Our website uses the very popular Yoast SEO plugin to optimise our content to
archive a better search engine ranking. The plugin author states that:

  • “As of the 25th of May 2018, EU citizens have more control over what data companies store and process about them due to the GDPR. At Yoast, we have always aimed to store as little personal details as possible. Our plugin itself stores no personal data, only website data. The personal data we might have from you is the data you have provided. In this manner, no DPA or Data Processing Agreement is needed. You can review our DPA Articleon how we handle compliance”

Other Plugins Installed on helplink.ie:

The following are a list of other plugins installed on the Helplink site that Transpose Digital believe
do not pose any problem for the GDPR legislation. Please feel free to research or
receive legal advice on this matter as this is only our opinion.

 

 

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