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Privacy

PRIVACY POLICY

Royal Crescent Publishing Ltd (“We”) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This policy (together with our terms of use) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. By visiting alternativecreditinvestor.com you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy.

This website and our services are not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

For the purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 and the Data Protection Act 2018, the data controller is Royal Crescent Publishing Ltd of Regency House, 33 Wood Street, Barnet, Hertfordshire, England, EN5 4BE.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT FROM YOU

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (e.g. anonymous data) or data relating to a company which does not also identify a living individual.

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

  • Identity Data includes your name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
  • Contact Data includes your postal address, email address and telephone numbers.
  • Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
  • Profile Data includes your username and password (if applicable), your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
  • Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products and services.
  • Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing and other communications from us and our third parties.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

We do not collect any “Special Categories of Personal Data” about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

COOKIES

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.

We use the following cookies. You can find more information about the individual cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them below:

Google Analytics: estimating our audience size and usage pattern https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en

You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

USES MADE OF THE INFORMATION

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:

  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.

This means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you a good service/product and a secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us

  • Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. Usually you will have consented to this when you signed up to join our mailing list and to receive third party mail outs. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us by email [email protected]  or by following the “unsubscribe” link on our emails.

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Purpose/Activity Type of data Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest
To register you as a new contact for e-newsletters and third party mail-outs (a) Identity

(b) Contact information

Your consent
To manage our relationship with you which will include:

(a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy

(b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey

(a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Profile

(d) Marketing and Communications

 (a) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation

(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services)

To enable you to partake in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey (a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Profile

(d) Usage

(e) Marketing and Communications

 Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them and grow our business)
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) (a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Technical

(a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise)

(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation

To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you (a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Profile

(d) Usage

(e) Marketing and Communications

(f) Technical

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences (a) Technical

(b) Usage

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you (a) Identity

(b) Contact

(c) Technical

(d) Usage

(e) Profile

Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business)

 

MARKETING

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly around marketing and advertising. We have established the following personal data control mechanisms:

Promotional offers from us

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have registered your details with us and have requested information about our goods from us.

Third-party marketing

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any company outside of our group of companies for marketing purposes.

Opting out

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by emailing us at [email protected] or by following the ”unsubscribe” links on any marketing message sent to you.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages we may still retain and store your personal data but we will no longer send you any marketing materials, our e-newsletters or mail outs.

CHANGE OF PURPOSE

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION

We may share your personal information with:

* Any member of our group of companies, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006.

* Selected third parties including the provider of our email service provider who we use to send out our newsletters and our professional advisers.

* We do not disclose information about identifiable individuals to our advertisers, but we will provide them with aggregate information about our users (for example, we may inform them that 500 men aged under 30 have clicked on their advertisement on any given day). We may also use such aggregate information to help advertisers reach the kind of audience they want to target (for example, women in SW1). We may make use of the personal data we have collected from you to enable us to comply with our advertisers’ wishes by displaying their advertisement to that target audience

We will disclose your personal information to third parties:

* In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.

* If Royal Crescent Publishing Ltd or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.

* If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Royal Crescent Publishing Ltd, our customers, newsletter subscribers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

WHERE WE STORE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

We do not transfer your data outside of the EEA.

DATA RETENTION

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

We retain your identity, contact, and marketing communications data until you unsubscribe. Anonymised technical data is collected by Google Analytics.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Request erasure below for further information.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

YOUR RIGHTS

You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY

Any changes we make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.

CONTACT AND COMPLAINTS

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to [email protected]

If you have any concerns regarding your personal data, we hope that you will contact us first and give us an opportunity to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO. However, you have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk).