To All MROA Members

The MROA has always taken data protection very seriously. We
want you to know you can trust us to respect your privacy and keep your
personal information safe. Legislation aimed at giving you more control over
this is called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

We have always limited the information we collect about
members to only that needed to run the Association. By remaining an active member of the MROA you
are giving us permission to use the information you have provided to manage
membership and keep you informed about the operation of the Association. Without your express permission, we will
never use that information for any other purpose.

Although no changes were required in the way we handle your
data we are taking this opportunity to show you exactly what we do with the
information we hold.

If you leave the Association, we will take steps to ensure
your information is kept secure and that after a period of time anything that
could identify you is removed.

Our new Privacy Policy reflects the recent changes in
legislation and takes immediate effect. Please take time to read the Privacy
Policy which can be found in the 'About' section of the MROA website. It will
tell you exactly what information we can collect, how we can collect it, what
we can use it for, who we can share it with – and how we will keep it safe.

Further, the MROA Committee has made the decision to no
longer publish personal contact details in the Year Book.

You don’t have to do anything in response to this message
other than take a moment to look at our new privacy policy.

Thank you for your continued MROA membership. 

Like many clubs we’ve also had the recent experience of updating our policy, so I would offer the following feedback:

 1-      I don’t think it’s realistic or achievable to get permission before the MROA publish photos of boats, and that the publishing of photos is in the legitimate interest of the association; being to promote the class and that this would have minimal privacy impact. Deciding to require consent going forwards seems overkill, and doesn't appear to be requested on the current website joining form, personally I have never filled in a renewal form, so this could be a copy-paste error from the RYA template?

2-      One purpose of an owners association is to provide contact between owners of the boats, if there is not going to be a membership directory published in the yearbook (as per Tim Fells’ note), how is it intended that this will be facilitated in the future? The policy refers to a membership directory so is this a misunderstanding.

3-      The MROA currently publish personal data of committee members and club class captains on the website as names/photos, email address and phone numbers, so for completeness, the policy should probably state this use and quantify it as “legitimate interests”

Hope this helps. I am looking forward to seeing lots and lot of photos of merlins, keeping in touch with other summer wine owners (!) and seeing mugshots of my favourite class committee.

 I'm surprised that this has not created more interest. When I read the original posting I was taken aback by the comment re personal details in the Yearbook.  I cannot do better than endorse Tim's response.
The Yearbook must be published in the 'standard style with the usual information' and the policy must be written to accommodate this. We all know what we are signing up for. I do not see that broadcasting to members/potential members that their contact details will be made available to other members will in any way affect the level of membership. On the contrary, why should anyone join if they are going to live in a vacuum.
Do not let the tail wag the dog. (Am I still allowed to say that without offending dogs?)

As usual, Peter is spot-on.  Like him, I'm astonished that  there isn't a stronger reaction.
 
Next step will be an association whose members are anonymous; 'The Man Who Was Thursday' was first published 110 yrs ago.
 
R