Privacy Policy

WHO WE ARE

The publisher of the Site is Techtonic Labs Ltd, company number 11696709 registered at 152-160 City Road, London, United Kingdom, EC1V 2NX

ABOUT THIS PRIVACY POLICY

In summary, depending on your relationship with us, we’ll use your personal information:

• As needed to provide our products and services, for example to administer newsletter subscriptions, take orders and ad placements and handle customer service queries
• To provide a single customer view across our Sites and ensure we understand who our customers are and their preferences and how our products and services are generally perceived.
• To provide the interactive features of our Sites, such as commenting, discussion forums and competitions
• To send you direct marketing communications about products and services that we feel may be of interest;
• To display digital advertising on our Sites that is tailored to your preferences so the online adverts you see are more relevant to you.
• To manage our business and to comply with the law.

This Privacy Policy, which covers all of your personal information whether collected online or offline, including by telephone or where you write to us, together with our Cookie Policy and any Site-specific notice, provides more detail on those activities and explains your rights and how to exercise them.

For all of our Sites, and brands, either Techtonic Labs Ltd or one of its subsidiary companies is the data controller of the personal information that we gather about you. You can contact us with questions or concerns about your privacy by emailing us at [email protected].

1. TYPES OF INFORMATION WE PROCESS AND WHERE IT COMES FROM

Information that we collect and process about you includes:

• Personal and contact details you have provided to us, such as your name, email address or postal address, for example when you register on a Site or to receive a newsletter, enter a sales promotion or competition, or at an event, or where you have agreed to receive marketing materials from us or third parties;
• Information you have provided when you obtain products or services from us or enquire about those products or services;
• Information included in any communications between us or which you provide in any post on any Site or any information collected when you participate in any poll or quiz or obtained via social media or which is publicly available;
• Information about your use of third party products or services or from third parties who we may use to operate certain aspects of our business;
• Information obtained if we carry out a credit search at a credit search referencing agency;
• Information we buy or obtain from third parties, including marketing lists; and
• We also collect information from cookies on your devices and this includes information about your IP address, MAC address and other identifying information, information about your devices, including your location, from third party advertising networks and how you use our products and services.

For more information about cookies, please see our Cookie Policy below.

2. USE OF YOUR INFORMATION

We want to offer you the best customer experience and products and services which are relevant to you. We may therefore use and permit others to use your personal information as set out below.

We will use your information to assess your request to receive the products and services we offer, including where necessary conducting identity and credit reference checks and other due-diligence checks.

We will use your information to provide and administer the products and services you have elected to receive, including notifying you of changes and updates to our products and services.

We will use your information to provide a single customer view across our Sites and ensure we understand who our customers are and their preferences and how our products and services are generally perceived.

We may customise and tailor your experience on our Sites and the products and services we offer to ensure they are more relevant to your interests and preferences.

We may use the personal information gathered from our Sites to analyse and determine the level of engagement with our Sites and whether the communications that we send to customers are relevant, e.g. we may analyse your browsing behaviours and whether or not you open the communications that we send you.

We may send you direct marketing communications (via email, post or telephone) about products and services we feel may be of interest to you. You can choose not to receive direct marketing communications from us at any stage.

Digital advertising helps us to fund the news articles and content published on our Sites and enables us to provide some of our content for free. We and our third-party ad partners may display digital advertising on our Sites that is tailored to your interests and preferences so the online adverts you see are more relevant to you. We work with a number of third-party ad partners to deliver digital advertising on our Sites and we use cookies and other personal information to personalise the advertising that you see, such as your email address, postcode and other observed browsing behaviour. We do not share identifiable information about you with our third-party ad partners. Where we share, match and use data for this purpose it is always pseudonymised beforehand, which means it is converted into a hashed series of numbers and letters to protect your identity. Where we use cookies on our Sites for advertising purposes we will always ask for prior consent and where you provide your consent the cookie information will be used along with other information we hold about you to display digital advertising that is more relevant to you. It is important to note, however, that where you do not provide your consent for digital advertising you will still see digital advertising on our Sites but this will not be tailored to your interests and preferences.

We may conduct market research to evaluate and improve our products and services generally or develop new offerings;

We will conduct analytics and modelling to identify trends and assess our performance and internal processes. We may disclose the insight we gain through such analysis to other businesses e.g. to demonstrate patterns of use to third-party ad partners and others. However, we do not share identifiable information about you with third parties and the insight we share in this context is always aggregated or anonymised.

We will use your personal information to manage and administer competitions and events offered by our third party partners.

Where permitted by applicable laws, where you interact with us we may monitor, record and retain all associated correspondence and communications, such as written letters, telephone call recordings, emails, text messages, social media messages, in person meetings and any other communications. We will do this to, (i) comply with our legal and regulatory obligations (ii), prevent or detect crime (iii), maintain appropriate evidential records (iv), protect the security of our communications systems and (v) for training and quality purposes.

Where you enquire or raise complaints about our products and services we will use your personal information to investigate and respond to your enquiry or complaint.

We will use your personal information to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and monitor compliance with the same across our business. Where necessary, we will also use your personal information to defend ourselves from any legal claims brought by you in connection with the provision of our products and services.

We will also use personal information to manage and administer our business generally.

If you log-in to our Sites using social media, (e.g. Facebook, Google+, Twitter or similar social media platforms), you are granting permission to the social media platform to share your user details with us. This will include your name and email address which will then be used to form a user identity.

If you send us a picture, or video, for publication you confirm that you have the consent of all of the people in the picture or video. If the picture, or video, features a child, or children, you confirm that you are the parent or guardian of the child, or children, and have the legal right to grant consent (or the parent or guardian of the child, or children, has granted such consent).

3. WHO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH

We share information as needed with our third party service providers and partners, as part of providing and administering our products and services or operating our business or as set out below.

We will disclose your information and co-operate with appropriate bodies and authorities in good faith where we are required to by law, a court order, a regulatory authority, or otherwise, including with the police, trading standards, regulatory authorities or other relevant authorities. We may share information about you with credit reference agencies.

We may also share information to facilitate the sale of one or more parts of our business, including if we are approached by a potential buyer or the restructuring of one or more parts of our business and with auditing organisations such as the Audit Bureau of Circulation

4. COOKIES

We collect information about you automatically when you visit our Sites by using cookies (small text files) and other tracking technology. For more information about cookies, and other tracking technology including how to turn them off, please see our Cookie Policy below.

5. TRANSFERS OUTSIDE OF EUROPE

We’re based in the UK and the Republic of Ireland but sometimes your personal information may be transferred outside the European Economic Area. If we do so we’ll make sure that suitable safeguards are in place, for example by using approved contractual agreements, unless certain exceptions apply. We can provide more information about this on request.

6. WHAT ARE THE LEGAL GROUNDS FOR OUR PROCESSING OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION (INCLUDING WHEN WE SHARE IT WITH OTHERS)?

We rely on the following legal bases to use your personal information:

A. Where it is needed to provide you with our products or services, such as:

• Managing products and services you hold with us, or an enquiry about one
• Updating your records, tracing your whereabouts to contact you about your account and doing this for recovering debt (where appropriate)
• Sharing your personal information with third parties and services providers when you apply for a product or service to help manage your product or service
• All stages and activities relevant to managing any product or service including enquiry, application, administration and management of accounts

B. Where it is in our legitimate interests to do so, such as:

• Managing your products and services, updating your records
• To perform and/or test the performance of, our products, services and internal processes
• For some direct marketing communications, subject to appropriate controls and safeguards
• To follow guidance and recommended best practice of government and regulatory bodies
• For management and audit of our business operations including accounting
• To carry out monitoring and to keep records of our communications with you and us
• To administer our good governance requirements and those of other members of our Group, such as internal reporting and compliance obligations or administration required for AGM processes
• For market research and analysis and developing statistics
• To provide insight and analysis of our customers to business partners either as part of providing products or services, helping us improve products or services, or to assess or to improve the operating of our businesses
• Where we need to share your personal information with people or organisations in order to run our business or comply with any legal and/or regulatory obligations
• To comply with our legal obligations or where we reasonably believe we are under a legal or regulatory obligation

C. With your consent or explicit consent

• For some direct marketing communications and digital advertising activities
• For some of our processing of special data categories of personal information such as about your health

7. HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR DATA FOR?

In general, we keep your personal information for as long as we need it for the purpose for which it was collected, plus a short additional period in case of problems. How long we keep it therefore varies according to the type of information it is and why we have it, and will range from a few days or weeks to, in some cases, several years. We have established a full data retention policy, and can provide further information on request.

8. WHAT ARE YOUR RIGHTS UNDER DATA PROTECTION LAW?

The law gives you certain rights in respect of the information that we hold about you. Below is a short overview of those rights. The website of the Information Commissioner’s Office (http://www.ico.org.uk) has a wealth of useful information in respect of your rights over your personal information. If you wish to exercise your rights, you can write to us by email [email protected] or by post to Techtonic Labs Ltd, 152-160 City Road, London, United Kingdom, EC1V 2NX

Your right to withdraw your consent

If we are processing your personal information on the basis of your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.

Your right to access the information we hold about you

With some exceptions designed to protect the rights of others, you have the right to a copy of the personal information that we hold about you, as well as information about what we do with it, who we share it with and how long we will hold it for. We may make a reasonable charge for additional copies of that data beyond the first copy, based on our administrative costs.

Your right to have inaccurate information about you rectified

You have the right to have the information we hold about you corrected if it is factually inaccurate.

Your right to object to what we do with your data, and to have restrictions placed upon it

Where we process your personal information on the basis of our legitimate interest, you have the right to object to that processing and to have restrictions placed upon it while we consider your objection.

Your right to have your information erased in some circumstances

You have the right to require us to delete the information that we hold about you if it is no longer necessary for the purpose we collected it for, and there is no other legal basis on which we must, or are allowed to, retain it.

Your right to stop receiving direct marketing from us

You have the right to require us to stop sending you direct marketing material (for example, promotional emails). It can sometimes take a few days to action these requests.

Your right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)

You have the right to lodge a complaint about our handling of your personal information with the supervisory authority, which in the UK is the Information Commissioner’s Office. But before you do so, please do contact us first to give us a chance to put matters right, at [email protected]. You can contact the ICO on 0303 123 1113.

9. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

It’s likely that we’ll need to update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will be posted here and such changes will become effective as soon as they are posted. Your continued use of the relevant Site constitutes notice to you of all these changes.

10. CONTACT US

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or if you wish to exercise your rights you can contact us by email at [email protected]. Alternatively, you can write to Techtonic Labs Ltd, 152-160 City Road, London, United Kingdom, EC1V 2NX

Cookie Policy

We are the publisher Techtonic Labs Ltd.

In this Policy we will refer to the mobile applications published by Techtonic Labs Ltd and our subsidiary companies as Apps and use the term Sites to refer to our websites.

We use automatic data collection technology when you visit one of our Sites or use one of our Apps (after asking for your consent). This policy explains how we use so called ‘cookies’ and other related technologies and how you can manage the behaviour of these cookies.

There is a detailed description of how we use the data we collect in our Privacy Policy above.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small data files sent from a website to your web browser. They are stored in your web browser’s cache and allow a website or a third party to recognise your browser or mobile device. Mobile devices and browsers can be shared by a number of people, so cookies are not always wholly related to individuals.

We use three major types of cookies:

Analytics Cookies

Analytics Cookies hold information as you view different pages of the website and help us to build up a profile of how our readers use the website. They help us to make the website work as efficiently as possible and provide better content and services in the future. We may also use analytics cookies to measure the effectiveness of advertising on the Sites and the Apps and elsewhere on the internet.

Example: By seeing that more browsers and devices from London prefer football content on a Friday evening than Sunday morning, we may change when and how much content we produce for London football teams on a weekday as opposed to a weekend.

Personalisation Cookies

Personalisation and Service Cookies remember your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. They remember your registration and login details and your settings and preferences. They are used to ensure you don’t have to login every time you use your browser to comment on articles and to ensure interactive services work effectively. They are also used to recommend content we think you’ll be interested in, based on what you’ve looked at before.

Example: We run a poll on a particularly contentious local issue so we will use cookies to prevent a device or browser voting hundreds of times to influence the poll results.

Advertising Cookies

Advertising Cookies are placed by us and our advertising partners to deliver more relevant advertising. Our Sites, Apps and services are predominately free to consume, and in exchange we sell our advertising space to allow us to create high quality content and bring you the services you value. Cookies are a vital part of that value exchange.

These cookies may gather information about your browsing activity on our sites and for third parties, across different Sites and across different visits. They allow us and advertisers to show more relevant ads and allow advertisers to manage how many times a device sees an advert. They might also allow the advertiser to tailor advertising to you when you visit our Sites. Advertising Cookies are usually stored until you delete them or they expire based on the time period set in each cookie, which is normally around 30 days.

The third party advertisers are required to follow the applicable laws. However, Techtonic Labs Ltd does not have control over the third party organisations that place cookies, who each have their own cookie and privacy policies.

Example: If a browser or device is recognised to enjoy lots of content about celebrities, we and/or our partners may show that browser or device adverts that relate to relevant lifestyle, tech and consumer goods.

Where you consent to the use of cookies we will use the cookie information in conjunction with some limited personal information that we hold about you, such as your email address and postcode, to display more relevant advertising to you. For further information about how we use your personal information please see the Privacy Policy.

If you opt out of Advertising cookies, you are not opting out of seeing advertising! You will still see plenty of adverts. They just may not be as relevant to you and your interests. See ‘Managing your cookie preferences’ below for more information about ‘opting out’.

Other technologies

In addition to cookies, there are similar technologies that may be used by the Sites and the Apps. These include:

Web beacons: These are tiny graphics with a unique identifier that are used to understand browsing activity. Web beacons are invisible when you open a web page.

Social widgets: These are buttons or icons provided by third-party social media providers that allow you to interact with those social media services when you view a web page or a mobile app screen. These social widgets may collect browsing data, which may be received by the third party that provided the widget, and are controlled by the third parties.

UTM codes: These are strings that can appear in a web address when a user moves from one web page or website to another. The string can represent information about browsing, such as which advertisement or publisher sent the user to the receiving website.

Managing your cookie preferences

Most web browsers will allow you to turn off cookies. You should look at your web browsers Settings or Help menu to find out how this is done. However, please be aware that switching off cookies may affect the way the Site operates and adversely affect the quality of your experience on the website.

Alternatively, you can decline to receive interest based advertising at http://youronlinechoices.eu.

You can also click on the AdChoices logo that you will see in the corner of advertisements that carry behavioural targeting cookies (see Advertising Cookies above) and click on the link to control the settings Google uses to show you adverts https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated.

When using a mobile device, you can opt-out of receiving interest based advertising by selecting ‘Privacy’ and then ‘Advertising’ in the Settings of your Apple iPhone or iPad, or the “Opt out of Ads Personalisation” in the Google Settings on your Android device. You may also be able to reset the unique identifier that Google uses for online behaviour based advertising (referred to as an “Advertising ID”) in the Settings on your Apple or Android device.

Ad Blocker Detection

We or our advertisers may use code in the website to detect if you are using an ad blocker. If we detect that you are using an ad blocker, we may display a warning message describing how this may affect your experience using the Sites and ask that you disable it.

Social Media Technologies

When you use social media platforms with the Sites and the Apps, each platform has its own technologies and policies to be aware of. For information on limiting the use of widgets and sharing functions with social networks, see below:

For Twitter widgets, you can find more information here.

For Facebook widgets, you can find more information here.

For Pinterest widgets, you can find more information here.

Contact us

If you have questions or comments about the use of Cookie technologies at the site, please email us at [email protected].