Privacy notice

Amanah Eritrean Marriage is run by Eritrean Muslim Community Association UK (EMCA), a charity supporting the Eritrean Muslim community in the UK since 1989. Amanah Eritrean Marriage and EMCA are the data controllers for the details you provide.

About you: your full name, the display name you choose, your date of birth, gender, height, citizenship or nationality and any other residency status you tell us, where you were mainly raised, the languages you speak, the city and country you live in, whether you would consider relocating, your profession and your living situation.

Family and faith: your marital status, whether you have children and your intentions about having them, whether you are of Eritrean heritage, how often you pray, how you would describe your level of religious practice, whether you wear the hijab if you are a sister, and how connected you feel to Eritrean culture.

In your own words: a description of yourself and of what you are looking for in a spouse, together with the age range, marital status, attitude to children, level of religious practice and cultural connection you would consider. We ask you not to include health, financial or immigration details in the free-text sections.

Contact: your email address and phone number. From sisters we also ask the name, phone number and relationship of their wali, the guardian who would be involved in the marriage.

Your photograph. We ask for one photograph of you when you register. We remove the location and camera information that phones store inside image files before we save it, so the copy we hold is the picture and nothing else.

When you send a photograph, our software checks the image itself before anyone sees it, to catch files that are not photographs at all. It measures things like how much the colours vary and whether the camera left any information behind. It does not look for faces and it does not try to work out who is in the picture. A member of staff looks at every photograph and decides whether we can use it; if we cannot, we email you and ask for another, and your profile is not reviewed until we have one we have accepted.

Because this is a Muslim marriage service, registering indicates your religious belief; we ask directly about your religious practice, and about Eritrean heritage because the service is for the Eritrean Muslim community and it is what makes you eligible. UK data protection law treats all of this as special category data, which is why we ask for your explicit consent before you submit the form, and why the consent wording names these categories.

For the purposes of the marriage service: reviewing and approving your profile, contacting you about it, showing you profiles that match what you are looking for, and making suitable introductions. We do not use your details for anything else, and we do not use them for marketing.

Our lawful basis is your consent. You can withdraw it at any time, and doing so will not disadvantage you.

Our team. A limited number of staff involved in running the service can see your full profile, including your contact details, and only for managing the service and making introductions. They are under strict instructions to keep what they see confidential, and their access to individual profiles is logged.

Your photograph is narrower still. Only staff of the same sex as you see it. Nobody else can open it.

Other members, once your profile is approved. Your profile is shown to other approved members whose preferences you match, so they can consider you as a potential spouse, and theirs is shown to you on the same basis. They see your photograph, your answers, and the display name you chose when you registered, which does not have to be your real name. Your photograph will make you recognisable to them.

These are never shown to other members:

• your full name
• your date of birth (other members see your age only)
• your email address and phone number
• your wali's name, number and relationship to you

Introductions are arranged by our team, so no member needs your contact details to reach you.

Nothing is shown to anyone else before your profile is approved, and we do not sell or share your details with third parties.

Your information is stored in a database hosted in the United Kingdom, and the website is operated for us by hosting and email providers who process data on our instructions only.

We keep your details for as long as you would like to remain on the list. We do not delete them on a fixed schedule. They are kept until you ask us to remove them, which you can do at any time and without giving a reason.

You can ask us for a copy of your details, ask us to correct them, ask us to delete them, or withdraw your consent, at any time, by emailing amanahem@emca.org.uk.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.