Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Axe Drax protects your personal data, and we believe that the part of the fight for climate justice is to tackle the power that large tech companies have gained in the last few decades.

This privacy and cookie policy (“Policy”) describes how we will process any personal information that we may collect about you as a supporter or volunteer, or as a visitor to our website. We do not and will not sell, rent or lease personal data, nor send marketing on behalf of third parties. 

This policy does not address other personal data processing operations, for example Axe Drax’s internal processing operations including, for example, human resources, logistics and administration. Information related to these processing operations is provided to data subjects at the point of data collection, or subsequently, as required by law.   

2. Who are Axe Drax?

Axe Drax (“we”, “us”, “our”) is a dedicated group of campaigners and activists fighting Drax Group’s global expansion that is causing serious harm to the climate, people, animals and ecosystems .

We believe in a fundamentally transformed world, where the economic system is based around care for people and planet not driven by profit seeking.

Read more on our about page.

3. Data Controller

Axe Drax is the data controller for data processing in accordance with this policy.

If you have any questions about this Policy, our data processing practices, or your rights, you can contact us (details provided below).  

Set out below is an explanation of the ways we collect and use, or “process” your data and the legal basis for this in accordance with applicable data protection laws.  

If you support one of our campaigns or take an action on our website: 

If you sign an Axe Drax petition or campaigning action, we collect the information you provide including your name, email address, phone number and postal address. We collect information required for the campaign action itself. For example, your postcode is necessary for letter campaigns to Members of Parliament to verify you are a constituent. The legal basis for this processing is your consent. 

If you subscribe to our emails: 

We collect the information you provide – your name, email address and post code – in order to send you updates about our work, when you sign-up online to receiving emails from us. We also record which campaigns you have participated in, and whether you have made a donation so we can send you relevant information about these campaigns. Post code is collected to notify you of relevant actions and events in you area. The legal basis for this processing is your consent, which you may withdraw at any time by unsubscribing to our emails.  

If you donate to us: 

If you make an online donation to us, you are asked to provide your name, email address, telephone number and payment information this information is used to process your donation. The legal basis for this processing is entry into a contract with you to facilitate the donation and we retain this data on the basis of compliance with legal obligations related to taxation and finance that require us to maintain records of these transactions. 

If you contact us by phone, email or in writing: 

If you exchange emails, telephone conversations or other electronic communications with our staff members, our systems will record details of those conversations, sometimes including their content. We may monitor email traffic data and also the content of email for the purposes of volunteer admin, political advocacy and financial administration 

Work-related contacts: 

In the course of our work, we collect information such as the names, contact details and work-related information about individuals and organisations we work with and who contact us, including journalists and media professionals. We keep this information in order to invite you to collaborate on and participate in relevant work-related activities. 

This includes the details of those whose professional interests align closely with our own and individuals who participate directly in our activities, as well as those who we have current contractual obligations with or who we may in the future enter into an agreement with. We also keep the details of other professional contacts if you have consented to hearing from us for this purpose. 

We collect this information through business cards, personal contact or occasionally recommendations from partners. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interests in operating, managing and developing our organisation and our work.  

If you visit our website: 

We collect some analytics data about the way you access and interact with our website using the free, self-hosted and open source Matomo analytics software. Any data collected through the Matomo software is carried out by computer systems which we operate and is never transferred to any third party. The legal basis of this processing is our legitimate interest in providing you with a functional website, gauging unique site views and understanding the geographical reach of our content. More information is provided about this processing at paragraph 5 below. 

The data collected may include information about your operating system and version, your web browser version, your system language, your screen size and resolution, and some other metadata which allows us to optimise your browsing experience. The data collected to Matomo is never associated with you directly, and is only associated with a partially-anonymised representation of your IP address. 

Web server access logs containing full IP addresses are stored between 7 and 14 days and are used solely for performance and security purposes. This information is not shared with third parties. 

We use Matomo to effectively deliver Axe Draxs website to visitors and to understand the geographic location of our audience and the reach of our website. We make a conscious choice to avoid web analytics tools such as Google Analytics where possible as part of our commitment to protecting your privacy. 

If your web browser is configured to request that websites do not track you by sending a “Do Not Track” (DNT) request when loading webpages, Matomo will not collect any information from your system.  More information about cookies is provided below. 

If you respond to a survey from us:

From time to time we offer the option to engage in surveys to do with our work and campaign issues. We conduct these surveys on the legal basis of your consent. We generally anonymise answers so that they cannot be linked back to individual respondents.

A full information notice is provided when you begin a survey and before your consent to engage in it is collected.

5. Your data and third parties

Axe Drax works with third party service providers who perform certain data processing tasks on our behalf. We strongly value data protection and we therefore very carefully select the third parties we work with and ensure that they share our values around data protection. All third parties that we work with are contractually obligated to act on our instructions and in accordance with current data protection legislation. We export some data outside the EU, for example with Action Network

We will never sell, rent or trade your personal data. We will refuse to comply with law enforcement requests for access to personal data concerning users of our online services that we believe to be unwarranted, and unless legally prohibited or unable to do so, will notify the data subjects concerned. Third party service providers may also be compelled to disclose data for purposes other than which it was collected. 

We are transparent about those third parties and we keep a list below of all that we use. Supporters will be given 14 days’ notice by email before any changes to this list in our Supporter Newsletter. 

6. Cookies and tracking

While we do not utilitse cookies on our website, we do use Matomo tracking pixels which can detect information from a website visitor including their device’s operating system, browser type, browser plugins, IP address and browser language. This information is used to help us understand the number of unique page visitors and where they are located. 

You can opt out of the use of these tracking pixels via your browser settings. Each browser is different, so check the Help or Settings menu of your particular browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences (see below list).   

An opt-out of Matomo tracking can be made using an opt-out cookie.

You can also opt out using the check box below:

You may choose to prevent this website from aggregating and analyzing the actions you take here. Doing so will protect your privacy, but will also prevent the owner from learning from your actions and creating a better experience for you and other users.

7. Social media links

We use social media and social networking to increase the reach and impact of our work. Our social media pages are managed by Axe Drax staff and volunteers. Personal data processed by social media platforms is subject to the terms and conditions of those platforms, which may act as controllers of that data. Individuals who engage with our social media accounts should check the terms of the relevant platforms, which are subject to regular change, to understand how their data may be used.

Axe Drax has accounts with the following social media platforms: 

8. Jurisdiction

Axe Drax is based in the United Kingdom and the data we collect is process and stored within the UK and EU in accordance with applicable data protection laws, with the exception of data stored by Action Network. The UK currently remains subject to EU data protection laws, however as the UK has now left the EU, it may become subject to additional requirements around transfers of data into and out of the UK. Should this eventuate, these requirements will be met by us and this Policy will be updated accordingly.  

9. Retention and deletion of your information

We keep your data as long as is necessary in connection with the purpose it is collected for. We do not keep data longer than required in connection with that purpose. We will delete the information we hold about you as soon as we no longer need it or, where actionable, at your request (see “Your rights” section below). For further specific information about our retention policies, please contact us on the details provided below. 

10. The security of your information

We take the security of your information very seriously. We employ physical, electronic and organisational security measures to protect the information that we collect about you from access by unauthorised persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage. For instance, we use SSL certificates on all websites we operate, and 2 factor authentication on services that store your personal information.

Although we do our best to protect personal data, information transmitted over the internet remains vulnerable to unauthorized access – for this reason the transmission of any personal data to our websites or via email to us is therefor at the data subjects’ own risk. 

11. Your rights

Individual’s whose personal data is processed by Open Rights Group have the following rights: 

  • The right to be informed as to whether we hold data about the individual; 
  • The right of access to that information; 
  • The right to have inaccurate data corrected; 
  • The right to have their data deleted; 
  • The right to opt out of particular data processing operations; 
  • The right to receive their data in a form that makes it “portable”; 
  • The right to object to data processing; 
  • The right to receive an explanation about any automated decision-making and/or profiling and to challenge those decisions where appropriate. 

You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from our mailing list at any time by clicking on the links in the newsletter, by emailing our privacy [at] axedrax.uk.  

You can also contact us to opt-out of or withdraw your consent to data processing we undertake, however in some cases we may need to retain data where it is kept in compliance with a legal obligation (e.g. records of donations must be kept).  

You also have the right to bring concerns to your national data protection regulator if you feel that your personal data has been unlawfully processed. For example, data subjects covered by EU law may also be entitled to lodge complaints in regard to data processing or the handling of subject access requests with data protection supervisory authority in their country of residence.

Relevant supervisory authority names and contact details are listed here. The Data Protection Authority in the United Kingdom is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). If you need any further information about your rights or want to lodge a concern or complaint, you may contact the ICO here. 

12. Contact us

If you have a query regarding this Policy, or if you would like to exercise your rights as a data subject, please contact privacy [at] axedrax.uk.

13. Changes to this policy

We keep this Privacy Policy under regular review and will place any updates on this page. This Privacy Policy was last updated on: