Privacy Policy
What information we collect and how we use it
When you submit a report, we pass on your details, and details of the issue, to the authority contact or contacts responsible for the area where you located the issue.
When you make a report
When you use FixMyBim to send a report, you provide us with personal information including:
- Your name
- Contact details
We send this information to the authority responsible for fixing your issue, as per your choice of category..
At the same time, your report appears on the FixMyBim website. Your email address and phone number are not published, and your name is only published if you have opted to do so.
We store your personal details, along with your password where used (passwords are stored in a format that is unreadable to anyone — including us — known as a hash) and any reports or updates you make, in our own database.
These are accessible only to FixMyBim administrators who adhere to strict internal data-handling policies.
When you add an update or respond to our ‘has your problem been fixed?’ survey
When you add an update to a report, or click through from our ‘has your problem been fixed?’ survey, we record this along with the initial report and your user data.
Updates are published on the website.
When you subscribe to an alert by email
We collect your email address, which we store with the details of whichever alert/s you have subscribed to.
When you contact the support team
Your message will be accessible to our support staff, who adhere to strict internal data-handling policies.
Your personal information is never shared, or used for purposes other than those listed above, unless we are obliged to by law.
Research
We sometimes use data from FixMyBim, or share it with trusted third parties, for research. This data is completely anonymised and contains no identifying details such as names, email addresses or the content of reports.
What happens when you use FixMyBim
Making a report
- When the relevant authority responds to your report, if you have provided us with an email address, in most cases their reply will go directly to your email inbox. This response, and any subsequent correspondence, happens outside the FixMyBim system.
- We email you if someone leaves an update on a report you’ve made.
- We send you a questionnaire email four weeks after you submit a problem, asking for a status update.
- You can then opt in or out of subsequent status update questionnaires.
- You can choose to opt out of questionnaires altogether via your account page.
- If your report is particularly interesting, we may get in touch, as we like to feature notable requests on our social media channels.
- We only ever send you emails in relation to your reports or use of the site.
Subscribing to alerts
We’ll send you an automated email every time someone makes a report within the area you specify, or when updates are made to a report you’ve opted to follow. The frequency of these emails will depend on how large your chosen area is and how many reports are made within it.
Unsubscribing
How do I stop receiving emails from you?
Every alert email we send contains an unsubscribe link at the bottom for you to stop receiving that alert. After the first questionnaire email on a report, mentioned above, you have to opt in to receive any further questionnaire on that report.
Legal basis for processing
In using FixMyBim for any of the functions listed above (sending a report, leaving an update, email alerts or site registration), we are processing your data under the legal basis in the Barbados Data Protection Act, 2019-29: 2(2) – Purpose limitation.
We assert that we have a legitimate commercial interest in giving people an easy and public way to report street problems, even if they don’t know who the problems should go to, and in sending them updates or alerts. The benefits of reporting problems publicly are that others can quickly see what has already been reported, so it prevents the institutions from having to deal with duplicates. It also creates a snapshot for communities, so it’s easy to see what the common problems are in a given area, and how quickly they get fixed. Other residents can browse, read and comment on problems – and perhaps even offer a solution.
Retention periods and your right to removal
Reports and updates
Except in exceptional circumstances, we do not delete reports or updates made through FixMyBim. Historic FixMyBim reports provide an invaluable resource for researchers into the quantity and type of street problems made. This research can help inform civic planners, developers, coders, historians and social scientists, among others.
Therefore, if you ask for a report to be removed, in most cases we will instead invite you to anonymise it, so that there is no public connection between the content and your name. You can anonymise reports singly, or in bulk, by logging in to your account and clicking on the ‘“Hide your name”’ link beside the time and date of your report. From here you may anonymise this report or all reports you have made.
Your personal information
As well as your report or update appearing on the FixMyBim website, your details, including name and email address, are stored in our admin system.
If you submit a report but do not click on the confirmation email, your report will not be sent to the relevant authority; however, the report and your details remain in our system and are accessible to site administrators.
Personal details will automatically be removed from our database after two years of inactivity of the associated account. Please contact us if you would like your details to be removed from our admin database sooner than that.
Support mail
If you contact FixMyBim via our support email address we keep your message for two years at which point it will be automatically deleted. This is to aid continuity and so that we can view any historic context which may have bearing on subsequent support mail, even if members of the support staff change. Support staff adhere to internal privacy policies which may be viewed on request.
Cookies
To make our service easier or more useful, we sometimes place small data files on your computer or mobile phone, known as cookies; many websites do this. We use this information to, for example, remember you have logged in so you don’t need to do that on every page, or to measure how people use the website so we can improve it and make sure it works properly. Below, we list the cookies and services that this site can use.
| Name | Typical Content | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| fixmystreet_app_session | A random unique identifier | When browser is closed |
Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)
We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use this site. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements.
Google Analytics stores information such as what pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here, what you click on, and information about your web browser. IP addresses are masked (only a portion is stored) and personal information is only reported in aggregate. We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data for any purpose besides providing us with analytics information, and we recommend that any user of Google Analytics does the same.