EmailThis is the main privacy policy for guardian.co.uk, guardiannews.com, and for certain services provided through the websites by Guardian News & Media Limited and Guardian News & Media LLC ("GNM").
At guardian.co.uk and guardiannnews.com we collect different types of information about our users for four main reasons:
1. To provide personalised services unique to individual users.
2. To help us to monitor and improve the services we offer
3. To sell advertising space on the site. This helps us to keep the site free of charge.
4. With user consent, to market services to individuals users.
There may be additional privacy policies that apply to certain services on guardian.co.uk and guardiannews.com. Please read these at the time you register or subscribe for these services on these sites.
Please follow the links below for further information.
Our principles
How we use your information
Use of children's data
Updating your personal information
Who we share data with
Use of cookies
About our advertising
Legal information and how to contact us
Changes to the privacy policy
Our principles
1. We do our utmost to protect user privacy through the appropriate use of the security technology. This means:
- we ensure that we have appropriate physical and technological security measures to protect your information
- we ensure that when we outsource any processes that the service provider has appropriate security measures.
2. We will respect your privacy. You should receive marketing emails only from GNM and, if you choose, from carefully chosen third parties. It will be made clear to you where you have these choices, for example, tick boxes will let you decide whether you wish to receive marketing. We may, however, email you occasionally with information or queries about your registration, your subscription account or postings, for example, with reminders, warnings or copyright requests.
3. We will collect and use individual user details only where we have legitimate business reasons and are legally entitled to do so.
4. We will be transparent in our dealings with you as to what information about you we will collect and how we will use your information.
5. We will use personal data only for the purpose(s) for which they were originally collected and we will ensure personal data are securely disposed of.
6. Our site is accessible via the Internet. This means that, wherever you choose to post your data on the site, they can be accessed from anywhere around the world.
7. Where we or our service providers transfer data out of the European Economic Area (EEA) this is only ever done with the relevant protections required by UK law being in place.
How we use your information
What information do we collect?
We collect information on our users through registration and use of the website, through cookies, where you choose to disclose data in postings, and when you enter sales promotions and competitions ("sales promotions").
Certain services that we provide may involve the collection by us of additional information, such as your geographic location from time to time, to enable the service to be provided as designed. In particular, this may apply to certain Apps that you download, or which we provide.
Registration
The minimum information we need to register a user is an email address and a password. We will ask further questions for different services, including sales promotions. Unless stated, all registration questions are compulsory.
We may also ask some further, voluntary questions during registration for certain services (for example, Professional Networks) so we can gain a clearer understanding of our users. This also enables us to personalise services for our users.
Logging in using social networking credentials
If you log-in to guardian.co.uk and/or guardiannews.com using a Facebook log-in as a means of authentication you grant permission to Facebook to share your user details. This will include your name, email address, date of birth and location which will then be used to form a Guardian Identity, and you may use your picture from Facebook as part of your profile. Authenticating also permits the sharing of your gender, networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Facebook account settings. If you remove the Guardian app from your Facebook settings, our access to this additional information will cease.
If you log-in to guardian.co.uk and/or guardiannews.com using a twitter log-in as a means of authentication we receive your avatar and twitter username.
Use of children's data
Except for children's books, guardian.co.uk and guardiannews.com do not knowingly collect or store any personal information about children under the age of 16. Children's books is a service for children which requires parental consent to join, no personal information on children is displayed on the site, and all contributions are moderated prior to being published. For any questions concerning children's books, please contact: Children's books, Guardian News and Media, 90 York Way, London, N1 9GU or by emailing childrens.books@guardian.co.uk.
Updating your personal information
We offer a 'My details' page (also known as Dashboard), where you can update your personal information at any time, and change your marketing preferences. You can get to this page from most pages on the site - simply click on the 'My details' link at the top of the screen when you are signed in.
Who we share data with
We will not share your personal information with others for marketing purposes unless you have given us your permission. With your permission we will share your information only with carefully chosen third parties.
GNM may make available third party services, such as Guardian Garden Centre or Guardian Bookshop, though guardian.co.uk and/or guardiannews.com, although we are not necessarily operating these sites. Any information which is collected by GNM when you access a third party service is processed under this Privacy Policy. Information collected by third party operators themselves is governed by their own privacy policies.
Please note that we reserve the right to access and disclose personal data to comply with applicable laws and lawful government requests, to operate our systems properly and to protect both ourselves and our users.
Any third parties who access your data in the course of providing services on our behalf are subject to strict contractual restrictions to ensure that your data is protected, and in compliance with applicable data protection/privacy legislation. We may also independently audit these service providers to ensure that they meet our standards. We may use service providers to help us run these site or services available on the sites, some of whom may be based outside the EEA.
Some GNM webpages use plugins from third party platforms (such as the 'Facebook Recommend' function). Information about your visit to GNM websites may be collected by these third party providers on these pages. If you browse these pages whilst still also logged in to your account on the third party platform, information collected by the third party may be connected to your account on the third party platform. For more information on how these third parties use information, please read their privacy policies.
Use of Cookies
We use cookies for a number of reasons:
1. For statistical purposes to track how many individual unique users we have and how often they visit our websites. We collect data listing which of our pages are most frequently visited and by which types of users and from which countries.
2. We use third parties to collect anonymous user information, sometimes through cookies and web beacons. Click here to learn more about how we use a third party service to collect and use information on guardian.co.uk and guardiannews.com.
3. GNM and third party advertisers will generate statistical cookies to track advertising impressions and conversions. There is further information on this in the Online Behavioural Advertising section of this privacy policy.
4. Placing cookies on your computer means we can serve you adverts that you might be more interested in, and allows us to control the number of times you see them and measure how effective the ad campaign has been. This helps us to keep the site free of charge. There is further information on this in the Online Behavioural Advertising section of this privacy policy, including how you can opt out of Online Behavioural advertising.
5. Flash cookies may be used to store user preferences for media player functionality and without them some video content may not render correctly.
You can turn cookies off but if you do this you may not be able to use all services on our websites and you might see more pop-ups and other intrusive advertising, as we won't be able to limit what you see using cookies. You will, however, still be able to view editorial content.
For more information about cookies and managing them, including how to turn them off, please visit our page on Cookies.
By using the sites you are agreeing to the use of cookies as described.
About our advertising
In late 2005 we launched a new advertising service called Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA). OBA allows us to deliver targeted advertising to visitors to our website. OBA works by showing you adverts that are based on the type of content you have been reading, and delivering adverts which we believe may be of interest to you.
As you browse guardian.co.uk or guardiannews.com, some of the cookies we place on your computer will be advertising cookies, so we can understand what sort of pages you are interested in.
This information we collect about behaviour on your computer enables us to group it with computers that show similar behaviour. We can then display advertising to your computer which is based on these interests. For instance if you have been reading a lot of food and drink articles we may decide to show you more adverts for food and drink.
It is important to remember that none of the OBA techniques we employ uses or requires us to collect information such as your name, email address, postal address or telephone number.
We may also share behavioural data with other websites. This may mean that when you are on other websites you are served advertising based on your behaviour on guardian.co.uk and guardiannews.com, and on guardian.co.uk and guardiannnews.com you may be served advertising based on your behaviour on other sites.
Behavioural retargeting is another form of OBA that enables us and some of our advertising partners to show you ads based on your online reading away from guardian.co.uk or guardiannews.com. For example, if you have visited the website of an online clothes shop you may start seeing ads from that same shopping site displaying special offers or showing you the products that you were browsing. This is allows companies to advertise to website visitors who leave their website without making a purchase. The privacy policy of criteo, one of the partners that we work with for behavioural retargeting is here: criteo.com/en/privacy-policy.
If you want to opt out of receiving online behavioural advertising this does not mean that you will no longer receive advertising when you are using guardian.co.uk or guardiannews.com. It just means that the advertising you see will not be customised for you.
If you would like more information about OBA and how to opt out of it, please visit youronlinechoices.com.
Please visit audiencescience.com/privacy.asp and quantcast.com/privacy for the privacy policy of our online behavioural targeting technology providers.
Other Advertising
Guardian.co.uk and guardiannews.com contain contextual affiliate links from which we may earn revenue. Our articles are never influenced by advertisers or affiliates, nor are they written for the purpose of promoting a product, except when clearly branded as a 'sponsored feature' or 'advertisement feature' or 'sponsor's content'.
Legal information and how to contact us
For the purposes of the UK Data Protection Act 1998, the Data Controller for guardian.co.uk, guardiannews.com and services provided through the websites by GNM is Guardian News & Media Limited, King's Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU.
If you would like to obtain a copy of the personal data we hold on you, or have any queries regarding GNM's use of personal data please contact the Data Protection Manager at the above address, or by email to dataprotection@guardian.co.uk.
Dispute Resolution for Guardian News & Media LLC
Our American office, Guardian News And Media LLC participates in the EU Safe Harbor Privacy Framework as set forth by the United States Department of Commerce. As part of our participation in the safe harbor, we have agreed to TRUSTe dispute resolution for disputes relating to our compliance with the Safe Harbor Privacy Framework. If you have any complaints regarding our compliance with Safe Harbor you should first contact GNM (using the contact details provided above).
If contacting us does not resolve your complaint, you may raise your complaint with TRUSTe, by fax to 415-520-3420, or by mail to Watchdog Complaints, TRUSTe, 55 2nd Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA, USA 94105. If you are faxing or mailing TRUSTe to lodge a complaint, you must include the following information: the name of company, the alleged privacy violation, your contact information, and whether you would like the particulars of your complaint shared with the company. For information about TRUSTe or the operation of TRUSTe's dispute resolution process, click here or request this information from TRUSTe at any of the addresses listed above. The TRUSTe dispute resolution process shall be conducted in English.
Changes to the privacy policy
Should we elect to change our privacy policy we will post the changes here. Where the changes are significant, we may also choose to email all our registered users with the new details. Where required by law, will we obtain your consent to make these changes.
Changes to this policy by date
November 2004: cookie information moved to separate page; Data Protection Commissioner changed to Information Commissioner; legal information under the Data Protection Act added.
May 2008: principles updated to provide more detail on protections and limits on data usage and confirmation about the use of data processors; contact details updated.
August 2009: contact details updated, useful links updated, some headings added and a new section headed "advertising and affiliate links" added.
July 2011: Principles updated to include further information on marketing preferences, contact details, further information provided about online behavioural advertising, cookies, and the 'Who we share data with' section has been updated.
September 2011: Websites covered expanded to include guardiannews.com, information on use of children's data added.
October 2011: Information on plugins and dispute resolution for Guardian News & Media LLC added.
February 2012: Additional provision included in 'How we use your information' to address certain data that we may collect, especially in the context of certain Apps and geographical location data.
April 2012: Information on logging onto our sites using social networking log-ins as a means of authentication.
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