Privacy notice

The Engineering Forum of Nigerians (UK) (“EFN”, “we”, “us”) is a professional association of UK-based engineers of Nigerian heritage, founded in London in 2004, and a registered charity in England and Wales (no. 1117948). We are the controller of the personal information described in this notice.

We collect only the information you choose to give us. When you use a form on this website, that means:

• Contact form: your name, email address, phone number (optional), the subject and your message.
• Membership application: your name, email address and phone number, the membership category you are applying for, your profession or discipline, your employer or university, whether you are chartered, the registration routes you are interested in, and any message you add.
• Get involved form: your name, email address, phone number, your organisation, what you are interested in and your message.
• Event listing request: your name and email address, and the event’s name, date and web link.

When you send a form, our server also records your IP address and the time. We use these only to stop spam and abuse: the IP address appears in the email we receive, and a coded (hashed) version is kept on our web server for a short time to limit repeated submissions.

If you email or phone us, we receive whatever you choose to tell us. If you pay a membership fee by bank transfer, we see the payer’s name, the amount and the reference on our bank statement. We do not take card payments on this website.

Our forms do not ask for special category information, such as details of your health, religion or ethnic origin. Please don’t include it in your messages.

When you simply browse the website, we don’t ask who you are. We count visits without cookies and without keeping your IP address (see Visit statistics). Like most websites, our web host may also keep standard server logs, such as IP addresses and the pages requested, to keep the site secure and running.

UK data protection law requires a lawful basis for each use of your information. Ours are:

• We never sell or rent your personal information.
• Within EFN, your details are seen only by the officers who need them to deal with your enquiry or application — for example, the Membership Secretary.
• NSE and COREN: only when you ask EFN to support your registration do we pass your application and supporting documents to the Nigerian Society of Engineers or the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria.
• Service providers: our web host and our email provider process data on our behalf, to run this website and deliver messages. If we switch them on, Cloudflare (for the spam check on our forms) and an analytics service also receive some information: see Spam protection and Visit statistics.
• Maps and videos: when you allow them, OpenStreetMap, YouTube or Vimeo receive your IP address: see Maps, videos and other websites.
• We will also share information if the law requires us to.

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it. Enquiries are typically deleted within 24 months, unless you become a member. If you do, we keep your details for as long as your membership lasts, and afterwards only for as long as we need them.

Visit statistics are kept only as daily totals, which are deleted automatically after the period shown in What’s switched on right now. The daily codes used to count each visitor once are deleted within two days. Your cookie choice is remembered for 12 months; after that, we ask again.

Under UK data protection law (UK GDPR), you have the right to:

• Access — ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Rectification — ask us to correct information that is wrong or incomplete.
• Erasure — ask us to delete your information.
• Restriction — ask us to limit how we use your information.
• Objection — object to us using your information on the basis of legitimate interests.
• Portability — ask for information you gave us in a format you can take elsewhere.
• Withdraw consent — where we rely on your consent, withdraw it at any time. For cookies, maps and videos, use “Cookie settings” at the bottom of any page.

To use any of these rights, email admin@efn.org.uk. There is normally no charge, and we will reply within one month, as the law requires. We may ask you to confirm your identity first.

Cookies are small files that a website saves in your browser. Websites can also keep information in your browser’s “local storage”. UK law lets us use these without asking only when they are essential; anything else needs your permission first.

Essential — always on

• efn_consent (a cookie, and the same in local storage; kept for 12 months) — remembers your choices in our cookie banner, so we don’t ask on every page. It holds only those choices.
• efn_admin (a cookie, deleted when you close your browser) — keeps our website editors signed in. It is only set when someone opens our editors’ sign-in page, never for other visitors.
• efn-live-edit and efn-live-edit-hidden (local storage), and efn-live-edit-saved (session storage, cleared when the tab is closed) — remember a signed-in editor’s editing settings on that device. Never set for other visitors.

Analytics — only with your permission

Our own visit statistics use no cookies (see Visit statistics). If we switch on Google Analytics, it runs only after you choose “Accept all” or turn on Analytics in Cookie settings. It then sets the cookies _ga and _ga_ followed by our account code, which last up to 2 years and let Google recognise your browser when you come back.

Maps and videos — only with your permission

Maps from OpenStreetMap and videos from YouTube or Vimeo load only when you allow them (see Maps, videos and other websites). Once loaded, these companies may set their own cookies or similar storage.

Changing your mind: use “Cookie settings” at the bottom of any page to change your choices at any time. You can also delete cookies and local storage in your browser’s settings; if you delete efn_consent, we will simply ask again.

To see which pages are useful, our website counts visits itself. This works without cookies, without anything running in your browser and without any other company.

• What is counted: the page you visited, the date, the website you came from (just its name, such as google.com) and whether you used a phone, tablet or computer.
• Counting each visitor once a day: our server makes a code from your IP address and browser details, mixed with a random value that changes every day and is then thrown away. The code can’t be turned back into your IP address and is deleted within two days, so no one can be followed from one day to the next.
• Never kept: your IP address, or anything else that identifies you.
• Not counted: search engines and other robots, our signed-in editors and — unless the table below says otherwise — browsers that send a “Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control” signal.

We keep only the daily totals, and delete them after the period shown in What’s switched on right now.

Other analytics services

We can also choose to use one of the services below. The table in What’s switched on right now shows whether we do.

• Plausible Analytics, GoatCounter or Cloudflare Web Analytics set no cookies. When a page loads, your browser sends the service the page address, the website you came from and details of your browser and device, and the service sees your IP address. Each says it does not use cookies or follow people across websites. Because they store nothing on your device, we may let them run without asking you first; the table shows whether we ask. See the privacy policies of Plausible, GoatCounter and Cloudflare.
• Google Analytics 4 uses cookies, so it runs only after you agree. Google then receives details of your visit, such as the pages you view, your device and browser, and your approximate location, and may process them outside the UK, including in the USA. See how Google uses information from sites that use its services.

Our forms have their own checks against automated spam, such as a hidden field that only robots fill in and a limit on how many forms can be sent in a short time (see What we collect).

We may also switch on Cloudflare Turnstile, a security check that tells people and automated programs apart, usually without you having to do anything. When it is on, your browser contacts Cloudflare when you reach one of our forms or start filling it in. Cloudflare receives signals such as your IP address and details of your browser, and uses them only to detect and block automated programs and to improve the check. When you send the form, our server asks Cloudflare to confirm the result. Because the check keeps our forms secure, it runs without asking for cookie permission. See Cloudflare’s Turnstile privacy addendum.

Some pages show a map from OpenStreetMap or a video from YouTube or Vimeo. Until you allow them, you see a placeholder instead, and your browser doesn’t contact these companies. The map or video loads only when you press its button (such as “Show map” or play). If you have allowed maps and videos in Cookie settings, maps load straight away; videos still wait until you press play.

Once it loads, the company receives your IP address and details of your browser, and may set its own cookies or similar storage. For YouTube we use its privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com). See the privacy policies of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, Google (YouTube) and Vimeo.

Our fonts are hosted on our own server, so loading a page does not share your visit with font providers such as Google. Buttons for sharing an article on LinkedIn or X are plain links: nothing is sent to those sites unless you click one.

Some of the features above can be switched on or off in our website’s settings. This table is made automatically from those settings, so it always shows what the website does today.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please contact us first at admin@efn.org.uk so we can try to put it right.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator: visit ico.org.uk or call 0303 123 1113.

We may update this notice from time to time, for example when we switch on a new feature. The date below shows when the text last changed; the table in What’s switched on right now always shows the website’s current settings.