Privacy Policy

Applicable to: HK Polling System mobile applications  
Version: 15 June 2024

What personal information is processed and stored

The Hong Kong Freedom Beacon Inc. (HKFB) develops the above-named mobile applications on behalf of the Hong Kong Parliament Electoral Organizing Committee (HKPEOC) for use in the upcoming Hong Kong Parliament Election. HKFB and HKPEOC do not collect personal information. We do not know nor want to know who the users of our apps are.

The app however does need to process the personal information that is on the chip of the identity document, including privacy-sensitive information such as place of birth, and document number. In addition, the app scans via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology date of birth, date of expiry, and document number, since these are needed to get access to the information on the chip. This is a security feature of the chip, to avoid unauthorized access to its contents.

All information that can be used to identify the users is processed locally on the smartphone, i.e., the app does not send such information to a server for processing. This includes name, date of birth, and full document number. The personal information that is processed is not stored on the smartphone.

How is sensitive personal information secured?

Since all the processing of personal information is done on the phone (client only), the confidentiality of this information depends on the security of the phone. The app is designed in such a way that the information processing will not function if the smartphone is connected to the Internet. Users will have to manually disconnect their smartphones from the Internet before any information process can begin. If, for whatever reason, the users reconnect the smartphones to the Internet and / or leave the apps during information processing, the apps will immediately terminate the session and erase all data it has gathered.

Internet connection is only required for fetching polling or voting information from the server and for submission of users polling responses or ballots. When appropriate, the apps will prompt users to reconnect to the Internet to submit their polling responses or ballots. All personal data processed will be erased automatically before the Internet connection is resumed. The data that is submitted to the election or polling server (i.e. your polling responses or ballots) will be encrypted and will not contain sensitive information that could be used to identify specific individuals.

Changes in this privacy statement

This privacy statement may change from time to time. If the changes are significant or reduce the rights of users, then we will provide a prominent notice.

For any enquiries regarding this privacy policy, please contact:

Hong Kong Freedom Beacon Inc.
info@hongkongfreedombeacon.org

OR

HK Parliament Electoral Organizing Committee
info@hkparliament.com

– End of Privacy Policy for HK Polling System App and HK Parliament Voting App –


HKP Website Privacy Policy

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Who we share your data with

If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where your data is sent

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

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