Privacy Statement
Ballincollig Community School is committed to preserving the privacy of all visitors to https://www.balcs.ie (“our website”). This privacy statement relates to our practices in connection with our website and its associated services. Ballincollig Community School fully respects your right to privacy. We will not collect personal information/personal data about you when you visit our website unless you choose to provide that information using the “contact us” form, consenting to the use of cookies or subscribe to our school’s “e-news”. By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of your information under the terms of this privacy statement which is in accordance with the Data Protection Acts, 1988 and 2003 and the European Communities (Electronic Communications Networks and Services) (Privacy and Electronic Communications) Regulations 2011. Please read the following privacy statement to understand how we use and protect the information that you choose to provide to us.
Personal information which we collect from you
When you visit our website you may wish to provide certain information about yourself, such as when you complete our “Contact Us” form or subscribe to our school’s “e-news”. Ballincollig Community School does not collect any personal data about you on this website, apart from the information which you volunteer to send us/provide in the “Contact Us” form or by subscribing to our “e-news” or by accepting our use of cookies, web beacons and similar technologies in order to run our website, keep it secure and understand how visitors use our website in order to provide relevant and interesting content.
The school “e-news” published by Ballincollig Community School in conjuction with our provider mailerlite, may contain tracking facilities such as web beacons within the actual email. Subscriber activity is tracked and stored in a database for future analysis and evaluation. Such tracked activity may include; the opening of emails, forwarding of emails, the clicking of links within the email content, times, dates and frequency of activity [this may not be a comprehensive list]. This information is used to evaluate the effectiveness of our school “e-news”. To find out more about the types of tracking associated with our email campaigns, read the Mailerlite Privacy Policy.
Non-Personal information which we collect
Where you visit our website, certain non-personal data is available to us through our internet service provider. This non-personal data is collected on a statistical, aggregate, non-individual basis. This information may include the IP address from which you access our website, the type of browser used to access our website (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.), the type of operating system used to access our website (Windows, Macintosh, etc.), the “top-level” domain name used (ie, .com, .org, etc.), the date and time of your visit to our website and the number of pages you visited on our website.
Use of your information
Any information which you provide using the “Contact Us” form is not made available to any third parties and is only used by Ballincollig Community School in line with the purposes for which you provided it (e.g. to contact you and answer any queries which you have raised in the “Contact Us” form or to address any other feedback which you send us in the “Contact Us” form) or for any reasonably incidental purpose.
If you have consented to receiving our school’s “e-news”, either on the enrolment form or by opting to subscribe to it on our website, we use your data provided together with Mailerlite to deliver our school’s “e-news” to the email address you provided. For further information on how Mailerlite protects your data and complies with data protection laws, please visit: https://www.mailerlite.com/legal/privacy-policy
Disclosure to Other People
We do not disclose, sell or distribute any personal information which you send to us via the “Contact Us” form to any third parties. We may pass aggregate information on the usage of our site to third parties, but this will not include information that can be used to identify you. Your personal data may also be anonymised and used for statistical purposes. Unless required to do so by law, we will not otherwise share, sell or distribute any of the information you provide to us without your consent.
If you consent to and sign up to receiving our school “e-news” via email, your information provided is not held by us, it is collected by our third party newsletter processor Mailerlite, who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of email transactions and are fully EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework Certified and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. You can read the Mailerlite privacy policy here.
Transferring your information outside of Europe
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 Union (“EU”). By way of example, this may happen if any of our data processors' servers are located in a country outside of the EU. These countries may not have similar data protection laws to the EU. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing. If we transfer your information outside of the EU 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.
If you use our services while you are outside the EU, your information may be transferred outside the EU in order to provide you with those services.
Social media platforms
Communication, engagement and actions taken through external social media platforms that this website and its owners participate on are custom to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policies held with each social media platform respectively.
Users are advised to use social media platforms wisely and communicate / engage upon them with due care and caution regarding their own privacy and personal details. This website nor its owners will ever ask for personal or sensitive information through social media platforms and encourage users wishing to discuss sensitive details to contact them through primary communication channels such as by telephone or email.
This website may use social sharing buttons which help share web content directly from web pages to the social media platform in question. Users are advised before using such social sharing buttons that they do so at their own discretion and note that the social media platform may track and save your request to share a web page respectively through your social media platform account.
Shortened links in social media
This website and its owners through their social media platform accounts may share web links to relevant web pages. By default some social media platforms shorten lengthy urls [web addresses]. Users are advised to take caution and good judgement before clicking any shortened urls published on social media platforms by this website and its owners. Despite the best efforts to ensure only genuine urls are published, many social media platforms are prone to spam and hacking and therefore this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any shortened links.
IP Addresses
With your privacy in mind and since in our case it does not add much value to our site analytics, we have opted NOT to collect visitors IP addresses through our site analytics tools provided by our website’s platform provider (Squarespace).
External website links
Although this website strives to only include quality, safe and relevant external links, users are advised to adopt a policy of caution before clicking any external web links mentioned throughout this website. (External links are clickable text / banner / image links to other websites. The owners of this website cannot guarantee or verify the contents of any externally linked website despite their best efforts. Users should therefore note they click on external links at their own risk and this website and its owners cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.
Commenting on our news
You have the ability to add a comment to our news, in which case the name and email address you enter with your comment will be saved to this website’s database, along with your computer’s IP address and the time and date that you submitted the comment. This information is only used to identify you as the comment author, and will not be used for any other purpose, nor is it transmitted to any third party or data processor. Only your name will be shown on the public-facing website. You can read Squarespace's Privacy Policy here.
Your comment and associated personal data will remain on this site until such time that we either (a) remove the comment or (b) remove the blog post. If you wish to have your comment and data removed, you may request that we do so at any time.
Cookies
For a full list of cookies we use and more detailed information on how to accept or reject cookies please visit or cookie policy
WHAT IS A COOKIE?
A cookie is a small text file that may be stored on your computer or mobile device that contains data related to a website you visit. It may allow a website “remember” your actions or preferences over a period of time, or it may contain data related to the function or delivery of the site. Cookies can be set by the owner of the website or in some cases by third party services the website owner allows to present other information, run content or provide other functionality such as analytics.
Further information on cookies can be found at; http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm
COOKIES USED ON https://www.balcs.ie
Ballincollig Community School uses cookies when you visit our website, which is built on the Squarespace platform. We use some essential cookies for security features on our website and we use Squarespace's proprietary analytics tools which allow us to measure and learn in aggregate how our website is being used, and to see for example, which are the most popular pages or what % of our users access our website from a mobile device vs a desktop. This helps us make important design and functionality decisions and helps us ensure we provide relevant information in an easily accessible format. This analytics tool does not however track you across the internet and is only used during your visit to our website and analytics cookies are only placed on your device once you have given your consent to their use. We also use several session cookies and a persistent cookie to record your acknowledgement of our cookie usage. You can read the Squarespace privacy policy here.
ESSENTIAL AND NON-ESSENTIAL COOKIES
Cookies can be classified as either 'essential' or 'non-essential'.
Essential cookies: these are cookies that are either:
(a) used solely to carry out or facilitate the transmission of communications over a network; or
(b) strictly necessary to provide an online service (e.g. our website or a service on our website) which you have requested.
'Essential' cookies are automatically placed on your computer or device when you access our website or take certain actions on our website.
Non-essential cookies: these are any cookies that do not fall within the definition of essential cookies, such as cookies used to analyse your behaviour on a website ('analytical' cookies) or cookies used to display advertisements to you ('advertising' cookies). 'Non-essential' cookies and other technologies are only placed on your computer or device if you have consented to us doing so.
SESSION AND PERSISTENT COOKIES
Cookies can be classified as either 'session' or 'persistent', depending on how long they last after they are placed on your browser.
Session cookies: session cookies last for as long as you keep your browser open. They expire when you close your browser.
Persistent cookies: persistent cookies expire at a fixed point in time or if you manually delete them from your browser, whichever occurs first.
FIRST AND THIRD PARTY COOKIES
Cookies can be classified as 'first party' or 'third party'.
First party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by our website domain.
Third party cookies: these are cookies placed on your device by third party website domains.
For a full list of cookies we use and more detailed information on how to accept or reject cookies please visit our cookie policy
Security
Albeit we process very limited personal data on our website and through our school “e-news”, we (and any technology providers we use) nonetheless employ state of the art security measures to protect your information from access by unauthorised persons and to guard against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage and we will do our best to ensure that all records we hold remain secure in line with our obligations under Data Protection Acts, 1988 and 2003. We take our security responsibilities seriously, employing the most appropriate physical and technical measures, including staff training and awareness. We review our security procedures regularly.
Retention
We do not retain your personal data for longer than it is necessary for us to comply with the purpose for which you gave it to us. Any personal data which you provide to us using this website will be used in line with the purposes for which you provided it (e.g. to contact you and answer any queries which you have raised in the “Contact Us” form or to address any other feedback which you send us in the “Contact Us” form) and after this purpose has been completed, we will delete your personal data. Personal data provided for the purpose of our school “e-news” (your name and email address) are, once you unsubscribe through the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of any “e-news” email deleted.
Accessing Your Information
You are entitled to see the information we hold about you. On written request, we supply copies of your personal data which you may have supplied to us using our website. If you wish to obtain copies of this personal data, you should write to the principal of Ballincollig Community School at Ballincollig, Co. Cork and ask that he/she provides you with an Access Request Form. The law entitles us to charge you a fee for doing so (which currently does not exceed €6.35). Your request will be dealt with as soon as possible and will not take more than 40 days to process. If you discover that Ballincollig Community School holds inaccurate information about you, you can request that we correct that information. In certain circumstances, you may also request that data which you have supplied via our website be deleted (although you should note that if you request a deletion, you would generally be expected to identify some contravention of data protection law in the manner in which Ballincollig Community School processes the data concerned). Upon written request, we will supply you with a Data Rectification/Erasure Form for this purpose.
Contacting Us
If you are concerned about how your personal data is processed by our website, please do not hesitate to bring these concerns to our attention using the contact details below:
The Principal
Ballincollig Community School,
Ballincollig, Co.Cork
+353 21 487 1740
Review of this Policy
We keep this Policy under regular review.
Our website is hosted by Squarespace and its use is subject to Squarespace's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.