We have updated this policy to reflect changes in data protection law. This policy was last updated 11 April 2024.
At 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp, we're committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
This policy explains when and why we collect personal information about you, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others, how we keep it safe and secure and your rights and choices in relation to your information.
Any questions regarding this policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to contact@ageuk.org.uk or by writing to Head of Supporter and Customer Engagement, 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp, 7th Floor, One America Square, 17 Crosswall, London, EC3N 2LB. Alternatively, you can telephone 0800 169 87 87.
This policy applies to individuals whose personal data is processed by 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp.
We're 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp, the country's largest charity dedicated to helping everyone make the most of later life.
In this policy '91¶ÌÊÓƵapp', 'we', 'us' or 'our' means:
Usually, 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp will be the 'controller' of your personal information. This means that we are responsible for deciding how your personal information is used and ensuring that it is used in compliance with applicable data protection law (in conjunction with other parties, where applicable).
If one of our subsidiaries (or another entity) is the relevant controller, this will be explained where appropriate.
We obtain information about you in the following ways:
For example, we may obtain information about you when you take part in one of our events, make a donation, play our 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp 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:
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:
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:
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.
The information we collect, store and use from you may depend on the relationship you have with 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp and/or one of our trading and charitable subsidiaries. This might include:
Data protection laws recognise certain categories of personal information as sensitive and therefore requiring greater protection, for example information about your health, ethnicity and religion.
We do not usually collect sensitive data about you unless there is a clear and valid reason for doing so and data protection laws allow us to do so.
Where appropriate, we will make it clear why we are collecting this type of information and what it will be used for.
The purposes for which we use your information may depend on the relationship you have with 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp and/or our charitable or trading subsidiaries. We may use your information for a number of different purposes, which may include:
We respect your right to privacy, and we will only contact you about 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp, our trading and charitable subsidiaries, if you are happy to hear from us or where appropriate to do so.
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.
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:
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 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp.
You can opt out of our marketing communications at any time. Please see “Your Choices” for further information.
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:
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 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp our fundraising and products and services that we offer. We do this by:
We may use the following re-marketing processes on some or all of specific online platforms.
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 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp and trusted third-party agencies working on our behalf for the purpose of monitoring and improving the usability of the 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp website.
We do not sell or rent your information to third parties.
We do not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.
However, we may disclose your information to third parties in order to achieve the other purposes set out in this policy. These third parties may include:
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:
We work in partnership with around 130 local 91¶ÌÊÓƵapps that provide support and services to older people within their community. Each local 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp 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 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp for the following reasons:
Data protection law requires us to rely on one or more lawful grounds to process your personal information. We consider the following grounds to be relevant:
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 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp 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 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp as a charitable organisation in pursuit of our aims and ideals. For example to:
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 choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us about the vital work we do for older people and the exciting products and services you can buy, then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form used to collect your information.
We’re committed to putting you in control of your data so you’re free to change your marketing communication preferences (including to tell us that you don’t want to be contacted for marketing purposes) at any time using:
We will not use your personal information for marketing purposes if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted and will retain your details on a suppression list to help ensure that we do not continue to contact you. However, we may still need to contact you for administrative purposes like where we are processing a donation or thanking you for your participation in an event.
Under UK data protection law, you have certain rights over the personal information that we hold about you. Here is a summary of the rights that we think apply:
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.
When you give us personal information, both offline and online, we take steps to ensure that appropriate technical and organisational controls are in place to protect it.
Any sensitive information (such as credit or debit card details) provided to us via our website is encrypted and protected with the following software: 128 Bit encryption on TLS. When you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear on the bottom of web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.
We take reasonable steps to ensure your information is accurate and up to date.
Where possible we use publicly available sources to identify deceased records or whether you have changed address.
We really appreciate it if you let us know when your contact details change.
We keep your information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes it was collected for. The length of time we retain your personal information for is determined by operational and legal considerations, as well as best practice.
For example, we are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfill our statutory and regulatory obligations (e.g. health/safety and tax/accounting purposes).
Further reasons we may retain personal information include:
We review our retention periods on a regular basis.
If you would like to know more about how long we hold your personal data for – please email us at contact@ageuk.org.uk.
Like many other websites, this website uses cookies. 'cookies' are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. For example, we use cookies to store your country preference. This helps us to deliver a more personalised service when you browse our website and improves our services.
91¶ÌÊÓƵapp has a Cookie Preference centre that allows you to control certain types of cookies that are used by 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp. When anyone visits or is taken to our website, all Marketing/Targeting cookies are opted out by default, meaning that individuals will only receive targeted online advertisements if they opt-in to these types of cookies. Cookies for Performance allow us to anonymously assess how effectively our website is working which in turn, ensures that we are giving all of our users the best experience.
We use Google Consent Mode, a feature of Google Analytics 4, which interacts with our cookie preference centre.
If you choose to deny consent to targeting or performance cookies, instead of storing cookies on your device, tags send “cookieless” pings to Google. This allows us to track the effectiveness of our online campaigns while respecting your cookie preferences and privacy.
It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences. For more information on how to switch off cookies on your computer, visit our full cookies policy. Turning cookies off may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.
Our local 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp’s can include the use of a ‘Chatbot’ on their local 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp site. This is so they can take specific questions and more general queries from the users of the site to provide better information in response. These ‘Chatbot’s’ are controlled solely by the Local 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp and are not administered by 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp centrally nor is data is passed between Local 91¶ÌÊÓƵapp’s Chatbot services.
Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites even if you access those using links from our website.
In addition, if you linked to our website from a third-party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third-party site and recommend that you check the privacy policy of that third-party site.
Any changes we may make to this policy in the future will be posted on this website so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you're happy with any changes. If we make any significant changes we'll make this clear on this website.
We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.
We are committed to protecting vulnerable supporters, customers and volunteers, and appreciate that additional care may be needed when we use their personal information. In recognition of this, we observe good practice guidelines in our interactions with vulnerable people.
If you use our services while you are outside the EEA, your information may be transferred outside the EEA in order to provide you with those services.
As part of the services offered to you through this website, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). By way of example, this may happen if any of our servers are from time to time located in a country outside of the EEA. You should be aware that these countries may not have similar data protection laws to the UK. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing. If we transfer your information outside of the EEA in this way, we will take steps to ensure that appropriate security measures are taken with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this policy.
We undertake regular reviews of who has access to information that we hold to ensure that your info is only accessible by appropriately trained staff, volunteers and contractors.
Records of your personal information and interactions with us (including by email and telephone) may be monitored. This may include:
We will let you know that your call may be recorded when you contact us by telephone, and we will only ask for the personal information that we need to provide you with the service you are looking for.
The purposes for which we monitor your communications with us are:
We welcome, and take seriously, all complaints and feedback about our work.
If you make a complaint to us, we will collect and use your information to respond to your concerns.
If your complaint relates to an area of our work where we employ a third-party processor or product provider, we may share your personal information with that third party to investigate your concerns.
We will keep a record of your complaint for 7 years from the date that we deem the complaint closed.
You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.
The ICO’s address:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Helpline number: 0303 123 1113
ICO website:
Any changes we may make to this policy in the future will be posted on this website so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you're happy with any changes. If we make any significant changes, we'll make this clear on this website.