Privacy Policy GDPR

This policy expands on the privacy information that has previously been made available to you a copy of which can be found here. Please note, some of these rights do not come into force until 25th May 2018 and we may update this page before that date.  



The purpose of this notice is to explain how Yoga Alliance Professionals (YAP) collects and uses your personal information and how we comply with data protection law. In legal terms, YAP is a ‘data controller’ for this information.


We respect the privacy of our members and website users and this Privacy Policy demonstrates our commitment to protecting their privacy. 


In this notice, we will explain what personal information we hold, and your rights regarding this information. It’s important that you read it carefully, together with any other privacy notices and information that we provide you, from time to time. By using our website, you are accepting the terms described in this Policy.


Contents 


  1.     Your personal information and where we obtain it
  2.     How we use your personal information
  3.     What personal information we use and how long we keep it
  4.     Passing on your personal information to third parties
  5.     Security and safe storage of your personal information
  6.     How you can access and correct your personal information
  7.     Additional information
  8.     How to get further information


1. Your personal information and where we obtain it


Information that you provide


We receive personal information about you in one of two ways.


Firstly, when you completed an application to join YAP and secondly, from information you have inputted or shared on your membership profile on our website. This includes identifiable information such as your name and contact details.


You can find more information about the personal information we hold about you at “What personal information we use and how long we keep it ” below.


Information from other sources


We may receive your name, contact details and training course start/graduation date from your course Trainer as part of their Terms and Conditions. This will allow you join YAP as either a Trainee or Teacher. 


We may also periodically obtain both personal and non-personal information about you from other business partners and other third parties. Examples of information that we may receive include (but are not limited to): updated address information, and additional demographic information.


Information about others


We may also collect and store personal information about other people that you provide to us. If you use our website to send others (friends, students, colleagues, etc.) information that may interest them, we may store your personal information, and the personal information of each recipient.


2. How we use your personal information


Administration of your YAP membership


We have a contractual and legitimate reason to keep your personal information. In order to provide you with a membership and meet our contractual commitments we need to use and store your personal information to administer your membership.


For instance, we can use your information to:


  • Deliver the service/s that you have requested, 
  • Communicate and interact with you, in relation to your YAP membership. This can be by telephone/mobile devices, web chat, email, post or secure mail,
  • Provide services and information you request from us in relation to your membership,
  • Inform you about changes to our services,
  • Provide information about YAP products and services which we think you could benefit from, including newsletters,
  • Improve our service offering, including through surveys and research activities,
  • Enforce our Terms and Conditions,
  • Develop and display content and advertising tailored to your interests on our site,
  • Identify if and when you open the secure messages, emails or links we send you.


Use of your personal information based on consent


We’ll use your personal details to provide you with other information you’ve consented to receive. You can easily withdraw your consent at any time.


For example: when you applied for a membership you were asked if you’d like to receive information about our additional services. If you have consented to receive such information, you can withdraw your consent at any time, by emailing us on stayintouch@yogaallianceprofessionals.org, putting title of email Withdrawing Consent. 


Use of Cookies


On the first visit to our website on any device or web browser (and every 30 days thereafter), you will be prompted to accept or deny cookies from yogaallianceprofessionals.org. If you choose to deny cookies, you deny your consent to store cookies and local storage for this website, eventually deleting already stored cookies. You may also delete or decline cookies by changing your browser settings. (Click "Help" in the toolbar of most browsers for instructions.) If you do so, some of the features and services of our website may not function properly.


If you choose to allow cookies we will collect information from your browser when you visit our website. This information includes your IP address, your browser type and language, access times, the content of any undeleted cookies that your browser previously accepted from us, and the referring website address.


If you want more information about cookies we use please go to our cookies policy page.



3. What personal information we use and how long we keep it


Data we use


This includes - 


  • Names, surname, forenames, yoga name
  • Address
  • Telephone number
  • Email address
  • Emails, secure messages, correspondence
  • Website and social media links
  • Trainer details and graduation date
  • Membership dates and payment dates
  • Further Training Information, (please note we do not keep a copy of certificates)
  • Membership Level
  • Date of birth
  • Insurance information
  • Credit card details (encrypted)
  • Details of workshops, retreats and teacher training courses which you run
  • Photo albums, videos, coupons, classifieds, articles, job vacancies and any other information which you post on your public profile


How long do we keep your data for?


The information which we hold above will remain on your public profile and account for the duration of your membership.


If you do not renew your membership on the required date, you will be given a 7 (seven) day window in which to renew and after that time your online profile will be removed from our website. After this time your account will be downgraded to a student/practitioner account, with limited functionality. Any information which you placed on your public profile, other than your profile photo will be removed from public view and stored on our secure SQL database. If you would like your profile information to be permanently deleted, then please contact us on stayintouch@yogaallianceprofessionals.org


If you opt not to have a practitioner account, we will keep a record of your membership on our main system (account) for 7 (seven) years after your cancellation date. We will keep your name, email address, training details and membership dates for this time. After you cancel we will remove your credit card details from our system. 


In addition, if information has been provided to third parties as described in this Privacy Policy, retention of that information will be subject to those third parties individual policies. 


While we will remove your profile from our website at your request, we cannot guarantee that this will update on Google and other search engines immediately, as governance of the internet is out-with our control. This is dependant on reindexing by Googlebots and other web crawlers.


Financial information and bank details


We will keep a record of your credit or debit card on your profile at all times, to ensure that your renewal payments go through on time. Card details (with the exception of the last 4/four digits) are encrypted for your safety. Our authorised employees cannot see these. We may use this information or payment method to process payments for any purchases made on our website, enrol you in discount, rebate and other programs in which you elect to participate.


If you do not wish us to hold your card details, then you can remove these from your profile at any time. 


If you cancel your membership, your card details will be removed from your profile as part of our cancellation procedures.  


Finally, we may keep your personal information for a longer period of time than mentioned above for archiving or research purposes, or in the event of ongoing disputes, claims, complaints or data migration. In such cases, we’ll consider the nature, degree of sensitivity, and volume of your personal information that needs to be kept. We’ll also take into consideration the purpose for extending the retention period and whether this purpose could be achieved through other means.


4. Passing on your personal information to third parties


From time to time, we may need to pass your personal information on to trusted third parties. The third parties we may share information with are:


For compliance purposes


We need to pass your personal data as requested and when required to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, in accordance with our legal obligations, for compliance purposes.


In order to comply with our legal, regulatory and statutory obligations, we may need to pass your personal information to third parties such as courts, law enforcement agencies, our insurers, auditors and our professional advisers.


For insurance scheme administering purposes


Members based in the UK and Ireland have our group Master Insurance Policy included in their membership price. Our insurance broker is Balens Ltd and we are an Authorised Introducer for them. In order to set up members insurance we will share, member names, addresses, payment date and membership dates.


If you request access to our European or Corporate insurance, then we will pass your name and contact details on to or insurance broker, Balens Ltd. They will contact you directly to discuss your needs. 


YAP is satisfied that Balens Ltd has appropriate and adequate technical and organisational measures in place to protect the security of your personal data. Balens Ltd, will never share your data with anybody else. 


Third party processors for website analytics purposes


YAP uses website analytics providers in order to provide valuable information and insight into the performance and use of our website.  The use of these cookies are explained in more detail in our cookie policy. YAP website analytics has a data retention period of 4 years, all data collected will expire after this date. Additionally YAP can and will remove specific website analytics user data on request.


On the first visit to our website on any device or web browser (and every 30 days thereafter), you will be prompted to accept or deny cookies from yogaallianceprofessionals.org. You may also delete or decline cookies by changing your browser settings. (Click "Help" in the toolbar of most browsers for instructions.) If you do so, some of the features and services of our website may not function properly.



Other Authorised Service Providers

We use external systems to perform certain services on our behalf. We may share your personal information with them. These services include and are not limited to, our payment gateway which allows us to process payments, our CRM system which allows us to provide customer service and marketing assistance, perform business and sales analysis, support our website functionality, and support surveys and other features offered through our website. These service providers may have access to personal information needed to perform their functions but are not permitted to share or use such information for any other purposes.

YAP is satisfied that all of our Additional Third Parties have appropriate and adequate technical and organisational measures in place to protect the security of your personal data. They will never share your data with anybody else. 


Website Contact Forms


Our website functionality allows yoga practitioners (students) to contact our members via a contact form. We will use this information to create a free account for the yoga practitioner. We will match this information and service request against our list of members. When a contact form is submitted, you consent to us providing your personal information to the appropriate member/s. Sharing this information with members allows them to contact you using the e-mail address or other contact information you provided.


Once your information has been passed on to our member/s then you should review their Privacy Policy to understand how they use, store and disclose personal information. Once your information has been shared with our member then their Privacy Policy will take effect. If you want to learn more about their privacy practices, we encourage you to visit the websites of those third parties. These entities or their servers may be located either inside or outside the United States.


Aggregate Information


Such information does not contain any personal information and is related to numerical data such as number of website visitors, most popular features accessed on the website. We may share such information with members, prospective members and our additional third parties. This information may be used to conduct business analysis and develop further website content and services which we believe our members will find of interest. Aggregate information may be used to tailor content for your personal membership profile newsfeed. 


5. Security and safe storage of your personal information


The security of your personal data is very important to us and we take this matter very seriously.  We’ll use appropriate procedures and security features to process and protect your information. The information which you provide us on application forms, contact forms and on your membership profile, will be sent to servers which are located in the IBM/Softlayer data Centre, in the United States of America ,which implements the latest security best practices. Our website developers operate from the United States of America.


We take appropriate security measures (including physical, electronic and procedural measures) to help safeguard your personal information from unauthorised access and disclosure. For example, only authorised employees are permitted to access your personal information, and they may do so only for permitted business functions. We use firewalls to help prevent unauthorised persons from gaining access to your personal information.


We want you to feel confident using our website, however, no system can be completely secure. Although we take steps to secure your information, we do not promise, and you should not expect, that your personal information, searches, or other communications will always remain secure. This Privacy Policy is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018.


Please refer to the National Crime Agency’s website at http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/crime-threats/identity-crime for information about how to protect yourself against identity theft. 



6. How you can access and correct your personal information


How you can correct your personal data 


You can correct the information we hold about you by logging into your YAP profile and updating the relevant information. 


You can also contact us at stayintouch@yogaallianceprofessionals.org or write to us at Yoga Alliance Professionals, 10/2 Beaverhall Road, Edinburgh, EH7 4JE


How you can access your personal data and exercise your rights


From the 25th May 2018, in addition to your right to access your personal data that we hold about you, you also have the right to make a request (under certain circumstances) to:


  • Restrict or object to the processing of the personal data we hold about you (see Note 1 below);
  • Erase your personal data (see Note 1);
  • Receive a copy of personal data we hold about you, i.e. the data you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format where we use it with your consent. 


Note 1


It is important to note, that under the GDPR, your request to restrict or object to processing, or erase your personal data doesn’t automatically lead to a requirement for processing to stop, or for personal data to be deleted, in all cases.


To make a request under these rights you can:


Write to us at Yoga Alliance Professionals, 10/2 Beaverhall Road, Edinburgh, EH7 4JE

or email us as stayintouch@yogaallianceprofessionals.org


Restricting Data


You can choose not to provide us with certain information, when you join or at any time during your membership. This may result in you being unable to use certain features of our website, as such information may be required in order for you to register as member of our organisation or use our services.


At any time you can choose to no longer receive commercial or promotional emails or newsletters. Either by unsubscribing directly from these messages or by contacting us at stayintouch@yogaallianceprofessionals.org. We may send you other types of transactional and relationship email communication such as service announcements, renewal notifications, without offering you the opportunity to unsubscribe. 


7. Additional Information 


Third Party Websites


There are a number of places on our website where you may click on a link to access other websites that do not operate under this Privacy Policy. 


For example, if you click on a member’s personal website link or click on links included in their workshop, retreat, teacher training course listings, or any other search results on our website including advertising, you will be taken to a website that we do not control. These third-party websites may independently solicit and collect information, including personal information, from you. We recommend that you consult the privacy statements of all third-party websites you visit by clicking on the "privacy" link typically located at the bottom of the webpage you are visiting.


Blogs, Bulletin Boards, Review and Chat Rooms


We provide areas on our website where you can post information about yourself and others and communicate with others, as well as post reviews of members, courses, and the like, or upload content (e.g. pictures, videos, audio files, etc.). Such postings are governed by our Terms & Conditions. In addition, such postings may appear on other websites or when searches are executed on the subject of your posting. We may share blogs, articles on our social media accounts for others to see. 


Please note that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information on publicly viewable web pages, that information is publicly available and can be collected and used by others. For example, if you post your email address, you may receive unsolicited messages. We cannot control who reads your posting or what other users may do with the information you voluntarily post, so we encourage you to exercise discretion and caution with respect to your personal information. Once you have posted information, you may not be able to edit or delete such information.


Children’s Privacy


Our website is a general audience site, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13.


Third party rights


This Privacy Policy does not create rights enforceable by third parties or require disclosure of any personal information relating to users of the website.


8. How to get further Information


Further Information


The information provided in this Privacy Policy is in addition to any other privacy information we may give you on our website, directory.yogaallianceprofessionals.org or via other channels (paper communication, secure message, webchat, telephone etc.). 


If you want more information about the use of cookies on the YAP website, please view our cookies policy.


Contact Us


If you want to contact us, you can



Raise a complaint with the ICO


If you have concerns about the way we handle your personal data or you think we haven’t dealt with them properly, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office and raise a complaint


  • By phone on +44 303 123 1113
  • By writing to Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF
  • Via their website at http://www.ico.org.uk/concerns


We will occasionally update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our practices, services and legislation. We recommend that you check our website from time to time to inform yourself of any changes in this Privacy Policy or any of our other policies.