Our privacy policy

This policy describes how and why Cancer Research UK uses your personal information, how we protect your privacy when doing so, and your rights and choices regarding this information. We promise to respect any of your personal information which is under our control and to keep it safe. We aim to be clear when we collect your information about what we will do with it.

Who we are

In this Privacy Policy, “Cancer Research UK”, “CRUK”, “we”, or “our” means

Cancer Research UK (registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666) and the Isle of Man (1103), a company limited by guarantee in England (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F)); and
its group companies Cancer Research Trading Limited (company number 4355631 in England) and Cancer Research Technology Limited (company number 01626049 in England).

How we collect information about you

We collect information in the following ways:

Information you provide to us directly

You may give us your information in order to sign up for our newsletter, apply for research funding or otherwise communicate with us.
When you use our website, we collect your personal information using “cookies” and other tracking methods. There are more details on the cookies and tracking methods we use in our Cookie Policy.

In addition, in accordance with common website practice, we will receive information about the type of device you’re using to access our website or apps and the settings on that device may provide us with information about your device, including what type of device it is, what specific device you have, what operating system you’re using, what your device settings are, and why a crash has happened. Your device manufacturer or operating system provider will have more details about what information your device makes available to us.

Information you provide to us indirectly

Your information may be shared with us by third parties, for example:

if you are a researcher and your information is shared with us by the principal investigator or institution.

We also may receive data about you from subcontractors acting on our behalf who provide us with technical, payment or delivery services, and from business partners, advertising networks and search/analytics providers used on our website.

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

Information from other sources

We also use information from the following sources:

Social Media
Communication, engagement and actions taken through external social media platforms that we participate on are custom to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policies held with each social media platform respectively.

Depending on your settings or the privacy policies for social media and messaging services like Facebook, WhatsApp or Twitter, you might give us permission to access information from those services.

You are advised to use social media platforms wisely and communicate / engage upon them with due care and caution in regard to your own privacy and personal details.

Information available publicly

We supplement information on our supporters and partners with information from publicly available sources such as charity websites and annual reviews, corporate websites, public social media accounts, the electoral register and Companies House in order to create a fuller understanding of someone’s interests and support of CRUK.

What personal information we collect

We collect, store and use the following kinds of personal information:

your name;
your contact details (including postal address, telephone number, e-mail address and/or social media identity);
your date of birth;
your gender;
if you apply for research funding, information necessary to process your application, such as your employment history; the employment history of individuals who will be working on the grant, including any allegations of bullying or harassment and salary information for anyone who’s salary will be funded by the grant;
information about your activities on our website(s) and about the device you use to access these, for instance your IP address and geographical location;
information about events, activities and products which we consider to be of interest to you; and
any other personal information you provide to us.

Certain types of personal information are in a special category under data protection laws, as they are considered to be more sensitive. Examples of this type of sensitive data (known as “special category data”) would be information about health, race, religious beliefs, political views, trade union membership, sex life or sexuality or genetic/biometric information.

We only collect this type of information to the extent that there is a clear reason for us to do so, for example where we ask for information for the purpose of providing appropriate facilities or support. We will also collect this type of information if you make it public or volunteer it to us.

Wherever it is practical for us to do so, we will make clear why we are collecting this type of information and what it will be used for.

How we use your information

We will use your personal information to:

provide you with the services, products or information you asked for;
keep a record of your relationship with us;
respond to or fulfil any requests, complaints or queries you make to us;
understand how we can improve our services, products or information by conducting analysis and market research;
manage our events, such as conferences;
check for updated contact details against third party sources so that we can stay in touch if you move (see “Keeping your information up to date” below);
send you correspondence and communicate with you;
process applications for funding and for administration of our role in the projects we fund;
ensure that participants involved in CRUK research are treated with dignity and respect
if you are or have been a CRUK-funded researcher, invite you to act as a peer reviewer on grant applications in accordance with the conditions of your grant
administer our websites and to troubleshoot, perform data analysis, research, generate statistics and surveys related to our technical systems;
testing our technical systems to make sure they are working as expected;
contact you if enter your details onto one of our online forms, and you don’t ‘send’ or ‘submit’ the form, to see if we can help with any problems you may be experiencing with the form or our websites;
display content to you in a way appropriate to the device you are using (for example if you are viewing content on a mobile device or a computer);
generate reports on our work, services and events;
conduct due diligence;
monitor website use to identify visitor location, guard against disruptive use, monitor website traffic and/or personalise information which is presented to you;
conduct training and quality control;
audit and administer our accounts;
meet our legal obligations, for instance to perform contracts between you and us, or our obligations to regulators, government and/or law enforcement bodies; and/or
establish, defend or enforce legal claims.

How we use your information to tell you about our work

Sending marketing communications

Our marketing communications include information about our latest breakthroughs, campaigns and lifesaving work and requests for donations or other support. Occasionally, we may include information from partner organisations or organisations who support us in these communications. We operate an ‘opt-in only’ marketing policy. This means that, except as set out below, we will only send marketing communications to those that have explicitly stated that they are happy for us to do so.

We recognise that consent doesn’t last forever and that circumstances change, so we have placed a cap of 4 years from the last time someone consented to marketing. You can change your mind about your preferences at any time by contacting us at [email protected].

We may use information we hold about you, for example your relationship with us, your location and demographics, as well as the type of activity you have been involved with, to tailor our communications with you about future activities.

Managing your contact preferences

We make it easy for you to tell us how you want us to communicate, in a way that suits you. Our forms have clear marketing preference questions and we include information on how to opt out when we send you marketing. If you don’t want to hear from us, that’s fine, and you can change your preferences at any time. Just let us know when you provide your data or contact us at [email protected].

If you’ve decided you don’t want to be contacted for marketing purposes, we may still need to contact you for administrative purposes.

Legal basis for processing

Data protection laws mean that each use we make of personal information must have a “legal basis”. The relevant legal bases are set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (EU Regulation 2016/679) and in current UK data protection legislation.

Specific consent

Consent is where we ask you if we can use your information in a certain way, and you agree to this (for example when we send you marketing material via post, phone, text or e-mail). Where we use your information for a purpose based on consent, you have the right to withdraw consent for any future use of your information for this purpose at any time.

Legal obligation

We have a basis to use your personal information where we need to do so to comply with one of our legal or regulatory obligations. For example, in some cases we may need to share your information with our various regulators such as the Charity Commission, Fundraising Regulator or Information Commissioner, or to use information we collect about you for due diligence purposes.

Performance of a contract / take steps at your request to prepare for entry into a contract

We have a basis to use your personal information where we are entering into a contract with you or performing our obligations under that contract. Examples of this would be if you are being funded to undertake research.

Vital interests

We have a basis to use your personal information where it is necessary for us to protect life or health. For instance if there were to be a safeguarding issue which required us to contact people unexpectedly or share their information with emergency services.

Legitimate interests

We have a basis to use your personal information if it is reasonably necessary for us (or others) to do so and in our/their “legitimate interests” (provided that what the information is used for is fair and does not unduly impact your rights).
We consider our legitimate interests to include all of the day-to-day activities Cancer Research UK carries out with personal information. Some examples not mentioned under the other bases above where we are relying on legitimate interests are:

analysis and profiling of our supporters using personal information we already hold;
updating your address using third party sources if you have moved house (please see the “Keeping your information up to date” section below for more on this).
use of personal information when we are monitoring use of our website or apps for technical purposes;
use of personal information to administer, review and keep an internal record of the people we work with, including supporters, volunteers and researchers;
sharing of personal information between relevant teams and committees within Cancer Research UK and between Cancer Research UK’s group companies.

We only rely on legitimate interests where we consider that any potential impact on you (positive and negative), how intrusive it is from a privacy perspective and your rights under data protection laws do not override our (or others’) interests in us using your information in this way.

When we use special category personal data (please see the “What personal information we collect” section above), 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 using this type of information (for example if you have made the information manifestly public, we need to process it for employment, social security or social protection law purposes, your vital interests, or, in some cases, if it is in the public interest for us to do so).

How we keep your information safe

We ensure that there are appropriate technical and organisational controls (including physical, electronic and managerial measures) in place to protect your personal details. For example our online forms are always encrypted and our network is protected and routinely monitored.

Some of our suppliers run their operations outside the European Economic Area (EEA) - this may include a country which may not be subject to the same data protection laws as companies based in the UK. In these circumstances, we will take steps to make sure they provide an adequate level of protection in accordance with UK data protection law, and appropriate safeguards are in place.

How long we keep your information for

We take into account various criteria when determining the appropriate retention period for personal data including:

the purposes for which we process your personal data and how long we need the particular data to achieve these purposes;
how long the personal data is likely to remain accurate and up-to-date;
for how long the personal data might be relevant to possible future legal claims;
any applicable legal, accounting, reporting or regulatory requirements that specify how long certain records must be kept.

Sharing your information with other organisations

As set out in the “Sending marketing communications” section above, we will never sell or rent your information to third parties for marketing purposes.

We may share your information with organisations with whom we undertake joint marketing campaigns. This may be to ensure that our supporters are not contacted by both organisations, to enable us to assess the success of our activity or to facilitate due diligence.

We may also disclose your information to third parties in connection with the other purposes set out in this policy. These third parties may include:

membership societies such as AACR, EACR etc. who you may hold a membership with
business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors who may process information on our behalf;
if you are a researcher, volunteer advisory panels, any joint funders of research, host institutions and external members of our committees;
advertisers and advertising networks
analytics and search engine providers;
IT service providers.

Where we are under a legal or regulatory duty to do so, we may disclose your details to the police, regulatory bodies or legal advisors, and/or, where we consider this necessary, to protect the rights, property or safety of Cancer Research UK, its personnel, visitors, users or others.

We reserve the right to disclose your personal information to third parties:

if we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal information to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets; and/or
if substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, personal information held by us may be one of the transferred assets.

Keeping your information up to date

We may use information from external sources such as the post office national change of address database and/or the public electoral roll to identify when we think you have changed address so that we can update our records and stay in touch. We only use sources where we are confident that you’ve been informed of how your information may be shared and used.

We do this so we can continue to contact you where you have chosen to receive marketing messages from us and contact you if we need to make you aware of changes to our terms or assist you with problems with donations.

This activity also prevents us from having duplicate records and out of date preferences, so that we don’t contact you when you’ve asked us not to.
We’re committed to putting you in control of your data and you’re free at any time to opt out from this activity. To find out more, please contact [email protected].

We really appreciate it if you let us know if your contact details change.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law, you have rights over personal information that we hold about you. We’ve summarised these below:

Right to access your personal information

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. Please contact us at [email protected].

Right to have your inaccurate personal information corrected

You have the right to have inaccurate or incomplete information we hold about you corrected. If you believe the information we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete, please provide us with details and we will investigate and, where applicable, correct any inaccuracies.

Right to restrict use of your personal information

You have a right to ask us to restrict the processing of some or all of your personal information in the following situations: if some information we hold on you isn’t right; we’re not lawfully allowed to use it; you need us to retain your information in order for you to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim; or you believe your privacy rights outweigh our legitimate interests to use your information for a particular purpose and you have objected to us doing so.

Right to erasure of your personal information

You may ask us to delete some or all of your personal information and in certain cases, and subject to certain exceptions, you have the right for this to be done. If we are unable to delete your information, we will explain why this is the case.

Right for your personal information to be portable

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.

Right to object to the use of your personal information

If we are processing your personal information based on our legitimate interests or for scientific/historical research or statistics, you have a right to object to our use of your information.

If we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes, and you wish to object, we will stop processing your information for these purposes as soon as reasonably possible.

If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please contact us at [email protected]. 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 (ICO).

Complaints

If you are unhappy with any aspect of how we are using your personal information we’d like to hear about it. We appreciate the opportunity this feedback gives us to learn and improve. You can find out more and read our Complaints Policy on our web pages.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint about any use of your information with the Information Commissioners Office, the UK data protection regulator.

Changes to this Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your personal information we will make this clear on the Cancer Research Horizons website or by contacting you directly.

Contact us

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please let us know by contacting us at [email protected].
Cancer Research UK also has a Data Protection Officer, who can be contacted at:

The Data Protection Officer
Cancer Research UK
2 Redman Place
London
E20 1JQ
Email: [email protected].