Skip to main content

Privacy Statement for Cork City Alerts

Summary

Cork City Alerts is a free service provided by Cork City Council to send alerts to subscribers based on six core alert categories (Water Alerts, Road Alerts, Community/Miscellaneous Alerts, Flood Alerts, Weather Alerts and Planning Alerts). Alerts are issued by a combination of SMS, Email, app notifications and chat applications. Alerts are also geographically focused meaning the subscriber will only receive alerts based on the locations stored in their Cork City Alerts account. At all times the subscriber is in control of what information they receive, the locational relevance of alerts, the channels used to contact them, as well as an ability to quickly unsubscribe from the service in a few easy ways. The personal data on Cork City Alerts is limited to your mobile number, email address, IP address from web device and up to two mapped locations.


Cork City Council fully respects your right to privacy. The Council will not collect any personal information about you on its websites without your clear permission. Any information, which you submit via Cork City Council's websites will be treated with the highest possible standards of security and confidentiality, strictly in accordance with the Data Protection Acts, 1988 & 2003. This privacy statement sets out how Cork City Alerts and Cork City Council (Data Controller) and Pin Point Alerts Ltd (the Data Processor and the company that runs the service) processes subscriber personal data, secures this personal data, and the various policies that adheres to General Data Protection Regulation.

The Council reserves the right to amend the scope of the privacy statement at any time which may include or exclude other sites. Identity and the contact details of the controller: The Data Controller is Cork City Council, City Hall, Anglesea Street, Cork, T12 T997
Contact details of the data protection officer:
- - Data Protection Officer email: dataprotection@corkcity.ie
- - Phone: 021 4924000


Identity and the contact details of the processor:

The Data Processor is Pin Point Alerts Ltd, Burrell Hall, St. Kieran's College, College Road, Co. Kilkenny. Purposes and legal basis for the processing.

The following Personally Identifiable Information ("PII") is gathered from registered users ("subscribers"):
1. Irish Mobile Number
Cork City Alerts is provided exclusively to Irish phone holders. For that reason, you must have a unique login to Cork City Alerts and your mobile number is used to create and access your account. Your mobile number will also be used to send you SMS Text Alerts from Cork City Council.

2. Password
You need to authenticate with Cork City Alerts to access your account. Passwords are created at registration and they are salted/hashed on the Cork City Alerts server - passwords are never stored in plain text.

3. Up to two stored map locations, by way of coarse map coordinates
Cork City Alerts offers focused alerts from Cork City Council that are locally relevant to recipients. To make this happen Cork City Alerts allows you to add up to two locations for which you want to receive alerts. These are branded as “Home” and “Work” locations and we also generate a route between the two locations. A minimum of one location is required while the second location is optional. It is up to the subscriber to map their location on the system and to provide the level of accuracy they are satisfied with. It is not necessary to map exactly to a home location - the centre of a town or townland is usually sufficient to ensure you get the alerts that impact you. Cork City Alerts stores coordinates statically in a database after they are updated by the subscriber and Cork City Alerts does not track your location at any time. Coordinates are stored as a Latitude Longitude pair. If you provide a location at registration that is outside of Cork City you will receive alerts from MapAlerter for that location. Locations inside of Cork City will receive alerts from Cork City Alerts.

4. Email Address
Cork City Alerts uses your email address to send you email alerts from Cork City Council. The email address is a unique entity in the Cork City Alerts database, and it is also used to reset your account password, if you forget it. In extremely rare cases your email address is used to send out service updates, policy changes and changes to the Cork City Alerts terms and conditions if further consent is required.

5. IP address
An Internet protocol (IP) address is the unique number assigned to your Internet communicator device or Internet Service Provider (ISP). Cork City Alerts may track such IP addresses for system administration, site tracking, to prevent our servers from being abused and for other uses described in this Privacy Policy.

Our use of cookies:
Cork City Alerts makes use of cookies, which are small digital files that are stored in your web browser, that enable us to track your return visits to our website. We use cookies to ensure an improved user experience. The purpose of cookies on Cork City Alerts is also used to speed up the load time for web pages on subsequent visits to the website. Your browser settings may allow you to block these cookies, which is fine and the service will continue to operate, but we recommend you have them enabled to help us personalise your experience of Cork City Alerts.

Summary of how we use the information we gather:

We use the information to allow you to manage your unique account. We require your contact details to correctly send you notifications, and we require a unique username (mobile number) for you to create an account. Your password is used to access your Cork City Alerts account. To send you correct localized alerts and notifications we require coordinate information about your location - this can be accurate to your town/city and not necessarily to your exact home location. Mapping a point on the map is optional for your place of work (if you wish to receive notifications about your place of work).

The people that are given access to your personal information:

H3>

Cork City Alerts is provided as a free service by Cork City Council (the Data Controller). Cork City Alerts uses MapAlerter technology provided by Pin Point Alerts Ltd (the Data Processor). We will solely use your PII details you provide at registration for the purposes of identifying if you should receive a text/email/app notification and, subsequently, we will use your contact details to correctly deliver the notification and/or alert. If you provide a location at registration that is outside of Cork City, you will receive alerts from MapAlerter (which is provided by our service partner and our Data Processor Pin Point Alerts) for that location. Locations registered inside Cork City will receive alerts from Cork City Alerts.

Where does the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) database and backups reside?

All parts of Cork City Alerts including databases and websites are hosted within the European Union. At no stage is PII transferred to a 3rd country outside of the European Union. Backups are fully encrypted and stored securely in Ireland for a maximum period of 14 days before self-deleting.

Rights of access to and rectification/deletion of personal data/Rights to object to processing.

You have the right to request for us to delete any personal data collected by us or to correct and rectify any errors in this data. You also have the right to object to the processing of your personal data. Contact dataprotection@corkcity.ie. For further information please visit the Data Protection section of the Councils website: https://www.corkcity.ie/en/council-services/public-info/gdpr/

If processing is based on consent, the right to withdraw consent

If the personal data we hold about you was collected based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent and request deletion of that data. Contact dataprotection@corkcity.ie.

Obligation to provide personal data

In order to provide certain services to you, the Council requires your personal data, and cannot provide the services without this data. Where the council requires this data it will be made clear to you on application for these services, what personal data will be required to be held and processed by the Council.

Right to Complaint

If you have any concerns or complaints about the processing of your personal data or Cork City Councils responses to regarding your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint to the Office of Data Protection Commissioner, dataprotection@corkcity.ie. For further information please visit the Data Protection section of the Councils website: https://www.corkcity.ie/en/council-services/public-info/gdpr/
For further assistance on Data Protection contact: Data Protection Officer, Cork City Council, City Hall, Anglesea Street, Cork, T12 T997
Telephone: 021 4924000
E-Mail: dataprotection@corkcity.ie

Changes to this policy

We reserve the right to modify the Privacy Policy at any stage. If and when we make changes to our privacy policy, we'll share details of these changes on this page.

Glossary

IP ADDRESS: The identifying details for your computer (or your Internet company's computer), expressed in "Internet protocol" code. Every computer connected to the web has a unique IP address, although the address may not be the same every time a connection is made.
COOKIES: A cookie is a block of data that a web server places on a user's PC. Typically, it is used to ease navigation through the site. However, it is also a useful means for the web site identifying the user, tracking the users path through the site, and identifying repeat visits to the site by the same user (or same users machine). This can then lead to a web site owner being able to profile an individual users browsing habits and all potentially done without the knowledge, or consent, of the user.