Privacy Notice for Visitors to GeoDS Websites (including Cookie Policy)
This is a Privacy Notice for the geods.ac.uk and data.geods.ac.uk (GeoDS) websites, this notice supplements the Privacy Notice on Personal Data in Datasets acquired by GeoDS and was last reviewed and updated on 19 December 2024.
This privacy notice has been updated in line with the General Data Protection Regulation.
Purpose of this Notice
This Notice tells you how the University of Liverpool (upon whose servers parts of GeoDS run, and whom controls other GeoDS websites that are located on cloud-based services and commercial hosting services) will collect and use your personal data when you access this website. The University is a Controller of this personal data for the purposes of the data protection legislation.
Note that additional information will be provided where you are requested to enter personal information and this will vary between our various websites.
It is important that you read this Notice together with any other privacy notice we provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This Notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.
Changes to this Notice
We keep the information provided in this Notice under review. This Notice may be updated from time to time. If we make any substantial updates, we will draw these to your attention.
We will not use your personal data in any manner that is incompatible with the purpose for which the data were collected originally, unless we have obtained your consent to that additional use.
Anything you are not clear about
If there is anything you are unclear about, please contact the University’s Data Protection Officer, who shall be happy to answer any queries you may have concerning this Notice or the way in which we process your personal data.
The Data Protection Officer’s contact details are provided at the end of this Notice.
What data we collect about you
GeoDS is a multi-institutional centre (University College London, Universities of Liverpool, Oxford and Edinburgh) providing access to a wide range of mainly social science data through a three-tier data service – Open, Safeguarded and Secure. The Open tier is accessible by all and data can be downloaded for any purpose following a simple registration process. Access to data from the Safeguarded and Secure Tiers is restricted to the purpose of social science research for the benefit of society and follows a reviewed application process.
Open tier: personal details including name and email that you provide when registering to download data. We also record which datasets you download and when.
Safeguarded and Secure tiers: As well as the above, we collect additional personal details including contact details for you and your research team, information about your research, ethical approval and safe researcher training. We may also collect information about your IP address in the case of applications for specific products.
On registering for all tiers of the service we will ask you whether you would like to receive our newsletter and other information.
We will also collect contact information from you if you attend our training or outreach events.
How will we use the information
Your personal data are collected to enable us to provide you with data through our three-tier service and to respond to queries. These data may be shared between the GeoDS teams at our partner institutions at the University of Oxford, University College London and the University of Edinburgh.
Safeguarded and Secure Tier applications will also be shared with the Data Partner(s) in question and with our Research Approvals Group reviewers as well as our Research Approvals Group Chair as part of our Research Approvals Group process.
These data are also collected to enable us to provide information about our performance to our funder, the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council’s Smart Data Research programme, and to our advisory boards, to demonstrate our success and account for the investment into the Service.
For those who have consented to receive the GeoDS communications such as a newsletter, we will continue to send this information until we are notified otherwise.
Contact information from participants of training and outreach events organised by GeoDS will be used to enable us to deliver these events.
We will not share your personal details with third parties other than those already cited.
Purpose of processing your data
The lawful basis for processing your personal data will be for ‘the performance of a task in the public interest’ (GDPR 6(1)(e)), ‘public task’.
The lawful basis for processing your personal data may in specific instances be by consent as in the case of providing information about GeoDS and its activities.
The lawful basis for processing any special category personal data will be the processing is necessary ‘for scientific research purposes’ (GDPR 9(2)(j)).
When you access our web pages certain information your browser provides, including your IP address at the time, browser type, and potentially the address of the page you last visited, will be automatically recorded by the University. This data may be used to aid detection in the event of a security breach. The legal basis for this processing is necessity to pursue our legitimate interests to keep our website secure. The University retains this data in a form from which you may be identifiable until 18 months after the closure of GeoDS.
Third-party access
Your personal data that you have provided will not routinely be sent to third parties, unless notified.
Data retention
The University’s policies on retaining data for prospective and current students, staff and job applicants are detailed in its data retention policy at https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/it/records-management/information-management-policy/
In other cases, for example, if you subscribe to news or events, any retention of data will be made clear at the point of collection.
All GeoDS users’ personal data will be retained for 18 months following the closure of GeoDS.
Cookies
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your device by websites that you visit.
We use cookies for the purpose of performance tracking – to help our websites function, track how our websites are used and help us make improvements.
The following cookies are used: _utma, _utmb, _utmc, _utmv, _utmz, _ga, _gat (Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager).
These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our website and provide statistics to our funder and our advisory boards. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. These cookies are also used to track users’ interests and then provide targeted advertising on other websites. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.
If you share content from our website through other websites, for example Facebook or Twitter, cookies or a form of tracking may be used by these services and you need to manage your privacy via your account (and not through our site).
You can manage your privacy settings, including cookies, through your browser settings.
Further information about cookies can be found on the Information Commissioner’s Office website at https://ico.org.uk/.
Anything you are not clear about
It is important that the personal data the University holds about you is accurate and current. Please contact us, via the links on our websites, if the personal data you have provided to us needs to be updated.
Your rights as a data subject
Under the GDPR, in certain circumstances, you have the right to:
- withdraw your consent to our processing of your personal data where that is the legal basis for such processing
- access any of your personal data which we hold
- have your personal data which we hold corrected if it is inaccurate
- have any of your personal data which we hold erased
- restrict the ways in which we process your personal data
- object to our processing of your personal data
- receive a copy of any of your personal data which we hold in a structured and commonly used machine-readable format
- in certain cases not be subject to a decision based solely on automated decision making
- lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority
Queries and complaints
If you have any queries or concerns relating to this privacy notice or the way your data is being processed through this website then please contact legal@liverpool.ac.uk or write to:
The Data Protection Officer, Legal & Governance, University of Liverpool, Foundation Building, 765 Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L69 7ZX.
The UK’s regulator for the DPA and GDPR is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The University of Liverpool is a registered Data Controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) under registration number Z6390975.
Should you be dissatisfied with our handling of your concerns you have the right to complain to a supervisory authority. In the case of the UK this is the Information Commissioner’s Office and details can be found at https://ico.org.uk.
Privacy Notice on Personal Data in Datasets acquired by GeoDS
This is a Privacy Notice for datasets acquired by GeoDS, this notice supplements the Privacy Notice for Visitors to GeoDS Websites and was last reviewed and updated on 19 December 2024.
This privacy notice has been updated in line with the General Data Protection Regulation.
The Geographic Data Service (GeoDS) is an initiative funded by the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)’s Smart Data Research programme. It was established in 2025 to lead academic engagement between industry and the social sciences and to utilise geographic data for academic research purposes.
GeoDS provides unique insight into a diverse range of societal and economic challenges in collaboration with a wide range of data providers. To accomplish this objective GeoDS acquires data from third parties, in some cases including personal data, as part of its Data Acquisition activities, to harness the potential of smart data for the benefit of society.
Data acquisitions are conducted by University College London (UCL), which is one of the partner institutions of GeoDS and is the Data Controller of the acquired dataset. It has its own Privacy Notice on processing Personal Data in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which can found at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/legal-services/sites/legal-services/files/data-protection-policy.pdf. If you have any questions about this privacy notice please contact data-protection@ucl.ac.uk.
Specific details of what data are stored by GeoDS in each dataset are detailed at the relevant dataset record page on the GeoDS data catalogue website.
If you have a query about the way that your data is being processed in relation to a specific dataset, please contact UCL at the email above.
If we are unable to adequately address any concerns you may have about the way in which we use your data, you have the right to lodge a formal complaint with the data protection authority in your country or our main data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office. Full details may be accessed on the complaints section of the Information Commissioner’s Office website.