Privacy policy

 

Welcome to Social Engine’s privacy policy. We respect your privacy and we are committed to protecting your personal data.

1. Introduction

This privacy policy tells you how Social Engine use your personal data when you visit our website, interact with us, and commission us to deliver services. It also tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Please read this privacy policy to understand how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy was last updated on 23rd May 2018.

If you have any questions, or wish to exercise your privacy rights, please follow the instructions in this privacy policy.

2. About Social Engine and our website

Social Engine provides consultancy services to social purpose organisations in order to help them achieve their goals by being more evidence-based and insight-led.

Social Engine is a company limited by guarantee, registered in the United Kingdom.

Social Engine Limited, company number 9445799. Our registered offices are 26 Howard Walk, London N2 0HB.

Social Engine is the data controller responsible for this website and any handling of personal data carried out in the course of our work.

Some of Social Engine’s work involves partnerships and working collaboratively to deliver services for our customers, and on occasion we may act as joint data controllers. When we mention “Social Engine”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy, we are referring to Social Engine Limited.

3. Personal data which we collect about 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 (anonymous data).

We collect a variety of information in the course of conducting research and analysis for our clients and from visitors to our website. This personal data falls into these categories:

  • Identity Data includes title, first name, last name, username or similar identifier, address, phone number and email address. If you interact with us through social media, this may include your social media user name.

  • Research Data includes survey responses, as well as any profile data which we have added (for example, using analytics and profiling).

  • 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 our website.

  • Tracking Data includes information we or others collect about you from cookies and similar tracking technologies, such as web beacons, pixels, and mobile identifiers.

  • Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving direct marketing from us and your communication preferences.

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. To provide better content and service, Social Engine’s website uses the Google Analytics web analytics service. Please see Google’s privacy policy for further information.

With the exception of research data, 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.

4. How we collect personal data

We use different methods to collect data from and about you. This is primarily done through direct interaction – where you provide to us your identity and communications data by filling in forms or corresponding with us by post, phone, email or social media.

This includes personal data you provide when you:

  • sign up to receive our newsletter and other communications

  • make enquiries or request information be sent to you

  • engage with us on social media

  • enter a competition, promotion or survey

When you interact with us, including via the Social Engine website, we may automatically collect Technical and Tracking Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns.

Research data may be collected directly from surveys, polls or other research methods that you respond to. Research Data may also be passed to us by clients and partners for analysis purposes. When personal research data are passed to us, this will only be done with a Data Sharing Agreement in place, signed by both parties and in accordance with data protection regulations for research. Please contact us if you would like to see a copy of our standard data sharing agreement.

In all circumstances we will only use your personal data when the law allows us to.

5. How we use your personal data

  • To carry out analysis of research data as part of delivering services for our clients, where you have either given us consent to do so – for example by completing a survey – or have given consent to our client or partner and they have passed your data to us under the terms of a data sharing agreement for research purposes.

  • To send direct marketing or communications information to you, where you have given express consent for us to do so, as required by law.

Where our legal basis is consent, you have the right to withdraw consent any time.

7. Marketing and your communications preferences

We may use your Identity, Technical, Tracking and Communications Data to form a picture of 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 and tell you about them.

We carry out direct marketing by email, for example through our newsletter or occasional emails about what we’re up to. However we may have occasion to contact you in other ways, such as by post or telephone, where you have given us permission to do so.

On our website, we always try hard to make it really clear what we are doing and what communications you will be sent, such as deciding to sign up to receive our newsletter – and you have a right at any time to change your mind and say no thank you and opt out. The easiest way to opt out is to use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the communication.

We will only use Research Data to contact you in relation to the research project which you have agreed to participate in and where you have given explicit consent to be contacted for further research activity. For example to tell you about the opportunity to participate in a focus group or follow up interview so we can ask you more about your survey response.

Tracking Data, and in particular cookies, help us to deliver website and social advertising that we believe is most relevant to you. The cookies used for this purpose are often placed on our website by specialist organisations. Cookies also help us understand if you’ve opened a marketing email because we don’t want to send you things you don’t read. If you want more information about Tracking Data, in particular cookies, see Cookies below.

Almost all the cookies that relate to advertising are part of third party online advertising networks. If you’d like to read about how you can control which adverts you see online, see opt-out programs established by the Digital Advertising Alliance (United States) and the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance. We do not control cookies which are set by advertising networks.

8. Cookies

You can see from Marketing and your communications preferences above, that cookies are a tool which, like all other online operators, we use for communications purposes. That is just part of why cookies are used.

Cookies help Social Engine work better and provide lots of help in the background to enhance your online interaction with Social Engine. This includes things like making it easy to log in and move from page to page, and remembering your preferences while you go off and look at other pages. These cookies allow us to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of web pages that you can customise. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog.

Other cookies collect information about how visitors use our website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies don’t collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and used to improve our website for visitors.

When you use our website, your device or browser may be sent cookies from third parties, for example when using embedded content and social network links. It’s important for you to know that we have no access to or control over cookies used by these companies or third-party websites. We suggest you check the third-party websites for more information about their cookies and how to manage them.

You can see more information about the cookies we use here, including who they belong to, their ID and why they are used. We’ve also included links to the third-party websites where you can go to find out more.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or may not function properly.

9. Disclosures of your personal data

We may share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in this privacy policy. We may also share your personal data if the law otherwise allows it.

We may share personal data with the following categories third parties:

  • Clients and partners where these fall within the terms of a data sharing agreement and are specifically for the purposes of a particular research project.

  • Government, regulators and law enforcement.

  • Service providers that Social Engine use to conduct surveys (Survey Monkey), send communications (Mail Chimp) and other business activities (Google).

  • We also share data with third parties connected to advertising, retargeting and analytics. Please see Cookies above for more information about who those third parties are.

We may also share data with third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy.

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.

10. International transfers

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we will comply with applicable data protection law. Some of the mechanisms we may choose to use when undertaking an international transfer are:

  • The transfer of your personal data is to a country that has officially been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission.

  • We may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe (called the “EU Model Clauses”).

  • Where we use providers based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between the Europe and the US. If the provider is not EU-US Privacy Shield certified, we may use the EU Model Clauses.

11. Data security

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.

12. Third-party links

Our website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications (for example, the ability to sign in with Facebook). Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

13. Data retention

We will only keep 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.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data; see Your legal rights 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.

14. Your legal rights

If the General Data Protection Regulation applies to you because you are in the European Union, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data:

  • The right to be informed – that’s an obligation on us to inform you how we use your personal data (as set out in this privacy policy)

  • The right of access – that’s a right to make what’s known as a ‘data subject access request’ for copy of the personal data we hold about you

  • The right to rectification – that’s a right to make us correct personal data about you that may be incomplete or inaccurate

  • The right to erasure – that’s also known as the ‘right to be forgotten’ where in certain circumstances you can ask us to delete the personal data we have about you (unless there’s an overriding legal reason we need to keep it)

  • The right to restrict processing – that’s a right for you in certain circumstances to ask us to suspend processing personal data

  • The right to data portability – that’s a right for you to ask us for a copy of your personal data in a common format (for example, a .csv file or word document)

  • The right to object – that’s a right for you to object to us processing your personal data (for example, if you object to us processing your data for direct marketing)

  • Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling – that’s a right you have for us to be transparent about any profiling we do, or any automated decision making.

  • These rights are subject to certain rules around when you can exercise them. You can see a lot more information on them, if you are interested, on the UK Information Commissioner’s Office website.

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

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.

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.

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.

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). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Any questions?

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, or would like to exercise any of your rights, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.

18. Changes to this privacy policy

The General Data Protection Regulation is new and the ICO is still issuing new bits of guidance about how businesses should follow it. So, you may see little updates to our privacy policy over the coming months. Be sure to check in and have read every now and then. Thank you.