Data Privacy Policy
Thank you for trusting us with some information about you. We take that trust seriously and we want you to know how we use your information and why. We want you to know that we are not in the business of selling, renting or trading email lists with other companies and business for marketing purposes.
By using our website and agreeing to this policy, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy.
1. WHO IS HOLDING YOUR INFORMATION?
Name: Rhian Beavis of Virtually Rhian
Email address: virtuallyrhian@gmail.com
Address: Lakeside, GL18 1SZ
Person responsible for data within our business: name and contact information: Rhian Beavis, virtuallyrhian@gmail.com
Our data regulator contact details are: Rhian Beavis +44 (0) 7926024593. The data regulators for EU and UK can be found via these links: UK- https://ico.org.uk/ EU- https://edpb.europa.eu/about[1]edpb/board/members_en
Date this Policy last updated 10 February 2023
WHOSE INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?
2. We process information about: “Prospects” contacts working at or connected with potential Clients; “Clients” who have bought goods or services from us, and “Client Contacts” who are individuals employed by or contracted to Clients; “Suppliers”, “Associates” suppliers or potential suppliers of goods or services to us; “Affiliates/Referrers” who have signed up to our affiliate scheme or who have referred Prospects to us. “Employees” Our employees if we have any. Employees should refer for data privacy information relating to their own data to their contract of employment.
3. OUR POLICY
We promise respectful treatment of the personal information of everyone we have contact with. We want it to be simple and clear. This Policy explains how we do that – when and why we collect information, how we use it, the situations when other people can see or use it, and how we keep it secure. But just to set the scene in case you don’t want to read through all the details just now, we can be clear up front. We don’t sell, rent or trade email lists with anyone else. We’ve split this Policy into sections, depending on who you are. Section A is for everyone and includes information about cookies on our websites.
Section B is for you if you are or work for a business prospect. If you are a Client or a Client Contact, Section C is for you. Section D is for you if we have information about you purely because we are providing services to a Client. And if you’re a supplier, associate or Affiliate/Referrer, Section E is for you.
SECTION A: FOR EVERYONE Whoever you are, our intention is to use your information to make things work smoothly for you in your experience of dealing with us. If that’s not how it turns out for you, please make sure to contact us. It’s best to put things in writing, which you can do by emailing virtuallyrhian@gmail.com. We keep this Policy under regular review, and we may revise it as time goes on. Please check back here from time to time to make sure you’ve got the latest information.
A.1. OUR GENERAL APPROACH TO PERSONAL DATA
We’re committed to protecting your privacy and honouring your legal rights to control how we use your personal data. We only collect and use personal data when we need to
• because you have asked us to do something (for example, send you newsletters);
• so that we can reply to queries or complaints;
• to develop and manage our business relationships;
• to help grow our business and fulfil our contracts;
• to provide services to clients;
• to meet our legal obligations.
We try to make sure the information we hold is accurate and up to date and is no more than we need to have.
A.2. CATEGORIES OF DATA
The types of information that we will be processing depend on the nature of our relationship with you. We may process information about you that you have yourself provided to us or published generally on the internet through social media or on other websites. In all cases, we will have what identifying and communication information that is relevant and that we can sensibly obtain: that is, your name, email address, employer or business name, job title or position, contact address, social media addresses, and we may also capture some of the information published by you in your social media output to the extent that it may be relevant to our interactions. If you are or work for a prospect, we will aim to obtain and process information that is relevant to our building a business relationship with you and doing business together, which may relate to your business and your personal interests.
If you are or work for a customer or supplier, we will also keep records of our interactions, the work we have done for you or commissioned from you, the progress of work, and financial and accounting records. If we are processing information about you purely because we are providing services to others, please see Section D below. Please note that your rights may be subject to applicable exemptions. If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your information, or how we have responded to any request about your personal data, please take it up in the first instance by emailing us at virtuallyrhian@gmail.com. If we can’t sort it out, the official authority contact details are set out in the form above, and you can raise your concerns with them.
A.3. DOWNLOADS, AND SERVICES
We ask our own sales and marketing people to contact Prospects from time to time. This is normally because you have requested a call, or because we are actively trying to let you know about something you may benefit from. We are not a hard sell or cold calling based organisation but prefer to build long-term relationships with satisfied and relaxed clients.
A.4. SOCIAL MEDIA
We have an active presence on social media. If you are using social media they are holding and using your information in accordance with their data privacy policy. If you ‘like’ any of our posts or ‘follow’ us or contact us on social media we keep a record of that. Your replies to us, messages you send us, and your other activity linked to our posts may be seen by members of Virtually Rhian.
A.5. NO SALE OR EXCHANGE OF YOUR DATA
We do not sell or exchange your personal data with organisations who may want to sell you something or use your data for research or other purposes.
A.6. DATA LOCATION AND PLATFORMS
Like most small businesses, we do not have any tailor-made software – we use mainstream packages for everything from our Client records, to email, to accounting. We have picked mainstream suppliers with appropriate security standards. Your data will be kept on Dropbox, Google Drive, Gmail and Zoho Accounting software. If you have any questions about their Terms of Use, please find more information here: here and here.
A.6.1 WEBSITE DATA
We may process data about your use of our website and services. The website data may include your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views and website navigation paths, as well as information about the timing, frequency, and pattern of your service use. The source of the website data is our analytics tracking system. This website data may be processed for the purposes of analysing the use of the website and services. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interests, namely monitoring and improving our website and services.
This website may use cookies from time to time which allow us to distinguish you from other users of our website and help us to continue developing the website so that you have the best possible experience.
A.7. SHARING YOUR DATA AND STORAGE
Your information/advice is held in the strictest confidence and securely stored within Virtually Rhian on password secure cloud storage of Dropbox and Google Drive. We will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information. You acknowledge that the transmission of information over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot garantee the security of data sent over the internet.
Only some of your information needed to complete tasks for you are share with outside contactors or suppliers such as your email address or home address as needed to work together on an event, and this information will be securely shared. Your email address and home address may be shared with my accountant for invoicing purposes and will be deleted when we cease working together.
A7.1. USING PERSONAL INFORMATION
Personal information submitted to us through our website or via a telephone exchange or direct email, will be used for the purposes specified in this policy or on the relevant pages of the website.
We may use your personal information to:
a – administer our website and business
b – send you goods purchased through our website
c – supply to you services purchased through our website
d – send statements, invoices and payment reminders to you, and collect payments from you;
e – end you non-marketing commercial communications;
f – send you email notifications that you have specifically requested;
g – send you our email newsletter, if you have requested it (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require the newsletter and unsubscribe). We don’t rent or trade email lists with other organisations and businesses.
h – We use a third-party provider, Mailerlite, to deliver our newsletter. We gather statistics around our email deliveries using industry standard technologies to help improve our email newsletter. You can unsubscribe to general mailings at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of our emails or by emailing us at virtuallyrhian@gmail.com.
i – send you marketing communications relating to our business by email or similar technology (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require marketing communications).
A.8. HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR DATA FOR?
Your information will be kept for the length of time set out in our working contract. Personal information that we process for any purpose shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose. We will retain documents (including electronic documents) containing personal data to: the extent that we are required to do so by law, if we believe that the documents may be relevant to any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings and in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk).
A.9. WANT TO SEE WHAT WE HOLD ON YOU?
If you want to know what information we have about you (if any) email virtuallyrhian@gmail.com and give us your name, email address(es). We may require you to confirm your identity before proceeding. Provided we can legitimately disclose the information to you (see Section D), we will happily do a search and send you screenshots of what we have.
A.10. WHAT ARE YOUR RIGHTS
You have the right to know what information we are collecting on you, and to amend it if it is inaccurate. If you feel for some reason we have information we should not be keeping, or it is out of date or otherwise wrong, please let us know and we will take appropriate action. Most of the information we hold is not based on your individual consent but is based on our needing the information to run our business and provide our products and services. You have a “right to be forgotten” – but that does have some legal limits to it. If you want us to remove information about you, let us know. If you have been a Client, we may not be able to remove all data as we will have to ensure that we can continue to comply with legal, accounting, taxation and our insurer’s requirements for up to 6 years.
A.11. OUR LEGAL BASIS FOR PROCESSING YOUR DATA
The information we hold on you is based on our needing the information to run our business and provide our products and services – either so we can perform our contract with you, or because we have a legitimate business interest in processing your data. In a few situations we are processing personal data because we are under a legal obligation to do so. This principally relates to our business, accounting and tax records.
A.12. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS
Data will not be transferred to countries outside the EEA without adequate protection.
A.13. COOKIES
13.1 Our website uses cookies.
13.2 A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.
13.3 Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.
13.4 Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.
13.5 We use session cookies on our website.
13.6 Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies; for example:
(a) in Internet Explorer (version 11) you can block cookies using the cookie handling override settings available by clicking “Tools”, “Internet Options”, “Privacy” and then “Advanced”;
(b) in Firefox (version 44) you can block all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Options”, “Privacy”, selecting “Use custom settings for history” from the drop-down menu, and unticking “Accept cookies from sites”; and
(c) in Chrome (version 48), you can block all cookies by accessing the “Customise and control” menu, and clicking “Settings”, “Show advanced settings” and “Content settings”, and then selecting “Block sites from setting any data” under the “Cookies” heading.
13.7 Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites.
13.8 If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website.
13.9 You can delete cookies already stored on your computer; for example:
(a) in Internet Explorer (version 11), you must manually delete cookie files (you can find instructions for doing so at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/internet-explorer/delete-manage-cookies#ie=ie-11);
(b) in Firefox (version 44), you can delete cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Options” and “Privacy”, then selecting “Use custom settings for history” from the drop-down menu, clicking “Show Cookies”, and then clicking “Remove All Cookies”; and
(c) in Chrome (version 48), you can delete all cookies by accessing the “Customise and control” menu, and clicking “Settings”, “Show advanced settings” and “Clear browsing data”, and then selecting “Cookies and other site and plug-in data” before clicking “Clear browsing data”.
13.10 Deleting cookies will have a negative impact on the usability of many websites.
SECTION B: PROSPECTS
Most of the information we process comes from you. We process it so we can reply to you, and when you contact us again we know what you asked before, what you were sent, and what you told us. Typically, we are collecting name, contact details, and background information from you or published by you on social media or freely accessible on the internet, on why you might be interested in our products or services or a relevant contact for our business. If we email you individually using our own email system or respond to an email sent to us at any of our business email addresses, a copy of that email will also be stored. We do not routinely keep special category data. To the extent we hold this, it was supplied or made publicly available by you.
SECTION C: CLIENTS
Once you buy something from us, we will collect information from you at the point of sale. This will include the information we collect from Prospects (above). We collect your email address, phone number and postal address, credit/debit card details and billing address so we can provide what we have contracted to, invoice you and keep proper records of our business relationship. We process your data to support the delivery, the goods and services you have bought. We keep records of the goods/services provided to you, and information you give us, so we can support you when needed and advise you of any additional services you may need.
C.1. THIRD PARTY DATA
As well as your own personal data, we understand that you may need to provide us with personal data relating to your employees, your workers, or third parties (often your clients or suppliers) – depending on the services we are providing to you. We hold all such information under strict confidentiality obligations.
C.2. FINANCIAL AND CREDIT CARD DETAILS
If you pay us by BACS or direct transfer, we know only what the bank tells us, which is usually the name of the person who paid us and how much and the reference number. Where you purchase goods and/or services from us via our website then we may process Personal Data in connection with your purchase and the supply of that purchase, as well as keeping appropriate records. Such information may include your personal Information, billing address, delivery address, credit card or other payment details and we shall process this Personal Data on contractual grounds.
SECTION D: THIRD PARTY INFORMATION
We will act in accordance with your statutory rights, subject to the exclusions and exemptions that may apply. When we are processing data about you on behalf of a Client, we are operating under the banner of our Client’s data privacy policy. We will refer any enquiry from you to them, as they are the ‘data controller’ responsible for dealing with your query. But we will support that by providing relevant information to our Client for passing to you. When we are processing data about you because of a direct connection between you and our business we are acting as a ‘data controller’ (and operating under this policy).
SECTION E:
COMPLAINTS
If you have a complaint about the way we are handling your information or how we have responded to a request for information or removal, you can take this up in the first instance by emailing us at the email address set out above. If we can’t sort it out, the relevant supervisory authority details can be found on the form above.