Privacy policy
At a glance
We are a nonprofit in the education sector, funded through grants and reader donations. We care about the privacy of our readers, donors, and partners, and our goal is to collect and use as little personal information as possible.
This Privacy Notice explains in detail the different ways we may collect and use personal information. In broad terms, for most visitors to our websites, we collect only minimal technical data — such as your browser type or device — to understand how our site is used overall.
If you agree to optional cookies, we'll gather additional insights about your visit (such as which buttons you clicked) to help us determine which features to improve or expand. You can change your cookie choices at any time on our Cookie notice page.
Additional personal information may be collected if you choose to engage with us directly — for example, by signing up to our newsletter, making a donation, or sending us an email.
We follow GDPR principles, incorporating privacy into the design of our systems and tools. If you have any questions at any time, please get in touch using the contact details provided below.
1. About this Privacy Notice
We are Global Change Data Lab ("GCDL", "we", "our", "us"). We are a charity and company registered in England and Wales with charity number 1186433 and company number 11725483, whose registered address is Urbanoid Workspace, 1&3 Kings Meadow, Oxford, England OX2 0DP.
This privacy notice is designed to explain how we collect, use, and protect your personal information when you interact with us.
For the purposes of EU and UK data protection law, we are a "controller" of your personal information. This means that we make decisions about how and why your information is used and have a responsibility to make sure your rights are protected when we do so.
2. What does this Notice cover?
This notice describes how GCDL uses your personal information when you visit and submit information through our websites. We operate the following websites:
It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your personal information.
If you have any questions, please contact us at data-protection@ourworldindata.org.
3. What personal information do we collect?
When we refer to "personal information", we mean information that can be used to identify, or can be directly linked to, a person.
The personal information we collect depends on how you interact with us. The table below sets out the different types of information we may collect across all our activities — such as when someone donates, subscribes to our newsletter, or visits our website. Not all of the information listed will apply to everyone. For instance, if you do not provide contact details, we will not have access to them.
General Category | Types of Personal Information |
|---|---|
Identity information | This is information relating to your identity, such as your name. |
Contact information | This is information about how we can contact you, such as your email or your phone number. |
Device information | This is information relating to the browser or device you use to access our website, such as your IP address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access our websites. |
Marketing information | This is information relating to marketing and communications preferences. |
Communications information | Any other personal information you provide to us directly in the course of communicating with us. |
Under data protection legislation, certain personal information is considered more 'sensitive' (e.g., information relating to racial or ethnic origin, religion, political opinions and health). This is also known as 'special category data'. We do not collect any sensitive personal information about you through our website.
4. How is your personal information collected?
We collect and retain personal information about you that you have given us in different contexts, for example:
From direct interactions — when you sign up to our newsletter, make a donation, or correspond with us by phone, email, web forms, or otherwise.
From trusted third-party services — for instance, when you visit our websites, we may receive personal information from analytics providers such as Google Analytics; or when you make a donation, we may receive information from payment processors such as Stripe.
From third-party websites that embed our charts — if you are viewing one of our interactive charts embedded on another website, and you have consented to analytics on that site, we may receive analytics information from them.
5. Legal basis for data collection
Data protection law requires us to explain the legal bases we rely on when using personal information. The table below sets out the full range of purposes, types of data, and legal bases that apply across all of our activities. Not all of the purposes or legal bases listed may apply to you. It depends on how you interact with us. For most visitors to our website, the relevant basis is our legitimate interest in operating a functional, secure website. Other bases only apply if you actively choose to interact with us in a specific way.
Purpose | Type of data | Lawful basis for processing, including legitimate interests |
|---|---|---|
To provide you with our products/services | Identity information, Device information, Communications information | Our legitimate interests in providing our goods and services |
To provide you with a response when you use our contact function on our website | Identity information, Contact information, Communications information | Our legitimate interests in promoting and developing our mission |
To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, customer relationships and experiences and to measure the effectiveness of our communications and marketing | Device information, Identity information | Our legitimate interests to define types of users for our products/services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy |
To provide you with information relating to our goods/services and other information that we think you might be interested in as well as ways to contribute - you can unsubscribe to emails using the link in the email | Identity information, Contact information, Marketing information | For our legitimate interests and, where necessary, on the basis of your consent |
To communicate with you and handle concerns and queries | Identity information, Contact information, Communications information | Our legitimate interests in providing good customer service and complying with our legal obligations To comply with laws |
To enable you to complete a survey | Identity information, Contact information, Communications information, Marketing information | For the performance of a contract with you Necessary for our legitimate interests to study how our users use our products and services, and to develop them |
Generally to protect our legal rights and comply with laws | All of the above | Our legitimate interests and to comply with laws |
In cases where we rely on consent — for example, when you sign up to our newsletter — we will always ask for it clearly at the point you provide your information.
We do not carry out any automated decision-making using personal information that produces legal effects or otherwise significantly affects individuals.
6. Updates by email
Where you have provided consent, we will contact you by e-mail to keep you updated on information that you may be interested in (known as "direct marketing").
You can opt out from receiving our communications or update your contact preferences at any time by emailing info@ourworldindata.org.
7. Sharing your information
We may share your personal information with trusted third parties, who will process it on our behalf for the purposes identified above.
Depending on how you interact with us, we may share information with:
- Service providers who help us run our websites, manage newsletters, process donations, provide analytics, or support recruitment and HR.
- Professional advisors such as auditors or lawyers, where required for our operations.
- Authorities such as regulators or law enforcement, where we are legally obliged to do so.
8. International transfer of data and personal information
Where we need to share your personal information with people or entities outside the UK or EEA, such recipients might be subject to data protection laws which offer less protection than European data protection law. Where this is the case, we take steps to ensure your personal information is protected by entering into contracts that have been approved by the relevant authorities (such as controller to controller EU "standard contractual clauses" along with the Information Commissioner's International Data Transfer Addendum to those clauses).
9. Cookies
Our websites use cookies to enhance your experience while using those sites. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.
For further details about our use of cookies, please visit our Cookie notice page.
10. How long do we keep your information?
We will only keep your personal information for as long as we need it to achieve the purposes for which we collected it, to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, to exercise our legal rights and to protect ourselves from legal claims.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information, whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.
11. How we keep your personal information safe
To protect your privacy, we will make sure your personal information is kept securely and disclosed only to relevant organisations or representatives who need to access it to perform their roles. We use appropriate organisational, technical and administrative measures to protect personal information within our organisation.
If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us at data-protection@ourworldindata.org.
12. Your data protection rights
You have the right:
- to request access to your personal information (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are processing it lawfully;
- to correct, delete or restrict (stop any active) use of your personal information;
- to request the transfer of your personal information to you or to a third party in certain circumstances. We will provide your personal information to you (or the third party you have chosen) in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format;
- to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances;
- to withdraw consent where you have given us consent to use your personal information. If you withdraw consent we will stop using your personal information immediately, unless we are required to process it for a different purpose (for example, the information is necessary to comply with a legal obligation). If you decide to withdraw your consent, this will not affect the lawfulness of our processing before your consent was withdrawn;
- to opt out of marketing communications we send you at any time. You can exercise this right by clicking on the "unsubscribe" or "opt-out" link in the marketing e-mails we send you.
These rights may be limited, for example if answering your request would reveal personal information about another person or if you ask us to delete information which we are required by law to keep. If you still have concerns, you have the right to complain to the data protection authority (see below for further details).
To exercise any of these rights, or to make a complaint to us, you can get in touch at data-protection@ourworldindata.org.
13. How you can get in touch
If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights outlined above, please contact us at data-protection@ourworldindata.org.
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the relevant local data protection supervisory authority. For details of supervisory authorities in the EEA see here. For the UK's data protection authority, contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
14. Our complaints process
If you are concerned that we have handled your personal information in a way that breaches our obligations under data protection law, we would appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the relevant supervisory authority, so please contact us in the first instance.