Welcome to the My Activity Journal App

Do you want to participate in COVID-19 research while having fun journaling?

This app enables you to record your daily activities undertaken during COVID-19 social distancing measures and lockdowns. It aims to encourage users to dedicate time to self-reflection and get inspired by new hobbies and interests. The app has been developed by UCL IRDR Centre for dPHE as a research project investigating how people’s lifestyles have changed during the crisis to inform public health policy and encourage positive wellbeing. The app is complemented by the #MyActivityJournal competition on Twitter and Instagram - why not join in?

The app is being updated and improved by our team at UCL to facilitate collecting data for its research and improve the user experience. We’re adding new features, improving artwork, introducing ratings and gamification of the features - stay tuned, enjoy the app and help COVID-19 research at UCL.

If you have any questions or suggestions, we would be delighted to hear from you on irdr.dphe@ucl.ac.uk

Privacy Policy

University College London IRDR Centre for Digital Public Health in Emergencies (hereafter referred to as “UCL IRDR”) has built the My Activity Journal App as a free App. This App is provided by UCL IRDR at no cost and is intended for use as a journaling app during the COVID-19 lockdowns and beyond whilst allowing UCL IRDR to collect data and conduct research. UCL IRDR anticipate the app will provide vital information for their ongoing COVID-19 research projects investigating how people’s lifestyles have changed during the crisis. Medical content in the app, pertaining to FAQs on COVID-19, health and hygiene, has been provided by a project partner and public health education company: Transmissible, Netherlands, adapting WHO FAQs. Project partners, such as Transmissible, may be granted access to anonymised data for research purposes. The study has received ethical approval by UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction and UCL Ethics Committee, number 4147/002.

University College London (“UCL”), a company incorporated by Royal Charter (number RC 000631), is the entity that determines how and why your personal data is processed. This means that UCL is the ‘controller’ of your personal data for the purposes of data protection law.

This page is used to inform you how UCL will use the personal data it collects when you use the App.

If you choose to use the App, UCL will collect and use personal data in accordance with this Policy. The personal data that UCL collects is used for updating and improving the App and for our research study on human lifestyle changes in relation to COVID-19. We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy.

The personal data we collect and use

While using the App, we will require you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information, including but not limited to your:

The information we request will be used to create a user profile and will be retained by us and used as described in this Privacy Policy.

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances: To register you as a user and to manage our relationship with you; to conduct research into the way citizens have changed their lifestyle during and after the lockdown in order to inform public health policymakers and future strategies on support for citizens in similar crises and pandemics; and to help you with any technical difficulties occurring during use of the App.

We aim to conduct research in accordance with the highest standards of research integrity. Our research is underpinned by policies and procedures designed to help ensure we comply with regulations and legislation that govern the conduct of research, including data protection law.

We respect the confidentiality of personal information relating to research participants, including where this information is provided to us directly and where it is obtained from other organisations. We will be clear with you when your information is collected about how we intend to use that information. We will not do anything with your personal information that you wouldn’t reasonably expect. We will use your information only for the purpose of the research you are participating in and we will not usually use your information or contact you for any purpose other than research unless you have agreed to this. We commit to keeping your personal information secure.

We will de-identify (anonymise), pseudonymise (remove identifiers such as your name and replace this with a unique code or key) and delete personal information collected as part of this research 5 years after the end of the project. All personal information is kept in line with UCL policies or any regulatory requirements.

For this App, personal data processing is required in order to create user profiles for the My Lockdown Journal app and for research into the lifestyle under lockdown. This is necessary because without personal data being stored, users would not be able to sign-in to the app or retain continuity of activity logging.

Should you volunteer to participate in our online survey: “To Zoom or not to Zoom: How has your lifestyle changed during lockdown”, then your email address may be used to link your data sets, but your data will remain pseudonymised according to the privacy policies of both research projects. Your information is likely to be shared within the project team, primarily in a way that we can identify you as a participant. Any personal information used in research will have identifiers removed (making it anonymous) before sharing more widely or publishing the research outcomes.

Your information is likely to be shared within the project team, primarily in a way that we can identify you as a participant. Any personal information used in research will have identifiers removed (making it anonymous) before sharing more widely or publishing the research outcomes.

Pseudonymised data may be used for the purposes of:

Only de-identified anonymous data will be used in published reports or journals and at conferences. Results of the study and analyses will be included in published international journal articles and conferences, seminars, workshops, websites, social media, newspaper articles, and future proposal bids. We will share the published results with users who provide us with a valid email address.

Lawful basis for processing

Data protection laws require us to meet certain conditions before we are allowed to use your data in the manner described in this notice, including having a ‘legal basis’ for the processing. Where we process special category personal data or criminal convictions information, we are required to establish an additional legal basis for processing that data.

The main legal bases on which your personal data are generally processed for research purposes are explained below. For all information – as cited by Article 6(1)(e) of GDPR:

For special category data and information relating to criminal convictions/offences – as cited by Article 9(2)(j), based on Schedule 1, Para 4 of the Data Protection Act 2018:

Data retention

We ask our researchers to de-identify information wherever possible (anonymisation or pseudonymisation). Information where you can be identified will, as such, be kept for a minimum amount of time and in accordance with the research objectives. We may, however, keep consent forms which contain personal information for a number of years after the research has been completed, as this is sometimes a requirement of the research’s funder.

For some research projects we cannot de-identify the information as it is necessary for achieving the outcome of the research. For such projects, we store your personal information as part of the research for the duration of the project and for a defined period after the project has ended. This is usually defined by external regulations but may be defined by our own policies and procedures. In this project your data will be kept for up to 5 years after the end of the research project and in accordance with data protection regulations.

Further details about how long personal information obtained for research is kept can be found in our Data Retention Schedule.

Your rights

Under data protection legislation you have certain individual rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you. For the purposes of research where such individual rights would seriously impair research outcomes, such rights are limited. However, subject to certain conditions, you have the following rights in relation to your personal data:

Right 1: A right to access personal data held by us about you. Your right of access can be exercised at any time by contacting us at data-protection@ucl.ac.uk or Data Protection Officer, UCL Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT.

Right 2: A right to require us to rectify any inaccurate personal data held by us about you.

Right 3: A right to require us to erase personal data held by us about you. This right will only apply where, for example, we no longer need to use the personal data to achieve the purpose we collected it for; or where you withdraw your consent if we are using your personal data based on your consent; or where you object to the way we process your data (in line with Right 6 below).

Right 4: A right to restrict our processing of personal data held by us about you. This right will only apply where, for example, you dispute the accuracy of the personal data held by us; or where you would have the right to require us to erase the personal data but would prefer that our processing is restricted instead; or where we no longer need to use the personal data to achieve the purpose we collected it for, but we require the data for the purposes of dealing with legal claims.

Right 5: A right to receive personal data, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. You also have the right to require us to transfer this personal data to another organisation.

Right 6: A right to object to our processing of personal data held by us about you.

Right 7: A right to withdraw your consent, where we are relying on it to use your personal data.

Right 8: A right to ask us not to use information about you in a way that allows computers to make decisions about you and ask us to stop.

It is important to understand that the extent to which these rights apply to research will vary and that in some circumstances your rights may be restricted.

If you notify us (using the contact details set out below) that you wish to exercise any of the above rights and it is considered necessary to refuse to comply with any of your individual rights, you will be informed of the decision within one month and you also have the right to complain about our decision to the Information Commissioner’s Office (see the ‘who do I contact with questions’ section below for further detail on this).

Please also note that we can only comply with a request to exercise your rights during the period for which we hold personal information about you. If that information has been irreversibly anonymised and has become part of the research data set, it will no longer be possible for us to access your personal information.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact the Data Protection Officer.data-protection@ucl.ac.uk

Log Data

We want to inform you that whenever you use the App, we collect data and information required for the COVID-19 research study on your phone called Log Data. This Log Data would consist of timestamps of App use (records of which sections of the App are utilized and when) and interactions with App tabs and buttons. This will be used for research purposes to evaluate the user interaction and efficiency of gamification features.

Cookies

Cookies are files with a small amount of data that are commonly used as anonymous unique identifiers. These are sent to your browser from the websites that you visit and are stored on your device’s internal memory. More information can be found in the UCL Cookie Policy here. The App does not currently use these “cookies”.

Integrity and Confidentiality

Data will be processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures.

This App contains links to other sites. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that site. Note that these external sites are not operated by us. Therefore, we strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of these websites. We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party sites or services.

Children’s Privacy

This App does not address anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13. In the case we discover that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, we immediately delete this from our servers. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so that we will be able to do necessary actions.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page. This policy is effective as of 2020-05-10.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or suggestions about our Privacy Policy, or wish to exercise your rights, please contact Data Protection Officer: data-protection@ucl.ac.uk If you have comments and suggestions about the app itself do not hesitate to contact us at University College London IRDR dPHE via email at: irdr.dphe@ucl.ac.uk

Complaints

If you have any questions about your personal data and UCL that are not answered by this privacy notice then please consult UCL’s data protection web pages, where further guidance and relevant UCL policy documentation can be found.

If you need further assistance or wish to complain about our use of your personal data or exercise any of your rights, please contact UCL’s Data Protection Officer: data-protection@ucl.ac.uk or Data Protection Officer, UCL Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT.

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 UK Information Commissioner’s Office. Full details may be accessed on the complaints section of the Information Commissioner’s Office website.