Hidden Strength

Privacy Policy

We at Hidden Strength have a responsibility to keep your personal information safe. This goes for all the children and young people we work with. It goes for our staff, and our supporters- that is, people who think our work is good and want to support it. It goes for other people who work with us too. We have made sure that we have set up good ways to keep information about you safe and private. We keep checking these to make sure they are as good as possible.

This page explains how we handle your personal information. This applies to your use of the Hidden Strength App and website (our platform). This information was updated on 21 May 2021.

This policy is made with young people mind.

Who we are

Hidden Strength is responsible for looking after your information. Hidden Strength is registered under the Data Protection Act 2018 and our registration number with the Information Commissioner’s office number is ZB038358. For the purposes of this policy, we are the Data Controller. This means that we decide what we do with your personal information and how we use it. How we use the personal information is called “processing”. We need to have a good reason to use or process your personal information.

We care about you and take care with your personal information. Sometimes the law means we will have to share your personal information. But this is always to protect you or others. You can read more about this in our confidentiality promise. If you would like someone to explain these laws to you, please email dataprotection@hiddenstrength.com

What does Personal Information mean?

Personal information is anything that identifies you. This can be things, like your name, location, your date of birth and even a photo of you. It also includes information about your health and your computer’s IP address. It can include things you’ve told Hidden Strength about yourself like how you have been feeling. We only keep information like this about you so we can use what we know to help you, or so we can work with you in future. For example, if we are going to give you help and advice about a new problem, we may see from our records that there are other problems you have already told us about. Using that information about you means we can give you better help or advice. Another example is that we may need to use the email address or phone number to get in touch with you again if we need to.

We will only ask things about you that you want to tell us or things that we think we need to know so we can help you, even though they are very private.

What information we collect about you

When you use Hidden Strength platform, we collect information that you provide to us. This will vary depending on whether you use the App or website.

For example, if you want to use our App, you will need to set up a Hidden Strength account, so we need to collect a few important details about you such as:

What information we collect	Why we collect it	How long we keep it for
Names (first and last)	We need this information so we can identify you and make sure you are you. In the case of emergency, will pass your full name to emergency services.	We may need to retain your name (first and last) for safeguarding purposes.
Selfie Image	We need this information so that we can identify you. We will share this information with a third party that we work with who will check your selfie for your age. We keep your image on file so we can check your ID at various intervals.	We will immediate delete this after you close your account.
Username	We ask you to set up a username so we can identify you with this unique name on the Hidden Strength platform.	We will immediate delete this after you close your account.
Password	We ask you to create a password so that you can login to your Hidden Strength account.	We will immediate delete this after you close your account.
Avatar Image	We ask you to create an avatar image so that this can be your image on the Hidden Strength platform.	We will immediate delete this after you close your account.
Journal Entries	We have a journal section on the Hidden Strength platform to allow you to record entries about how you feel. You can then look back on these entries at a later date.	We will immediate delete this after you close your account.
Friends	We give you an option to connect with friends so that you can communicate with them on the Hidden Strength platform.	We will immediate delete this after you close your account.
People Following	We allow you to follow a creator on the Hidden Strength platform and be notified when that creator publishes new content	We will immediate delete this after you close your account.
Date of birth	We need this information to check your age.	We will immediately delete this information when you close your account.
Phone Number	We ask for your phone number to send you an invite code to access the registration process for your account with Hidden Strength.	We need to look after these for safeguarding reasons.
Partial Post Code	We need this information because we have a waiting list of users who want to join Hidden Strength. We use this information to help us generate a selection process when we send invitation codes to those who are on the waiting list.	We will immediately delete this information after you complete the registration process and have access to the App.
Topics of interest	We ask you what your topics of interest are so that we can give you a personalised list of stories and features that might be of interest to the you.	We immediately delete this information when you close your account.
Reason for signing up	We ask you why you signed up to Hidden Strength so we can give you a personalised list of the stories and features that might be of interest to you.	We immediately delete this information when you close your account.
Chat messages	We work with therapists to provide a service to you. Part of this service is a chat function between you and therapists. You are also welcome to chat with other users.	We need to keep this information for safeguarding reasons.
Video and audio recordings	We work with therapists to provide a service to you. This may be through audio or video recordings.	We need to look after these recordings for safeguarding reasons.
Therapist notes	We work with therapists to provide a service to you. If a therapist has a chat session with you, they may take notes.	We need to look after these notes for safeguarding reasons.

When you contact us or communicate with us in any other way, we’ll collect whatever information you volunteer or that we need to resolve your question.

Some of your personal information is more special, because it is super sensitive. We do not routinely collect special information like your ethnicity or sexuality, but you may choose to share this information voluntarily with one of our therapists. If you do share any of this information with us, we promise to look after it as carefully as possible.

What do we use your personal information for?

We use your information to help us support you in the best way we can. We will use it for things like:

To provide the Hidden Strength service to you via the website and App.
If we have any legal obligations that we have to comply with.
To protect your interest or those of others.
Keeping notes of our conversations when you communicate with us either through the chat function or otherwise. We will sometimes refer to these notes when you contact us to make sure we can give you the best help.
So that we can improve the service we offer young people and understand you better.
Sharing your information with other people if we need to or if you ask us to.
If it is necessary in the public interest.
If it is necessary for our (or others’) legitimate interests, including our interest in providing a safe service to you

Why do we need this information?

Your personal information is important, and we must have a legal reason for using it.

The legal reason we have is called ‘public task’. This means that we will use your personal information to give you support in the best way we can.

If we use your information to look at the types of things young people talk to us about, this will be anonymous so your identity will be kept hidden.

We may also use your personal information because the law tells us that we must (for example, a court officially ordered us to do so). This is called ‘legal obligation’.

For the ‘special’ information that we collect, we must have another legal reason as well as ‘public task’, or ‘legal obligation’. It is called a ‘condition’. If we don’t have another reason, or condition, we will not collect this special information from you.

These conditions are:

where you have told us, we can collect this information (consent).
where we need to protect yours or someone else’s life (vital interest).
where you have made the information public.
for health or social care reasons.

Do we share your information?

Sometimes we will need to share your personal information. We also work with other businesses who help us provide and improve the service we offer you. We do not sell your information to anyone and never will. We also have strict rules on how the people or businesses we work with use and disclose the personal information we provide.

We have a “Life Ring” button on our App. If you have pressed this button on the App, we will only share your information if You ask us to.
We have reason to believe your life, or someone else’s life is in danger.
You say you are being hurt or are likely to be harmed by someone in a position of trust who has access to others like teacher or police officer.
You tell us that you’re seriously harming another person.
We are told we have to by law, for example for a court case

How long we will keep your information for

We take your information seriously and will not keep it for longer than we need.

We will usually keep your information for 6 years or less.

Links to other websites

We sometimes suggest that you visit another website, but it is important for you to know that we do not own those websites or control them. Before we make any suggestions of other websites, we will always do our best to make sure that they are a safe place for you to visit. We cannot control how those websites or what information they collect about you. Please read the privacy policy when you visit any other websites.

Can I ask for a copy of my information?

Yes of course. Your information is yours and you are able to request a copy and have a right to know what we hold about you.

The law says that you can always …

Ask us for a copy of the information we have got about you
Change the information we have got about you, or bring it up to date, if it is wrong
Change how you’d like us to get in touch with you
Ask us to delete all the information we have got about you (we will then do that, and just keep your name on a list of people we won’t get in touch with again)
Tell us we can’t use information about you for anyone to sell you anything
Tell us if you are worried about the way, we are keeping or using information about you, and want to make a complaint about this.

To do any of these, please write to us at info@hiddenstrength.com.

If you would like to do this, you can send us an email at info@hiddenstrength.com. You can write to us at C/o Cottrill Mason, 13 Vansittart Estate, Windsor, SL4 1SE.

We will get back to you in a month – or sooner.

You will have a right to ask us to change any information that we hold that is incorrect; ask us to delete any of your personal information if we don’t have a good reason to keep it or ask us to stop using your information.

What is a cookie, and can I eat it?

Cookies are little files that are stored on computers and mobile devices. We use cookies to keep you logged in and make your experience as smooth as possible when you move around the App and website.

We occasionally share this information with other companies.

Updates to the privacy policy

The law is changing all the time and if we have to make any changes to this policy, you can find this at the top of this page.