Privacy Policy

Market Forces is an affiliate member of Friends of the Earth Australia (ABN: 18 110 769 501). Our work exposes the institutions that are financing environmentally destructive projects and helps people around the world to hold these institutions accountable. We work with the community to prevent investment in projects that would harm the environment and drive global warming.

In order to campaign effectively with you, our supporters, and on your behalf, we need to collect different types of information, including personal data.

The main points in our privacy policy:

  • We will only ever ask for what we really need to know.
  • We will always respect your choices around the data that you share with us and the communication channels that you ask us to use.
  • We will put appropriate security measures in place to protect the personal data that you share with us.
  • We will never sell your data.
  • You have the right to amend or withdraw your consent about the ways in which we hold and use your personal data at any time.

If you have any questions please contact us.

Personal data

In some areas of our websites, we ask you to provide personal information that will enable us to enhance your site visit, contact you with information you request or that may be of interest to you, e.g. when you subscribe to our newsletters, make a donation, take an online action or contact us via our websites. Personal information we request may include your name, address, phone contacts and email address.

We may also collect information about your relationship with various financial institutions (for instance, whether you are a customer or shareholder of a particular bank). This enables us to send you information about the financial institutions most relevant to you, provided that you have opted in to receive such updates. The option to provide this information will be made explicit at the point of collection (for example as an optional checkbox on a form).

How is personal data used?

We will only email you information about our work where we have your consent to do so. We provide you with the opportunity to opt out from receiving campaign update emails on our online action forms, so you will only be subscribed to a mailing list if you leave this option checked. Otherwise, your data will be deleted after the campaign has finished. If you would like to check or change your email subscriptions, or if you wish to unsubscribe from our emails, contact us here.

We may email you information we believe may be of interest to you. For example, when you consent to being contacted by email, we might email you to take action (such as sign a petition) or make a donation. You may also receive a welcome email letting you know about other ways to support us. Emails we send you will always give you the chance to opt out of receiving further emails.

Sharing personal data

Market Forces will not share your personal information with third parties unless it is absolutely necessary, or part of the nature of a particular action you may take on any of our websites. We will not share these details further. Otherwise, we will only disclose your data if we are obliged to do so by law.

For example, if you choose to send an personalised email to a particular organisation by filling out an action form on any of our websites, this will by nature include your name and email address as specified on the form in the email sent to that organisation. If you sign a petition which involves a hand in to a government, it may be necessary to include your name on the petition hand in. In cases such as these, we will always endeavour to make it clear at the point of submission that your details are being shared to a third party.

Keeping your details up to date

The accuracy of your personal information is important to us. If you change email address or name please contact us.

We aim to amend or delete any information we hold that is incorrect within one month or as soon as possible thereafter.

Security

The security of your personal information is important to us and we will take appropriate precautions to protect it. Market Forces uses a leading global data management system provider, with security guidelines and supporting procedures aligned with the ISO 27001 standard.

We use trusted third party gateways, such as Paypal and Stripe, for handling donation payments. Market Forces does not have access to your payment details, which is tokenized as it enters our system for your own security. Please see Paypal’s privacy policy and Stripe’s privacy policy as we are not responsible for the way Paypal or Stripe handle data.

Even with all of our precautions, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. So, whilst we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information which you disclose to us online and you must understand that you do so at your own risk.

We take steps to ensure that access to personal information is restricted to employees and volunteers who need it. Market Forces volunteers sign confidentiality agreements prior to beginning work with us. All Market Forces employees and volunteers who handle personal information are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices.

Use of cookies

In order to optimise our websites, we use third party cookies. Cookies are small pieces of information sent by a web server to a web browser, which enable the server to collect information from the browser. Like many websites, Market Forces’ site uses cookies to provide you with a personalized web service, which includes monitoring the performance of our web pages and data on which social media platforms people access our web pages from.

Currently our websites use third party cookies from a variety of services, including Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. We sometimes use cookies to enable other areas of our site to function well, for example a cookie might be used to track whether a user has already signed a petition.

We use Google Analytics to monitor and improve our websites. Google Analytics uses cookies to collect non personal information, like your IP address, your browser, your location and the pages you visit. Please check Google Analytics for details on their cookies and their policies. We use Google Analytics to analyse how users use our site, for example to find out how many people visit our site or an individual web page and from which social media platforms our visitors click through from to view our websites. We may also use Google Analytics to gather information on visitor demographics and interests. We do not use Google Analytics information to identify individual visitors – all the information we access is aggregated and anonymous.

We also embed content from other sites, such as social media websites or media outlets, and add buttons from social media platforms so that you can share our content. This can result in cookies being used by third parties such as Twitter and Facebook. You should check the relevant third-party website for more information about their cookies.

Cookies may be set by us or third parties. By continuing to browse our site you’re agreeing to our use of cookies. You may avoid the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. Please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of our websites.

We may also set advertising cookies for the purpose of displaying relevant digital adverts on external platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook and LinkedIn to previous visitors to our site. This practice is known as “remarketing” and you may find out more about it by checking the website of the relevant third-party advertising platform (e.g. Facebook).

Changes

We may make changes to this Policy from time to time. If we change our Privacy Policy we will post the changes on this page and we will hold a record of changes that we make. Please revisit the policy when you want to confirm how we use your personal information. This policy was last revised in March 2022.

Access to your personal information

You have the right to request and be sent:

  • confirmation that your data is being processed;
  • a copy of your personal data that we currently hold; and
  • other supplementary information that we hold about you.

To make a request please contact us. We will take steps to confirm your identity before releasing any information to you. We will not charge you for providing the information that you request. We aim to amend or delete any information we hold that is incorrect within one month or as soon as possible thereafter.

Your rights and acceptance of this policy

By sharing your consent preferences, and by using any of our websites, you consent to the collection and use of information by Market Forces in accordance with our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use our websites.

Privacy policy for minors

If you are under 18, please obtain permission from a parent or guardian before taking any action (such as submitting a form on any of our websites) that would involve providing information about yourself such as your name or email address.

Information retention

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is appropriate for the activity that you are supporting (for example participating in a campaign or making a donation to support our work). If you ask for your personal information to be deleted we will take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify it.

Email

Whilst we will take all reasonable steps to protect and secure your personal data, we cannot guarantee the confidentiality of any messages transmitted between you and us via email as these are potentially accessible by the public. We will not be liable to you or anyone else for any loss relating to any email message sent by you to us or by us to you.

If you have any requests concerning your personal information or any questions about how we manage our data, please contact us.