Who we are

The website is controlled by Speak Freely NY, a nonprofit, multi-disciplinary team of practitioners, researchers and mental health professionals based in New York State. Website visitors are offered the opportunity to talk with and get support from responders who work under the auspices of Speak Freely NY. These consultations are free of charge, voluntary, and strictly confidential.

Data Protection Legislation

The collection and use of any personal information via this website is subject to, the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), the UK Data Protection Act 2019 (DPA) and other European privacy and data protection laws (European Data Protection Legislation).

Sharing your information without explicit consent

In certain cases, we may disclose categories of personal data listed above in order to prevent an act of imminent violence. Acts of imminent violence include serious harm to others. Where we process your personal data for this purpose, our legal basis for processing will be the vital interests basis. We will report this data to the relevant authorities or any other competent municipal, state or federal law enforcement agency.

Sharing and disclosing of your personal information

In the course of our activities, we may need to disclose and share your personal information with various stakeholders. We will only disclose and share your personal information as described below:

• Our Employees and Multi-disciplinary Team: In the course of their work, our employees and multi-disciplinary team may need to access your personal information, for example, when you call us, or chat with us. Their access is limited to what is necessary to perform their duties.

• Third Party Agents and Service Providers: From time to time, we may need to share your personal information with agents or service providers to assist us in making available all of the features of our website (maintenance, analysis, legal requirements, fraud detection, marketing and development). Please note that these service providers may be located in the United States or in other jurisdictions or countries. They will only have access to personal information that is necessary to perform these functions on our behalf and are required not to disclose or use it for any other purpose. Please be aware that we have contractual agreements with these vendors to ensure the security of your data.

• We may process, store, and transfer your personal information in and to a foreign country, with different privacy laws that may or may not be as comprehensive as US law. In these circumstances, the governments, courts, law enforcement, or regulatory agencies of that country may be able to obtain access to your personal information through the laws of the foreign country. Whenever we engage a service provider, we require that its privacy and security standards adhere to this policy and applicable state and federal privacy legislation.

• When required by law, to enforce compliance or to protect the property or safety of our rights or those of others: By way of example, we may disclose personal information to legal or regulatory authorities in the event that we suspect criminal activity, to detect and prevent fraud, or to comply with legal or regulatory requirements of governmental bodies, regulatory agencies or other self-regulatory organizations. We may also need to disclose personal information to comply with a legal obligation (e.g., court order) or to protect our assets (e.g., to collect overdue accounts).

Collection and use of your information out of the United States

Your personal information will be processed both within the United States and the UK. Any processing of your personal data will be carried out in accordance with UK and European Data Protection Legislation. Note that the United States and Europe have different data protection laws, meaning that adequate data protection safeguards are (and will be) in place to safeguard your personal information.

Cookies and other tracking technologies

Details on the collection, use and disclosure of data on our site through cookies and other social media features:

We may use various tools to improve your experience on our site, to better understand our users' behavior, and in particular in connection with our marketing strategies. The following section is intended to provide you with more information about how we and our Trusted Partner use these tools, including profiling, if any.

By using cookies and similar technologies, we are able to provide you with advertising that is more relevant to your needs, as it is targeted to your interests and preferences. When you visit our site, cookies tell us, among other things, which pages you are interested in and, as a result, we may subsequently display advertising or recommendations that match your interests.

These technologies do not contain any personally identifiable information per se. They may, however, contain a unique identifier necessary for profiling. When you click on one of these ads, we may also track the response rate of the campaign. We mainly use cookies and web beacons as they are defined as follows:

Web beacons

Web beacons are tiny images that we can place on our web pages or in our emails. They can be used, for example, to anonymously track how many times a particular page has been visited by a user or whether an email has been read. As the name implies, web beacons are invisible and any part of our Site, including the advertisements displayed on them, may contain web beacons. Unlike cookies, web beacons are not placed on your computer.

Cookies

Cookies are small data files that are commonly stored on your device when using websites and online services. They are used for the efficient operation of websites and can provide information and help customize services. We collect the information provided by cookies. We use different types of cookies (collectively referred to as cookies here):

Necessary cookies: These cookies are essential to the operation of our site. Without them, certain services do not work.

Performance and functionality cookies: These cookies are not essential to the provision of our services. They help personalize and enhance the user experience. For example, we may use performance cookies to learn which pages on our site are most popular, which method of linking between pages is most effective, and to determine why certain pages display error messages.

Cookies for advertising purposes: These cookies are not essential to the provision of our services. They help us show you relevant advertisements, both on and off our site, measure the performance of those advertisements, and generate subject matter reports. We use these cookies to track whether you were able to view content or whether someone who saw an ad later returned to perform an action.

We use two main types of cookies:

The session cookie: This type of cookie is kept in memory for the duration of your visit to our site, after which it is erased from your device. It allows you to be identified and is then deleted when you leave our site.

The persistent cookie: This cookie is stored on your device until it expires, or is deleted by you, and will be retrieved the next time you visit our Site. Our persistent cookies therefore have a variable duration.

Please note that the use of cookies only identifies you as a user and does not recognize you by name or address.

Disabling cookies

It is possible to prevent the personalization features of our site by disabling cookies on your browser. You can do this by changing the settings on your browser or mobile device, as found in your browserʼs “Tools” or “Preferences” menu.

However, if you choose to decline cookies, certain pages or sections of our site may not display properly or certain features may not be available.

For more information on how to modify your browser settings or how to block, manage or filter cookies can be found in your browserʼs help file or through such sites as http://www.allaboutcookies.org.

Do other websites have access to cookies when you browse our site?

We sometimes use third-party service providers.

Indeed, when you access our site, either directly or through an advertisement redirecting you to our site, a cookie is automatically created on your computer or mobile device. At that time, a web analytics tool (for example, Google Analytics) and possibly external ad servers have access to this cookie, which allows us to provide you with a better experience on our site or, in some cases, to track your activity to promote some of our products. Although a code in the cookie file identifies you as a user, it does not recognize you by name or address.

Our service providers may also need to collect your IP address or mobile device identifier when you visit a site. This information may be transmitted to and stored on servers located in the United States or elsewhere, such as Canada and the UK. We do not combine any information collected by these third parties with information we hold about you. Please be aware, however, that certain suppliers may be required to disclose the data collected to third parties if they are required to do so by law or if they wish to entrust the processing of certain data to third parties. No information that would allow these suppliers to identify you is transmitted to them.

Please note that third-party service providers have their own cookies and privacy policies.

Use of Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics, which is provided by Google Inc. (Google), in order to analyze the browsing behaviors of visitors to its site, which are tools for analyzing the frequentation and use of Web sites.

The information collected by Google Analytics is used to analyze the use of our site and to generate statistical reports on visitor activity. You can obtain more information about Google Analytics here.

Targeted Advertising

We also work with third-party advertising companies, such as Facebook or Google Ads, that collect and use information about your visits to our site in order to provide you with advertising that may be of interest to you. We do not disclose any information that would allow the advertising companies to identify you.

Please note that our advertising partners and other third parties may also set cookies or pixels when you click on their advertisements or links to their websites or services on our site. This Privacy Policy does not apply to third-party websites or third-party advertising providers.

You can disable Google Analytics while browsing by selecting the appropriate settings for your browser or computer tool, as well as ad settings. You may opt out of sharing your information with these third parties by installing an add-on to opt out of receiving interest-targeted ads.

We also use Facebook's personalized audience feature to target advertising related to the interests of its current and potential customers. We invite you to check your Facebook privacy settings if you wish to manage your advertising settings. You can get more information here.

Please note that even if you choose not to receive ads targeted to your interests, you will still be able to see our ads. In this case, these ads will simply not be adapted to your real needs and may be displayed more frequently.

For more information on how targeted advertising works, you can visit the Digital Advertising Alliance education page at https://youradchoices.com/.

Social Media Features

Our services include social media features such as the Twitter share button or interactive mini-programs that work on our site. If you use these features, they collect your IP address, the page you visit on our site and create a cookie to enable these features to function properly. These features may be hosted by a third party or directly on our site. Your interaction with these features is governed by the company's privacy policy that proves the feature and not by this policy.

Your rights

You have the right to know whether we hold personal information about you and to have access to that Personal Information. You also have the right to ask questions about how we have collected, used and retained your personal information and to whom it has been disclosed.

We will provide you with such information or make the corrections promptly where personal information is inaccurate and no later than 30 days from the date when we receive the written request. A reasonable fee may also be charged to process your request.

In some situations, it may not be possible for us to disclose all of the personal information we hold about you. Exceptions to the access requirements are limited and specific. The reasons for denying access are provided upon request.

These exceptions include information that is prohibitively costly to provide, information that contains details about other individuals, the existence of legal, security or business reasons that prevent the provision of the information and the fact that the information is protected by solicitor-client or litigation privilege.

If you would like to exercise any of your other rights or ask any questions, please contact hello@nyspeakfreely.com.

Keeping your personal information secure

Appropriate security measures in place to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorized way. Access to your personal information is limited to people who have a genuine need to know it. Any use of your personal information will only be done by an authorized person who is subject to a duty of confidentiality.

Retention of your personal information

To find out how long we keep your information, please refer to the table in the Legal basis for processing your personal information section of this privacy policy.

Link to other web site

It is important to understand that this Policy does not apply to other third-party websites that may be accessed through links on our site. We are not responsible for those third-party sites, their content or access. Therefore, any personal information you transmit through these sites is subject to the privacy policies of those sites. It is your responsibility to review their privacy policies to ensure the protection of your personal information.

Changes to this privacy policy

This website privacy policy was published on December 6, 2023.

This website privacy policy was updated on December 6, 2023.

This website policy may change from time to time and you should check it regularly for updates.

It is our policy to post any changes we make to our privacy policy on this page with a notice that the privacy policy has been updated on the Website home page. If we make material changes to how we treat our usersʼ personal information, we will notify you through a notice on the Website home page.

We include the date the privacy policy was last revised at the top of the page. You are responsible for ensuring we have an up-to-date, active, and deliverable email address for you, and for periodically visiting our Website and this privacy policy to check for any changes.

Contact information and challenging compliance

We welcome your questions, comments, and requests regarding this privacy policy and our privacy practices. Please contact us at:

Privacy Officer

Email: hello@nyspeakfreely.com

We have procedures in place to receive and respond to complaints or inquiries about our handling of personal information, our compliance with this policy, and with applicable privacy laws. To discuss our compliance with this policy please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact information listed above.