We may collect information about you in a variety of ways. The information we may collect on the Site includes:

Personal Data:

■ Business Information: Personally identifiable information such as; your name, organisation/business address, email address, and telephone number.

■ Specific demographic information such as; your age, gender, location, and specific subject area interests, that you voluntarily give to us when you register with the Site or when you choose to participate in various activities related to the Site, such as surveys and interactive forms and webinars.

You are under no obligation to provide us with personal information of any kind, however your refusal to do so may prevent you from using certain features of the Site and accessing materials

Automatically Generated Derivative Data, Mobile Device Data, and Third-Party Data:

■ Information our servers automatically collect when you access the Site, such as your IP address, your browser type, your operating system, your access times, and the pages you have viewed directly before and after accessing the Site.

■ Device information, such as your mobile device ID, model, and manufacturer, and information about the location of your device, if you access the Site from a mobile device.

■ Information from third parties, such as personal information or network friends, if you connect your account to the third party and grant the Site permission to access this information.

Having accurate information about you permits us to provide you with a personalised response to meet your need. Specifically, we may use information collected about you via the Site to: 

■ Assist law enforcement and respond to local/national processes.

■ Compile anonymous statistical data and analysis for use internally or with third parties.

■ Share updates and information including resources, webinars and support materials.

■ Email you regarding your enquiries or our news, events and resources.

■ Enable user-to-user communications.

■ Generate a personal profile about you to make future visits to the Site more personalised.

■ Increase the efficiency and operation of the Site.

■ Monitor and analyse usage and trends to improve your experience with the Site.

■ Notify you of updates to the Site.

■ Offer new products, services, and/or recommendations to you.

■ Perform other business activities as needed.

■ Prevent fraudulent transactions, monitor against theft, and protect against criminal activity.

■ Request feedback and contact you about your use of the Site.

■ Resolve disputes and troubleshoot problems.

■ Respond to product and customer service requests.

■ Send you a newsletter.

■ Other.

We may share information we have collected about you in certain situations. Your information may be disclosed as follows:

By Law or to Protect Rights

If we believe the release of information about you is necessary to respond to legal process, to investigate or remedy potential violations of our policies, or to protect the rights, property, and safety of others, we may share your information as permitted or required by any applicable law, rule, or regulation. This includes exchanging information with other entities for safeguarding purposes, fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Third-Party Service Providers

We may share your information with third parties that perform services for us or on our behalf, including payment processing, data analysis, email delivery, hosting services, customer service, and marketing assistance.

Interactions with Other Users

If you interact with other users of the Site, those users may see your name, profile photo, and descriptions of your activity, including sending invitations to other users, chatting with other users, liking posts, following blogs.

Online Postings

When you post comments, contributions or other content to the Site, your posts may be viewed by all users and may be publicly distributed outside the Site in perpetuity.

Third-Party Advertisers

We may use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit the Site. These companies may use information about your visits to the Site and other websites that are contained in web cookies in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.

Social Media Contacts

If you connect to the Site through a social network, your contacts on the social network will see your name, profile photo, and descriptions of your activity.

Cookies and Web Beacons

We may use cookies, web beacons, tracking pixels, and other tracking technologies on the Site to help customise the Site and improve your experience. When you access the Site, your personal information is not collected through the use of tracking technology. Most browsers are set to accept cookies by default.

You can remove or reject cookies but be aware that such action could affect the availability and functionality of the Site. You may not decline web beacons. However, they can be rendered ineffective by declining all cookies or by modifying your web browser’s settings to notify you each time a cookie is tendered, permitting you to accept or decline cookies on an individual basis.

We may use cookies, web beacons, tracking pixels, and other tracking technologies on the Site to help customise the Site and improve your experience.

For more information on how we use cookies, please refer to our Cookie Policy posted on the Site, which is incorporated into this Privacy Policy. By using the Site, you agree to be bound by our Cookie Policy. 

You should be aware that getting a new computer, installing a new browser, upgrading an existing browser, or erasing or otherwise altering your browser’s cookies files may also clear certain opt-out cookies, plug-ins, or settings.

We are not responsible for the content or privacy and security practices and policies of any third parties.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that a website stores on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. When you visit our website, you will be prompted to accept or refuse cookies via a cookie banner.

■ First-party cookies are cookies set by the website you’re visiting. Only that website can read them.

■ Third-party cookies - In addition, a website might potentially use external services, which also set their own cookies, known as third-party cookies. Some of our pages display content from external providers (see list below). To view this third-party content, you first have to accept their specific terms and conditions. This includes their cookie policies, which we have no control over. But if you do not view this content, no third-party cookies are installed on your device.

Third-party providers on DDCS website may include:

You Tube, Internet Archive, Google Maps, Twitter, TV1, Vimeo, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Livestream, SoundCloud, Bluesky, Instagram, Medium

These third-party services are outside of the control of the DDCS. Providers may, at any time, change their terms of service, purpose, and use of cookies, etc.

■ Persistent cookies are cookies saved on your computer and that are not deleted automatically when you quit your browser, unlike a session cookie, which is deleted when you quit your browser.

The purpose of the cookies is to enable the site to remember your preferences (such as user name, language, etc.) for a certain period of time. That way, you don’t have to re-enter them when browsing around the site during the same visit. Cookies can also be used to establish anonymised statistics about the browsing experience on our sites, and to help us improve our site.

How do we use cookies?

DDCS mostly uses first-party cookies. These are cookies set and controlled by ourselves and/or the website provider we host our content on, not by any external organisation. However, to view some of the content on our pages, you will have to accept cookies from external organisations.

We use:

■ Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, language preferences, and customised settings.

■ Performance and Analytics cookies. These cookies provide quantitative measures of website visitors. With the usage of these cookies, we are able to count visits and traffic sources to improve the performance of our site. We use these purely for internal research on how we can improve the service we provide for all our users. The cookies simply assess how you interact with our website – as an anonymous user (the data gathered does not identify you personally).

■ Advertising cookies. These cookies are used by advertising companies to serve ads that are relevant to your interests.

How can you manage cookies?

Removing cookies from your device

You can delete all cookies that are already on your device by clearing the browsing history of your browser. This will remove all cookies from all websites you have visited.

Be aware though that you may also lose some saved information (e.g. saved login details, site preferences).

Managing site-specific cookies

For more detailed control over site-specific cookies, check the privacy and cookie settings in your preferred browser.

Blocking cookies

You can set most modern browsers to prevent any cookies being placed on your device, but you may then have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site/page. And some services and functionalities may not work properly at all (e.g. profile logging-in).

Managing our performance and analytics, and advertising cookies

You can manage your preferences concerning cookies either via the cookie banner you’ll see when you enter our site, by changing your browser settings to block cookies, or clearing your cookies from your browser and re-entering our site.

Our site is made with Squarespace - for more information on how Squarespace implements cookies into sites see here.

We use administrative, technical, and physical security measures to help protect your personal information. While we have taken reasonable steps to secure the personal information you provide to us, please be aware that despite our efforts, no security measures are perfect or impenetrable, and no method of data transmission can be guaranteed against any interception or other type of misuse. Any information disclosed online is vulnerable to interception and misuse by unauthorised parties.

Account Information

You may at any time review or change the information in your account or terminate your account by:

■ Logging into your account settings and updating your account.

■ Contacting us using the contact information provided below.

Upon your request to terminate your account, we will deactivate or delete your account and information from our active databases. However, some information may be retained in our files to prevent fraud, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our Terms of Use and/or comply with legal requirements.

Emails and Communications

If you no longer wish to receive correspondence, emails, or other communications from us, you may opt-out by:

■ Noting your preferences at the time you register your account with the Site.

■ Logging into your account settings and updating your preferences.

■ Contacting us using the contact information provided below.