Privacy Policy
WhatsUpUK.co.uk is owned and operated by Offers365 Limited
Offices: Colony, 5 Piccadilly Place M1 3BR Manchester UK
Registered Company Number: 11947444
VAT Number: 322 2376 34
ICO Number: ZA683207
Phone Number: +44 7837 036636
Website: https://www.offers365.co.uk/
Email Address: Info@offers365.co.uk
Privacy & Cookies Policy (the “Policy”)
Last updated: 2nd April 2024
Previous version: 2nd April 2024
You can control online behavioural advertising cookies on this website via your Cookie Settings. Further details on this can be found under Cookies and other identifiers in Section 17 below.
1. What is this Policy for?
This Policy explains how we protect and handle any personal information you provide to us, including via our websites, our apps, our social media pages/accounts, email, telephone and in person. It also covers any personal information we receive from third parties and provides you with an overview of your rights.
By using our products and services, including browsing our websites, registering, logging in or signing up for newsletters or marketing, you agree that we may use your personal information as outlined in this Policy. There may be occasions when we share responsibility for the processing and protection of your personal data in connection with your use of our products and services as joint controllers with our partners (please see Section 2 Who we are for additional information). In such instances our partners will process your personal data in accordance with their privacy notices.
2. Who are we?
WhatsUpUK.co.uk is owned and operated by Offers365 Limited. Offers365 is a UK based performance marketing network that specialises in affiliate marketing on a Cost per Sale (CPS) and Cost per Lead (CPL) models.
Below you'll find our company details:
Offices: Colony, 5 Piccadilly Place M1 3BR Manchester UK
Registered Company Number: 11947444
VAT Number: 322 2376 34
ICO Number: ZA683207
Phone Number: +44 7837 036636
Website: https://www.offers365.co.uk/
Email Address: Info@offers365.co.uk
3. What kinds of information do we collect?
We use the term “personal information” – also called “personal data” in the laws of some states and countries – to refer to information that reasonably identifies, relates to, describes, or can be associated with you. Data that has been deidentified or that otherwise cannot reasonably be related back to a specific person is not considered personal information. Once we treat data as deidentified, we commit not to attempt to reidentify such information. The precise definition of personal information may vary depending on your state or country of residence, but we take the same approach to protecting your privacy.
We collect the following types of personal information about you from various sources by different methods:
Information you have provided to us:
We collect information such as your name, telephone number, address, email address when you create and log into an online account, subscribe to one of our titles, sign up for our newsletter or marketing communications, respond to one of our competitions/promotions or Offers, order or register your interest in one of our products, use the Extension or post a comment under an article, in addition to, where you or your organisation provide us with products or services, the name of your organisation and bank and account details and information relating to a particular transaction.
Information from your device:
We collect information from and about the device you are using when you interact with one of our websites, apps or other products/services, including adverts. This may include:
Device Type: Information about your operating system, hardware, software, browser type in order to tailor the experience to your device (e.g. screen resolution).
Device Operations: Information about your operations and behaviours performed on your device to tailor the experience based on how you or similar users have interacted with our content.
Unique Identifiers: Device IDs, UIDs and Advertiser IDs in order to save your preferences against an identifier to refer to on subsequent pages and to display advertising.
Device Settings: Information from your device’s setting (such as access to your GPS location or other information related to the location of your device) so that we know which version of the website to serve you.
Network/Connections: Your IP address, so that we can recognise your geographical location.
Cookies: Data from cookies or similar technologies placed on your device which tells us about your use of our websites and/or selected third party websites. Some cookies are also placed by third parties. Please see Section 12 on Cookies and other identifiers below for more information about our use of cookies and other similar technologies.
Posting comments on articles:
When you comment on an article, the information you post and your username are publicly accessible. This information can be viewed and collected by other people. We strongly suggest you avoid sharing any personal details, and especially information that can be used to identify you directly such as your name, age, address and name of employer in your comments. We are not responsible for the privacy of the information you make publicly accessible via the comments section. Please see our Terms and House Rules for more information.
Information about transactions made
If you purchase anything or make any other financial transactions on any of our properties, we collect information about your purchase and ask for information including your name, email address and delivery address, to be forwarded on to the partners who are responsible for delivering your order. This may include payment information such as your credit/debit card number where we are engaging a third party to process payments on our behalf.
Information from partners
Where you have registered or created an account with one of our websites, we may obtain information about you from other companies who have obtained your permission (through their own privacy policies) to share information about you.
We may overlay demographic and lifestyle data from CACI to help us understand what you might be interested in for insight and marketing purposes (also known as profiling). CACI data are built using a variety of sources, including publicly available data (such as the electoral register and UK Census records) or from surveys and polls where you have given permission for your data to be shared. For more information on these partners and how you can opt-out of having your data shared with us from these sources for profiling purposes, please see the section entitled “Marketing Personalisation” in Section 7 below.
Social media
If you log-in to our websites through a social media site, such as Facebook, Twitter or Google, you are granting permission to such company to share your user information with us. This will include your name and email address plus any other information you have permitted them to share with third parties. If you remove our website from your Facebook, Twitter or Google account, we shall no longer have access to this information.
We use plugins from social media networks and other platforms on our websites, that may allow you to share content with these networks/platforms or use their services on our websites. For more information, please see Section 7 of this Policy.
Browser pop-up notifications
When you consent to receiving pop-up browser notifications from one of our websites, we collect the following information:
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the URL of the page you were on when you were subscribed;
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your country code;
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your device type;
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your browser name and version;
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whether the notification was shown to you; and
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the topics of the notification you have clicked on or interacted with.
Information about other people
By supplying us with information about someone else, you confirm that they have authorised you to provide us with their information (including sensitive personal data) on their behalf.
4. Legal bases for processing your data under UK GDPR and EU GDPR
We rely on the following legal bases to process your personal data under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (“UK GDPR”) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“EU GDPR”).
Contract: We process some of your data as a necessary part of performing our contractual obligations to you. For example, to ensure that products you buy can be delivered to you, to provide you with access to your digital subscription or to provide a prize to which you have won.
Consent: Some processing activities will only be done where we have sought your prior consent. If we require your consent, we shall provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it. Once given, you have the right to withdraw your consent again at any point and we shall be obliged to stop processing your data and delete it unless we can demonstrate that another legal basis applies.
Legal obligation: There may be situations where we need to use your information to comply with legal and regulatory obligations or defend claims. This includes publishing information about competition winners.
Legitimate interests: We process some of your data because it is in our legitimate interests to do so. Where this is the case, we have considered the impact that using your information may have on you and limited our use to only what is strictly necessary. Where we are using this as our basis, we can provide you with an explanation of why the processing is in our interests and you are free to contest this decision if you wish.
Examples of our legitimate interests processing activities include:
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supporting a free press and individual and societal rights to receive information;
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developing, delivering and maintaining relevant and engaging products services and advertising; and
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understanding who our audiences are in order to improve our content and services.
5. How we may use your information
Journalism
We use personal information for journalistic activities to support a free press and to support individual and societal rights to receive information. Legal basis for these processing activities: Legitimate interests.
Message boards, blogs and other public forums
Our websites may provide message boards, blogs and other user generated content facilities. Anything that you share will become public information. You should always be careful when deciding to disclose your personal information. Please see our Terms and House Rules for more information. Legal basis for these processing activities: Consent (if requested) or legitimate interests.
Comment Moderation
We monitor comments for offensive/objectionable content and disruptive behaviour that breach our Terms. Legal basis for these processing activities: Legitimate interests.
Comment Services
Where we provide you with functionality to comment on an article, you will need to create an account with us to use the comment functionality. We process your registration data and any comments that you voluntarily submit in accordance with our legitimate interests in providing users with the ability to comment on articles. The information you post and your username are publicly accessible and can be viewed and collected by other people. We strongly suggest you avoid sharing any personal details, and especially information that can be used to identify you directly such as your name, age, address and name of employer in your comments. We are not responsible for the privacy of the information you make publicly accessible via the comments section.
Our comments functionality is also subject to our Terms & Conditions. We will monitor and moderate comments, including for offensive/objectionable content and disruptive behaviour. Legal basis for these processing activities: Legitimate interests.
Delivering services
By using our websites, apps and other products and services, we may process your information, including your name, phone number and email address, for the purpose of providing you with such products and services and managing our relationship with you, which shall include (without limitation):
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carrying out ecommerce activities;
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managing your accounts, entitlements and subscriptions;
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communicating with you in relation to your account or service, service updates or other non-marketing communications;
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delivering customer services and support;
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contacting you when a checkout journey is not completed if you have provided your information;
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dealing with and responding to you about a comment you have submitted on our message boards or other such user generated content facilities;
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ensuring the integrity of votes, competitions and polls;
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maintaining records of our communications with you if you get in contact with us; and
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responding to press complaints submitted both direct to us and via the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).. Legal basis for these processing activities: Consent (if requested) or legitimate interests or contract
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running competitions effectively and informing you if you have been successful in any competitions or promotions. Legal basis for this processing activity: Contract or legal obligation
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We may also record phone calls or customer enquiries via online chat for quality, training and management purposes. Legal basis for this processing activity: Legitimate interests or contract
Digital events
We may use your personal data (such as your name, email address, etc.) to provide you with digital event functionality and content, including recordings, user generated content and chat functionality. This may also include speeches or presentations, chat content, questions, poll results and audio-visual content incorporating your likeness, image or opinions.
This content may be retained and reused by us for later business purposes (for example for reuse at subsequent events or to allow webinar access at a later stage). Legal basis for processing this data: Consent (if requested) or legitimate interests
Direct marketing, newsletters and browser push notifications
In accordance with your preferences and data protection legislation, we may use your information, including your name, email address, and phone number, to send you direct marketing communications, newsletters and to carry out marketing analysis.
This may include communications by email, post, telephone, SMS or app notifications about our products and services, events and special offers. This also includes browser push notifications where you have consented to receiving these. We may also send you periodic emails to inform you about the any changes to our products and services where we have permission to do so.
In relation to email marketing communications, we may send you such communications when we have your consent, or when you are an existing customer who has previously bought or subscribed to a similar product or service from us. You may opt out of email marketing communications when your personal information is first collected as part of that purchase or subscription.
You may also unsubscribe from receiving email marketing or newsletters at any time by clicking the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of each email. If you unsubscribe from email marketing or newsletters, we shall keep your email address to ensure that we do not send you any marketing in future. Legal basis for processing this data: Consent (if requested) or legitimate interests.
Personalisation / identifying your interests / audience segmentation / audience conversion / ecommerce activities
We use your information, including your UID, to provide you with a greater personalised experience when you visit or use one of our sites or apps, and for insight and marketing purposes.
We make assumptions and draw inferences about your interests based on the kind of articles and content you click on or read.
We use this information to segment our audiences into groups with attributes. This helps us show you more relevant content/adverts and helps our advertisers target more effectively. Legal basis for this processing activity: Consent (if requested) or legitimate interests.
Cookie Matching
Where you have given consent, we check to see if you have a cookie ID when you visit one of our properties. We are then able to compare the cookie ID we have to see if we know who you are. See Section 14 on Cookies for more information. Legal basis for this processing activity: Consent.
Data matching and lookalike audience building
We allow partners to reach audiences on our platforms via data matching where they have appropriate permissions. We use your UID (together with other associated personal data such as email address) to carry out such data matching. This is conducted at an aggregate level or an individual level, depending on how targeted our partners want to reach audiences on our platforms. Your UID is stored with an independent third party data management platform (DMP) who will match UIDs with the data from advertisers with whom we partner. This matching is based on common identifiers (such as email address). This matching is completed using a data clean room where neither we nor the advertiser will have access to each other’s data.
The data overlap between our audiences and these partners is useful to understand if an advertising campaign would be effective.
As part of the matching process, we segment audiences based on predefined attributes. These audiences may be similar to our partners’ existing audiences and are therefore called “lookalike audiences”. For example, a female fashion brand may want to reach “women interested in fashion”. This helps them find the right audiences and we are able to show you more relevant advertising.
You may amend your settings in order to avoid UID matching taking place in the future by contacting us (see Section 20 below) or by adjusting your account settings. Legal basis for this processing activity: Consent (if requested) or legitimate interests.
Tailored advertising
We use advertising to fund some of our websites and apps. Some advertising is ‘contextual’ meaning it is shown due to the particular webpage you are presently viewing. Other advertising, known as “online behavioural advertising” is shown to you based upon your likely interests, which are inferred from your browsing history. This information is collected through the use of cookies and similar technologies or your UID. For more information on controlling your tailored advertising preferences, please see Section 12 on Cookies below.
Sometimes we allow advertisers to show advertisements directly on our website and apps, which are tailored to you based upon information they have obtained, such as your browsing history on their own websites.
Other times we shall arrange for our customers to be shown advertisements on our own or other websites or apps. These advertisements are tailored to you with information we have obtained from your browsing on our websites and apps via cookies.
Where we arrange for our customers to be shown advertisements, we use technological and contractual mechanisms to protect your cookie data and to ensure that your browsing data used for advertising is not used by advertisers or other website owners for other purposes, such as linking online behavioural advertising data with your contact details, unless you have provided the advertiser or other website with your express permission to do this.
When you are shown an advertisement, our advertising systems do not know who you are or your contact details (such as your name, email address or postal address).
Your IP address may also be used, in connection with our legitimate interests to tailor the advertising we arrange to be shown.
We may also target advertising on social media sites to specifically include customers who have registered for our products and services. Legal basis for this processing activity: Consent (if requested) or legitimate interests.
Location based services and advertising
Where we provide services that utilise your device’s location, such as local weather or news, your location will be determined either from a lookup of your IP address in a “GeoIP” database which lists information provided by your ISP (usually your closest town or borough).
Sometimes we can collect the precise location directly from the device (such as through GPS or Wi-Fi on mobile devices) but only where you have granted permission for us to access this location information via your device settings. We use such information to provide you with a more tailored, relevant experiences when using our websites/apps.
Where you have granted permission to access your device’s location and consented to us to use your data for advertising purposes, this location information may be used to tailor the advertising you receive, including showing you certain advertisements when you are in the vicinity of a particular location. Legal basis for this processing activity: Consent.
Measurement and analytics
We may use certain information (such as the websites that you visit and advertisements you see or click on and emails you interact with) to help us, advertisers and other promotional partners measure the effectiveness and distributions of their advertisements and promotions as well as the effectiveness of our own services and communications. Legal basis for this processing activity: Consent (if requested) or legitimate interests.
Ad blocker detection
We collect information from your device to detect whether you’re using an ad blocker. This is to determine if we are able to show you advertising. As an advertising funded publisher, we rely on the ability to show you advertising. Legal basis for this processing activity: Legitimate interests.
Improving our services and products
We may use your information to monitor and improve our products, content and services. This may include (without limitation):
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developing the design and style of our products and services to make improvements;
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carrying out statistical, technical and logistical analysis to inform our strategic development; and
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blocking disruptive use and ensuring the security of our products and services.
If you have registered on our websites or apps, we may analyse the information we hold on you in aggregate with our other customers to improve our advertising systems. Legal basis for this processing activity: Legitimate interests.
Disclosures permitted or required by law
Your data will be disclosed where we are obliged to do so by law. We may also disclose your information in order to protect or enforce our rights or the rights of others and for the prevention and detection of crime. Legal basis for these processing activities: Legitimate interests or legal obligation.
Receipt of services from suppliers
If we have engaged you or the organisation you represent to provide us with products or services (for example, if you or the organisation you represent provide us with services such as IT support or financial advice), we will collect and process your personal data in order to manage our relationship with you or the organisation you represent, to receive products and services from you or the organisation you represent and, where relevant, to provide our products and services to others Legal basis for processing this data: Legitimate interests or contract.
6. If you fail to provide your personal data
Where we are required by law to collect your personal data, or we need to collect your personal data under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that personal data when we request it, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you. This may apply where you do not provide the personal data we need in order to provide the services you have requested from us. In this case, we may have to cancel the provision of the relevant services to you, in which case we will notify you.
7. How we may share your information
Service Providers: We may pass your information to our processors – companies that we use to provide services on our behalf, for example for delivery services and prize fulfilment companies. These processors can only use your information in accordance with our instructions and for no other purpose. Legal basis for processing this data: Contract or consent (if requested) or legitimate interests
Promotions: Sometimes we bring you promotions in association with other companies. If you enter such promotions, the other company will use the information you submit and we provide to them as a data controller in line with their own privacy policies. We shall let you know the precise arrangement at the time you provide your personal information. Legal basis for processing this data: Consent (if requested) or legitimate interests
Cobranded products / affiliate marketing: We regularly partner with industry affiliates to bring you special deals on products and packages you may find of interest. These include travel providers on MailTravel and financial service providers on MailFinance or This is Money. These providers collect marketing permissions for us and share data back with us about your purchases in order for us to measure the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns.
If you decide to book a holiday with an affiliate, use their advisory services or set up an account, or purchase a financial product, these affiliates will be data controllers of the information you have provided them in order to administer your relationship with them and will handle your information in accordance with their own privacy policies. Legal basis for processing this data: Legitimate interests
Functionality: We may share information about you with suppliers that we engage to help us provide our services and/or functionality of our websites and apps. Legal basis for processing this data: Consent (if requested) or contract or legitimate interests
Advertisers: We may provide third party advertisers with reports containing aggregate statistical data about our websites’ and apps’ audience to determine the reach of their target audience. This aggregated information may include demographic data such as age range and/or geographic location of groups of our customers.
This aggregated data does not include contact details (such as names, addresses or email addresses) that can be used to personally identify you or contact you. Legal basis for processing this data: Consent.
Online Behavioural Advertising partners: We allow third parties to collect and use information obtained during your browsing activities in order to deliver tailored advertisements to you. These parties are listed in our Cookie Settings tool where we provide you with their details, links to their privacy notices and the ability to opt out of their use.
We may provide Online Behavioural Advertising partners, including Google Ads, with a unique UID or information that could be used to (re)create one – such as a hashed version of your email address, and they can collect or receive information about your browser and device, such as type of browser, browser language, browser settings, cookie information, device type, operating system, IP address and ISP information. This can help our selected DMP match our UIDs with data belong to our partners by using a clean room where neither we nor the partner has access to each other’s data. This match is noted against our UID and use cases are established demonstrating lookalike groupings of potential interest to our partners.
This data sharing can also help partners continue to make advertising and site/app content relevant to users even if browser cookies are cleared, for example by re-creating deleted cookies (if you have consented to this).
Please note that Google Ads may also use your user ID and/or internet activity information (such as browsing history) to provide, maintain and improve their services and products. This includes research and development activities (e.g. conducting machine learning to better optimise the efficiency of their products and services) and investigating, protecting against and deterring malicious activity (such as fake traffic). You can also control their use on our sites, or opt out of all non-essential site tracking, via our Cookie Settings Tool linked to above. Our Cookie Settings Tool also specifies which partners rely on your consent and which partners rely on legitimate interests to use your data. Legal basis for processing this data: Consent (if requested) or legitimate interests.
Social media plugins: Some of our websites use social media plugins to help you share content more easily with your friends.
- Facebook Share, Like Buttons: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy/
- Instagram Follow Button: https://privacycenter.instagram.com/policy/
- X Share, Follow Buttons: https://twitter.com/en/privacy
- YouTube Follow, Subscribe Buttons: https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/our-commitments/protecting-user-data/
- TikTok Follow, Subscribe Buttons: https://www.tiktok.com/legal/page/eea/privacy-policy/en
If you do not click on the respective buttons, no personal data will be collected and stored by the social media company.
If you are logged onto to your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Flipboard, Instagram or Snapchat account, certain user data (including your IP address at the time) may be collected and linked to your social media account information by the respective social media company.
We receive no personal data from the social media companies about which articles you have clicked or seen on our websites. However, we do receive summarised, aggregated statistical reports on the use of these plugins. Legal basis for processing this data: Legitimate interests.
Change of Control: We may transfer, sell or assign any of the information described in this Policy to third parties as a result of a sale, merger, consolidation, change of control, transfer of assets or reorganisation of our business. Legal basis for processing this data: Legitimate interests.
8. Details of transfers to third countries and safeguards
Any organisation who has access to your information in the course of providing services on our behalf will be governed by contractual restrictions and/or technical limitations to make sure they protect your information and comply with applicable data protection legislation.
When transferring your personal data outside the United Kingdom (UK) or the European Economic Area (EEA), we will comply with our legal and regulatory obligations in relation to your personal data, including having a lawful basis for transferring personal data and putting appropriate safeguards in place to ensure an adequate level of protection for the personal data. Where these organisations are based outside of the UK or the EEA in a jurisdiction that has not been deemed adequate by the EU Commission, we shall, if appropriate, enter into EU Commission approved model clauses with these organisations to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place. We will take reasonable steps to ensure the security of your personal data in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
9. Your rights under the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR
In certain circumstances, for example if you are a UK or EEA resident, you may exercise the rights available to you (with some exceptions and restrictions) under the UK or the EU data protection laws as follows:
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Access: If you wish to exercise your right to access a free copy of your data, you can contact us, or our joint controllers, at the contact details provided below at Section 20.
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Portability:: If you wish to receive personal data that you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, or transmit this data directly to another controller, please contact us, or our joint controllers, at the contact details provided below. Please note that this right applies only to the information that is processed by automated means, on the basis of consent or performance of a contract.
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Deletion: To ask us to delete your personal data, please contact us, or our joint controllers, at the contact details provided below. However, there may be circumstances where we are legally entitled to retain certain data.
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Rectification: If you wish to update or rectify your data, you can do this directly by accessing your account settings.
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Restriction: To request the restriction or suppression of your personal data, please contact us, or our joint controllers, at the contact details provided below.
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Revoke consent for direct marketing: : If you wish to object to the processing of your data for direct marketing, you can opt-out by updating your settings or clicking on the ‘unsubscribe’ link in any marketing email or newsletter you receive from us.
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Opt-out of online behavioural advertising: You are able to control whether we and our partners may use your information for online behavioural advertising related purposes when you visit our websites via our Consent Management Platform that appears when you first visit our sites, or by going to the Cookie Settings.
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Objection to automated profiling: If you wish to opt-out of having your personal information profiled for personalisation purposes, you can adjust your account settings or contact us directly at the contact details provided below.
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Objection to legitimate interests: If you wish to object to our processing of your data where we are pursuing our legitimate interests or those of a third party, please contact us, or our joint controllers, at the contact details provided below stating the nature of and reasons for such objection.
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Complain: You also have the right to lodge a complaint about us with your local supervisory authority, for example the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK.
Exercising Your Rights
To exercise your rights under the GDPR, please contact us, or our joint controllers, at the contact details provided below in Section 20, indicating the type of right you would like to exercise and that you are making the request under the GDPR. In case of requests for deletion, please note there may be circumstances where we are legally entitled to retain certain data (see Section 15 Data retention and account deletion).
We may seek to verify the identity of the person submitting the request.
Where you are making a request via a third party, we need to be satisfied that the third party making the request is entitled to act on your behalf and may ask the third party to provide evidence of this entitlement. If we are satisfied that the third party has the appropriate authority, we will respond directly to that third party.
10. Data retention and account deletion
We store your data for no longer than necessary in relation to the purpose under which such data was collected. This is determined on a case by case basis and depends on things such as the nature of the data provided, why it was collected, the legal basis we rely upon to process the data, and our relevant legal or operation retention requirements. For example, if you request to delete your account, we still have to retain some data for fraud prevention purposes and financial auditing.
Please note that we evaluate deletion requests against our processing for the purposes of journalism, which includes original content and accompanying comments. When we receive a request to delete your personal data from our organisation, we are prepared to anonymise your comments by removing your email address and alias from your public account profile. In doing so, your comments are disassociated with your public account profile and therefore you are no longer publicly identified as the author of your comments. However, we keep your data because we may receive claims for libel and or/defamation in relation to user comments.
11. Children and young people
Our websites, apps and other products and services are not aimed at children. We do not intentionally target, or otherwise process information from individuals who are under the age of 16.
We do not create interest segments specifically designed for the purpose of online behavioural advertising to children who are under the age of 16.
You must be at least 16 years of age to consent to online behavioural advertising via your Privacy Settings. If you are aged under 16, please ask for permission from your parent or guardian before giving us your information or using our websites or apps.
If you are a parent or guardian of a child under 16, please contact us, or our joint controllers, if you are aware that your child has used our websites or apps or otherwise provided their information to us without your consent. We shall delete or otherwise cease processing your child’s personal information within a reasonable time.
In accordance with industry best practice guidelines, we may retain your information for a reasonable amount of time to make sure that we do not contact you in the future.
12. Cookies and other identifiers
When you use our websites and apps or interact with our emails, we may collect information using cookies or similar technologies. We may also collect information using your email address. For the purposes of this section, we use the word “cookies” for simplicity.
What are cookies and how do they work?
Cookies are small files that are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website. Your browser sends these cookies back to the website every time you visit the site again, so it can recognise you. This allows websites to tailor what you see on the screen.
Do you use other technologies which are similar to cookies?
Yes, we use the following:
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Web beacons: Our websites, apps and emails often contain small invisible images known as “web beacons” or “tracking pixels”. These are used in a way similar to cookies to:
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understand when a particular part of a webpage, email or app is viewed;
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understand how successful an article or an email marketing campaign has been; and
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verify any clicks through to links or advertisements contained in emails.
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Tracking URLs: These are web links that allows us to measure when a link is clicked on. They help us measure the effectiveness of campaigns and advertising and the popularity of articles that are read.
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Device identifiers: We use device identifiers on mobile devices in the same way as cookies are used on web browsers. A device identifier is a unique number on your device which allow us to remember your device.
We use these similar technologies on websites, emails and apps, for the same purposes and in much the same way as we use cookies on websites. We shall use “cookies” and “websites” below as shorthand for “cookies and similar technologies” on “websites, emails and in apps”.
What do you use cookies for?
Cookies and other online tracking technologies are an important part of the internet. They make using websites much smoother and affect lots of the useful features of websites.
There are many different uses for cookies, but for within our sites, they fall into the following groups:
Cookies that are needed to provide the service you have asked for (Essential / Strictly Necessary)
Some cookies are essential so you can move around our websites and use their features. Without the use of these cookies parts of our websites would not function. For example:
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your username and keeping you logged in during your visit – without cookies you might have to log in on every page you go to; and
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when you add something to the online shopping basket, cookies make sure it is still there when you get to the checkout.
Cookies that collect information about your choices and preferences (Functional / Preference)
These cookies collect information about your choices and preferences, and allow us to remember things like:
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remembering a location you’ve provided us with so we can show you relevant content to where you are and to provide local weather forecasts;
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if you have filled in a survey, so you’re not asked to do it again; and
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showing “related article” links that are relevant to the page you are looking at.
Cookies used to understand how people use our products and services (Analytics)
We use analytics cookies to gather information about what pages, links and sections of our apps are popular and which ones do not get used so much to help us keep our sites relevant and up to date. They are also useful to be able to identify trends of how people navigate our sites so we can identify improvements to make to the customer journey.
We may combine information collected by analytics cookies with other information that you provide to us. For instance, if you have registered for an account with us, we may combine your contact details other information you provide us with the browsing history from your device collected by analytics cookies (including data collected from before you registered and when you are signed-out).
We may also use this combined information to improve our products and services. For instance, we may analyse this information in aggregate to improve our advertising systems.
Cookies used to show advertising that is relevant to you (Tracking and Advertising)
Some advertising, known as “online behavioural advertising” is tailored to you and uses information collected by first party and third-party cookies based your web browsing activity.
Cookies are placed on your browser to remember the websites you have visited. Also, when you log into your account, we can recognise your UID. Advertising based on what you have been looking at is then displayed to you when you visit websites who use the same advertising networks.
To help us deliver relevant advertising using cookies, we use Google Marketing Platform. Click here to find out more about Google Marketing Platform.
Additionally, to help us deliver relevant advertising using cookies and track audience conversion, we use Facebook Ads. You can find more information about Facebook Ads here.
We also use these cookies in order to:
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know how many advertisements we serve, how many times these are clicked or hovered over with a mouse cursor, how many advertisements we show to a given user and how many customer actions these generate;
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understand which customers reach a sale or other action page on an advertiser’s site. This allows us to monitor how many sales or actions we achieve for an advertising client, and therefore, how effective our advertising is; and
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protect our advertisers’ brands, we often use a technology that scans the page to ascertain that it is safe from profane, sensitive and potentially brand-negative topics, before serving an ad there. This process is called “ad verification”.
Ad-blockers: We and our advertisers may use information from within our webpages to determine whether you have an ad-blocker enabled. This information may be stored or associated with your device (including through the use of cookies) to re-insert advertisements on our websites and to understand how our customers use ad-blockers. The advertisements that are re-inserted may include those from ad-blockers’ “white lists” or that promote our own products and services. We reserve the right to restrict your access to some or all of our website while you have an ad blocker turned on.
Do Not Track: Our websites do not respond to “Do Not Track” browser settings; however, we treat Global Privacy Control signals as an opt-out of selling or sharing of personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Laws, and as opt-out of processing for targeted advertising requests under the VCDPA.
Managing Cookies: You can change your cookie settings on this website at any time via your Cookie Settings. Please note that this consent tool is not supported on certain versions of Internet Explorer. Please change your browser in order to exercise your rights under the UK GDPR or the EU GDPR.
Cookies can also be controlled using the following instructions:
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Mobile Devices: When using a mobile device, you can opt-out of receiving online behavioural advertising by selecting “Limit Ad Tracking” in the Settings of your Apple iPhone or iPad, or the “Opt out of interest-based ads” in the Settings on your Android device. You may also be able to reset your unique identifier used for online behavioural advertising (referred to as an “Advertising ID”) in the Settings on your Apple or Android device.
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Online Behavioural Advertising cookies:: If you are primarily concerned about third party cookies generated by advertisers, you can turn these off by going to Your Online Choices.
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Web-Beacons: You can usually prevent the operation of web-beacons by changing your web-browser Cookie Settings and your ad choices, or for those in emails, by switching off images in your email client or viewing emails using only the “text” display (rather than “HTML” display’). See the “Help” section of your email client for instructions. Please see the All About Cookies website for further information about managing your options.
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You can also visit the trade body representing these advertising platforms where you can control your third-party online advertising preferences by going to th Network Advertising Initiative.
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Browsers: The links below take you to the help sections for each of the major browsers that will tell you how you can manage your cookies:
Please note that our website, apps and other products and services may not work correctly (or at all) if you change certain preferences. For example, you may not be able to purchase products via our websites. However, you may still be able to place an order via our telephone order line.
Where you use our apps, similar technologies to cookies are used for analytics, it is not presently possible to opt-out of these similar technologies. If you are not happy to be included in our analysis, please do not use our apps.
Please also note that after applying these settings, you will continue to receive advertising, however, it may not be tailored to your likely interests using information collected from cookies and similar technologies on your device.
13. How we protect your personal information
Personal information is maintained on our servers or those of our vendors, and is accessible by authorized employees, representatives, and agents as necessary for the purposes described in this privacy policy.
We use reasonable and appropriate physical, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to promote the security of our systems and protect the confidentiality, integrity, availability, and resilience of personal information. [Those safeguards include: (i) the pseudonymization and encryption of personal information where we deem appropriate; (ii) taking steps to ensure personal information is backed up and remains available in the event of a security incident; and (iii) periodic testing, assessment, and evaluation of the effectiveness of our safeguards.]
However, no method of safeguarding information is completely secure. While we use measures designed to protect personal information, we cannot guarantee that our safeguards will be effective or sufficient. In addition, you should be aware that Internet data transmission is not always secure, and we cannot warrant that information you transmit utilizing the Properties is or will be secure.
14. Updates to this Policy
We reserve the right to make changes to this Policy. Where changes are made, we shall post the revised Policy here with an updated effective date. Please check regularly for any changes to this Policy. Your continued use of our products and services after the effective date of the revised Policy (or such other act specified at that time) will constitute your consent to those changes. However, we will not, without your consent, use your personal information in a manner materially different from what was stated at the time your personal information was collected.
