How We Keep Your Data Secure
Your Data
The information you fill in when you sign up: age, location of cavernoma, address etc is recorded in an InfoStorm database owned by Cavernoma Alliance UK. This is a secure database accessible only to the charity's administrators and system administrator but in addition you have the ability, via special hyperlink, to view and update your own details (but not other members'). You can find out how to do that here.
The special hyperlink takes you to a page on our public web site with a secure frame within it where the form sits. So the data is sent and received over a secure SSL connection (see below) and each member has a unique URL with their own key. There are over 35,000,000,000,000 possible keys and your PC is locked out after three failed attempts so anyone trying to access a record in our database, including our members trying to access details other than their own, without knowing the key won't get very far.
Members' Stories
When you become a member we invite you to record your story for inclusion in the locked members' area. This is a separate web site which only people who know the username and password can access.
It is secured using SSL encryption, so the URL is
https://member.cavernoma.org.uk
Note the "s" after the "http". What that means is that all the data sent over the Internet between our server and your PC is encrypted and can't be read in transit. Your browser should show you, via a padlock image or similar, that this is in operation. It is the same security method the banks use. It's very secure.
The only thing stored on the web site is name, email address and the member's story about their condition in their own words. So this is the information which other members, who have the user name and password can read. We are trusting them to keep it confidential and at the bottom of every member's story is the following text to remind them of that:
Hosting
The servers on which all the data is held are owned by The Hug, a company owned by Paul Oldham, who is a member (and has a cavernoma in his pons) and his wife. They are housed in a very secure data centre in Manchester. Only Paul and his wife are able to access them.
Finally it's worth mentioning that all the data we hold, on the web site, the backups of the site (which are held at The Hug's offices), and at our offices in Dorchester are all covered by the Data Protection Act and we are very aware of the legal implications of that and as a charity we are registered under the Data Protection Act as a Data Controller, registration number Z9714921.