Effective Thesis Privacy Policy

This privacy policy will explain how Effective Thesis uses the personal data we collect from you when you use our website and our services.

Topics:

  • What data do we collect?

  • How do we collect your data?

  • How will we use your data?

  • How do we store your data?

  • What are your data protection rights?

  • What are cookies?

  • How do we use cookies?

  • How to manage your cookies

  • Privacy policies of other websites

  • Changes to our privacy policy

  • How to contact us

  • How to contact the appropriate authorities

What data do we collect?

Effective Thesis collects the following data:

  • Personal identification information (Name, email address, country of study, etc.)

  • Education and employment history (university and field of study, previous internships/jobs held etc)

  • CV and LinkedIn profile

How do we collect your data?

You directly provide Effective Thesis with most of the data we collect. We collect data and process data when you:

  • Register for our services online.

  • Voluntarily complete a feedback survey or provide feedback via email.

  • Receive coaching services.

 

Effective Thesis may also receive your data indirectly from the following sources:

  • Your public linkedin profile, researchgate profile or public EA forum membership posts.

How will we use your data?

Effective Thesis collects your data so that we can:

  • Provide you with coaching services and connect you with the relevant advisors.

  • Email you feedback forms so we can track the impact of our services (and understand areas for potential improvement).

  • Email you with relevant internship and job opportunities (and also message you and tag you in relevant posts on the community platform – if you choose to join our community platform).

  • Follow your progress throughout your research career in order to evaluate the impact of Effective Thesis and how effective our services are.

 

Who sees your data?

Effective Thesis shares your data with:

  • The whole Effective Thesis team.

 

Effective Thesis shares your anonymised data with:

  • Potential funders (sometimes this is needed for the impact evaluation).

  • Publicly through impact reports e.g. posts on the EA Forum.

 

If you explicitly agree, Effective Thesis will also share your data with:

  • Other students who apply (to allow for networking).

  • Potential employers/providers of other research related beneficial opportunities for students (e.g. people who run various internships and want recommendations for good students to invite them to apply).

 

At the start of the coaching process, you can request that your personal information be kept confidential within the Effective Thesis team, or request that particular information not be shared externally. We will also attempt to accommodate other reasonable privacy requests.

How do we store your data?

Effective Thesis securely stores your data primarily on Notion, and any data provided through feedback forms is stored with the relevant form provider. This data is only accessible to members of the Effective Thesis team with the relevant login and password.

Notion stores data on its secure servers. It is encrypted in transfer and at rest, though in-house administrators have access to it for support purposes.

The security of your Personal Data is important to us. To prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place reasonable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the data we collect. It is important to remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure, and therefore we cannot 100% guarantee the security of the Personal Data we collect.

Data Retention

Effective Thesis will keep your personal data and educational and employment history for up to 15 years. Once this time period has expired, we will erase your data by removing it from all of our databases and form providers. Please note that anonymised data shared publicly e.g. through impact assessments shared on the EA Forum will not be deleted.

What are your data protection rights?

Effective Thesis would like to make sure you are fully aware of all of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to the following:

The right to access – You have the right to request Effective Thesis for copies of your personal data. We may charge you a small fee for this service.

The right to rectification – You have the right to request that Effective Thesis correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request Effective Thesis to complete the information you believe is incomplete.

The right to erasure – You have the right to request that Effective Thesis erase your personal data, under certain conditions.

The right to restrict processing – You have the right to request that Effective Thesis restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.

The right to object to processing – You have the right to object to Effective Thesis’s processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.

The right to data portability – You have the right to request that Effective Thesis transfer the data that we have collected to another organization, or directly to you, under certain conditions.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please email us at: admin@effectivethesis.org.

What are cookies?

Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard Internet log information and visitor behavior information. When you visit our website, we collect information from you automatically through cookies or similar technology. 

We inform you of this with the following banner at the bottom of the screen when you first visit our website. “We use cookies to enhance your experience. By continuing to visit this site you agree to our use of cookies. More info”

For further information, visit allaboutcookies.org.

How do we use cookies?

Effective Thesis uses cookies in a range of ways to improve your experience on our website, including:

  • Understanding how you use our website

    • We track visitors via Google Analytics (standard tracking of flow through the website) and via Hotjar (in order to understand where our users receive the most value and to catch any issues or areas with poor user experience).

      • Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network. You can opt-out of having made your activity on the Service available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en

      • We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users ‘needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (eg how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behavior and their devices. This includes a device’s IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf.

      • For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site

How to manage cookies

You can set your browser not to accept cookies, and this website allaboutcookies.org.  tells you how to remove cookies from your browser.

Privacy policies of other websites

The Effective Thesis website contains links to other websites. Our privacy policy applies only to our website, so if you click on a link to another website this policy will not apply and you should read their privacy policy.

Changes to our privacy policy

Effective Thesis keeps its privacy policy under regular review and places any updates on this web page. This privacy policy was last updated on 21 November 2022.

How to contact us

If you have any questions about Effective Thesis’s privacy policy, the data we hold on you, or you would like to exercise one of your data protection rights, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Email us at: admin@effectivethesis.org

How to contact the appropriate authority

Should you wish to report a complaint or if you feel that Effective Thesis has not addressed your concern in a satisfactory manner, you may contact the Information Commissioner’s Office. See the website here to find your relevant office: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/