Privacy Policy
At DDS, we are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
This policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people who apply to DDS, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure. We may change our privacy policy from time to time so please check our website (https://dentaldefencesociety.com/privacy-policy/) occasionally to ensure that you are happy with any changes. By using our website and signing up to DDS, you are agreeing to be bound by the policy.
Any questions regarding this policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to advice@dentaldefencesociety.com or by writing to
Dental Defence Society
Data Protection Officer
4 Fitzjames Avenue
West Kensington
London
W14 0RP
Who are we?
We are Dental Defence Society Limited (DDS), UK newest dental defence organization (DDO), created to protect the interests of our GP members. DDS is a company limited by guarantee without share capital (no. 6825798). The registered address is 4 Fitzjames Avenue, West Kensington, London, W14 0RP
How do we collect information from you?
We obtain information about you when you use our website, for example, when you make an application to DDS or contact us about membership services or to receive newsletters from us.
What type of information is collected from you?
The personal information we collect includes your name, telephone number, address, email address, IP address, current working pattern as a General Practitioner (GP), your history including claims and/or complaints within your professional and personal aspect.
If you make an application online to DDS and you wish to pay your membership fee by direct debit, your bank account information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of direct debit transactions.
Other individuals’ personal information – By submitting information to DDS relating to any identifiable individual the Member represents that it has authority to provide that personal information to DDS. With respect to any individual about whom the Member provides personal information to DDS, the Member agrees: (a) to inform the individual about our privacy policy; and (b) to obtain any legally-required consent for the collection, use, disclosure, and transfer (including cross-border transfer) of personal information about the individual in accordance with the Privacy policy.
How is your information used?
We may use your information to:
- Process any applications that you have made to DDS;
- Process any medical malpractice claims or complaints from patients;
- To carry out our obligations arising from any membership agreements entered by you and us;
- Dealing with enquiries from GDC and other regulatory bodies including the provision of support to respond with legal enquiries;
- Seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
- Notify you of changes to our services;
- Send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about campaigns, education activities;
- Administration, e.g. communications, claims processing and payment;
- Decision-making on provision of indemnity and payment eligibility;
- Assistance and advice on dento-legal matters;
- Management and audit of the society business operations;
- Prevention, detection and investigation of crime, e.g. fraud and money laundering;
- Establishment and defence of legal rights;
- Legal and regulatory compliance, including compliance with laws outside the member’s country of residence;
- Sanctions checking;
- Monitoring and recording of telephone calls for quality, training and security purposes;
- Marketing, market research and analysis;
We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations (for example medical malpractice claims). We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.
Who has access to your information?
We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.
We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.
Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf: We may pass your information to our third party service providers, insurance/broker agents, legal service companies and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process claims and deal with any legal queries you may have). However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties beyond the DDS network for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.
When you apply online, your application form is processed in a secure environment by a third party server, who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of personal information. If you have any questions regarding secure transactions, please contact us.
We may transfer your personal information to a third party as part of a sale of some or all of our business and assets to any third party or as part of any business restructuring or reorganisation, or if we’re under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation or to enforce or apply our terms of use or to protect the rights, property or safety of our supporters and customers. However, we will take steps with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected.
Your choices
You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us about the vital work we do for GPs and/or our exciting products, then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form on which we collect your information.
We will not contact you for marketing purposes by email, phone or text message unless you have given your prior consent. We will not contact you for marketing purposes by post if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us by email: advice@dentaldefencesociety.com
How you can access and update your information
The accuracy of your information is important to us. We’re working on ways to make it easier for you to review and correct the information that we hold about you. In the meantime, if you change email address, or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please email us at advice@dentaldefencesociety.com , or write to us at
Data Protection Officer
Dental Defence Society
4 Fitzjames Avenue
West Kensington
W14 0RP
You have the right to ask for a copy of the information DDS hold about you (we may charge £10 for information requests) to cover our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.
Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information
When you give us personal information over the internet (e.g. application form, bank details), we take steps to ensure that it is treated securely. Any sensitive information (such as bank details) is encrypted and protected with the following software 128 Bit encryption on SSL. When you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear on the bottom of web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our websites, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.
Profiling
We may analyse your personal information to create a risk assessment of your practice as a GDP so that we can decide whether to grant you to membership to DDS. We may make use of additional information about you when it is available from external sources to help us do this effectively. We may also use your personal information to detect and reduce fraud and credit risk.
Use of ‘cookies’
Like many other websites, the DDS website uses cookies. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. They collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns and do not identify you as an individual. For example, we use cookies to store your country preference. This helps us to improve our website and deliver a better more personalised service.
It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences. For more information on how to switch off cookies on your computer, visit our full cookies policy. Turning cookies off may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.
Links to other websites
Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.
In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site.
Transferring your information outside of Europe
As part of the services offered to you by DDS, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the European Union (“EU”). By way of example, this may happen if any of our servers are from time to time located in a country outside of the EU. These countries may not have similar data protection laws to the UK. By submitting your personal data, you are agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing. If we transfer your information outside of the EU in this way, we will take steps to ensure that appropriate security measures are taken with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this policy.
If you apply to Dental Defence Society while you are outside the EU, your information may be transferred outside the EU in order to provide you with those services.
Review of this Policy
We keep this policy under regular review. This notice was last reviewed on February 2023