PRIVACY POLICY

This privacy notice is for visitors to our websites, apps and other digital platforms. It sets out how we use personal data that we hold about you and gives information on how to exercise your legal rights. In this notice ‘we’ and ‘our’ means Independent Digital News and Media Limited which operates this platform.

Personal data can include:

• Your name, email address, and year of birth, together with your home address if you’ve asked us to send something to your home address.

• Information about your devices, such as IP address

• How you browse our websites?

• Details of products or services you purchase

What data do we process about our visitors?

If you register for an account on our website in order to comment on an article, enter a competition, or receive selected newsletters, you will need to provide us with your full name, email address, year of birth and postcode.

If you plan to comment on our website, you will need to provide us with a commenting name.

If you attend one of our events remotely, we may share your name and contact details with the platform hosting the event.

If you purchase a product on our site through our partner AB (), we will collect your name, email, phone number, address, MAC/IP address, purchase history and whether you’ve opted in to receive marketing. We collect this information to fulfil your order, provide order updates and order history, as well as to provide you with support services and warranty tracking. Payments are processed through a third party, and so we don’t have access to your financial details. We and process your data as joint controllers under data protection law. This means that we decide together the personal information that we collect and how we use it, and we are both responsible for this use.

If you contact our Customer Services team, we will need your name and contact information as well as full details of your query.

If you sign a petition on independent.co.uk, we will collect your name, email address, and a disclosure to state you are over 18. We do not direct our service to people under the age of 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal information about them.

Your name will be shared with the recipient of the petition. Once shared we are unable to delete your details from the petition, so please do not sign it if you are unsure you would like your data to be shared in this way.

Your data will be stored with our contracted partner, which may mean transferral to the US. You should be aware that this will happen using approved UK Standard Contractual Clauses for data transfers or other similar safeguards that have been approved by the relevant body.

If any special category data is collected, for example related to political beliefs, we will delete this data within 3 months after the petition has closed.

You will be given the opportunity to opt in for further communications about the petition you have signed, or to receive emails from us related to updates or events at The Independent. We will process the data you give us under consent.

We collect data about our website’s visitors using technology such as cookies, device IDs, IP addresses and location data. This can include information about your location, the type of device you are using and your online browsing history. If you would like to know more about our use of cookies and how to manage them, please read our Cookie Notice.

What do we use this data for?

* Verifying your identity (for example when you return to the website and have already logged in).

* Personalising the advertising you see on the website so that it is more relevant to you. For more information on how we use your cookie data please see our Cookie Notice.

* Improving the design and style of the website.

* Informing you about products, services or promotional offers that you might find interesting if you have chosen to receive these type of communications.

* Sending you service messages about your subscription or account registration, for example if you have clicked a password reset link. This could be by email, overlay on the website or push notification.

* Dealing with, and responding to you about, a comment you have submitted for or on our message boards, blogs and other such user generated content facilities.

* Enabling you to share our content with others using social media or email.

* Communicating (and personalising such communication) with you through our newsletters, but only those you have consented to receive.

* Administering competitions and informing you if you have been successful in any competitions or promotions.

* Compiling customer reviews.

* Conducting market research.

* Sending a product to your home address.

* Granting you access to a subscription.

* Dealing with any query or complaint you submit to our customer services team. Only provide sensitive data (such as information about your health, race or religion) if you are happy to consent to our using it to manage your enquiry.

* Sending you push notifications from our apps.

* Ensuring that we are paid the correct amount of commission by our advertising partners to support our journalism.

We also log and use information about any service errors or interruptions that you have experienced in order to help us create fixes and to make technical improvements to our website.

How we may contact you

From time to time we may contact you by email or push notification to give you service information. For example if your subscription is coming to an end, or your payment method has expired.

If we have your permission we may also send you newsletters or emails about our events, subscription benefits or offers.

Occasionally we may ask you if you would like to participate in market research, or respond to you if you have made a complaint or have logged a query.

What is our legal basis for processing personal data?

Consent.

We will only use your personal data for advertising and marketing, personalisation of content and services, analytical purposes (such as, understanding who our readers are and how they browse our websites) and to track eCommerce purchases if we have your specific consent to do so.  This includes the use of data provided by you and our partners for profiling purposes in order to generate revenue from you so we can improve our products and services.

If you have given us consent to send you specific newsletters, you can unsubscribe from these at any time by clicking unsubscribe at the bottom of each email, or by logging into your account and managing your email preferences.

Legitimate interests.

The legitimate interest pursued by us to analyse our website traffic in order to maintain the service, for example monitoring successful page loads or error messages.