PRIVACY POLICY

Youth Media (UK) Limited (“We”) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Our relationship with you is valuable and we understand the importance you place on the privacy and security of information that personally identifies you.

This privacy policy (together with our terms of use - http://www.youthmedia.co.uk/page/tandc ) and any other documents referred to in it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be used by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

1. THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND WHAT WE USE IT FOR

We collect personally identifiable information when you register to use our products or services. We ask you for personal data only when it is needed to provide goods or services you have enquired about or asked us to provide or to respond to your requests for information. Our registration process involves providing us with personal information through Facebook or our sign-up page. This includes (but is not limited to) your name, the name of your school, college or university ("Institution"), course of study, year of study, address, e-mail address, date of birth and mobile telephone number. If you register with us through Facebook, the information we collect will be the information that you have provided to Facebook. We may collect information as part of our payment arrangements and we may from time to time use third party service providers to facilitate our payment process. The privacy policies of such third parties should be read to understand how they will use your personal information. In addition, if you make a general enquiry, report a problem, post material to the site, complete a customer survey or provide information in response to a sales offer, we may collect and use any personal information that you provide us with.

Where you sign up or register for our chat widget or any similar functionality that we may provide from time to time, your name will be added to a directory which will be available to other users of our services.

Where you register for our service we will use the information provided by you to improve our service to you. This will include being able to provide you with appropriate messages from your Institution for your relevant year group or course, together with relevant application content and messages from suitable advertisers that may be of interest to you based on your course of study and age.

We may also from time to time retain records of messages which you send via email, instant messaging or any other functionality that we may offer as part of our service, but we will only do this where required to by law.

We may use your personal information to contact you for your views on our services and to notify you occasionally about important changes or developments to the site or services. Where you have consented we may also send promotional emails about new products, special offers or other information which we think you may find interesting using the email address which you have provided.

We also receive and record information by tracking user traffic patterns throughout our sites to maintain a record of the movements of visitors to our site and users of our service. We use this information in order to customise the communications and content you see on our pages, and to better understand website usage so we can provide the best service and products to our customers. This information is stored in log files and is used for aggregated and statistical reporting but is not attributed to you as an individual.

2. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE SHARE?

There are times when we need to share the personal information we learn from you with other parties. However, the personal information we hold on our customers is an important part of our business and it is not our business to sell or rent this personal information to others. We will send personally identifiable information about our customers to other companies or people, however, in the following situations:

2.1 Agents or sub-contractors: We may employ other companies and individuals to perform functions in certain situations on our behalf. Examples of these functions include e-mail, handling credit card transactions, fulfilling bookings and providing customer service. These agents and sub-contractors have access to the personal information required in order to perform their functions but may not use it for any other purpose.

2.2 Change Control: We may disclose your personal information to any new business partners or owners in the event of a joint venture or if our business is sold or merged with another business entity.

2.3 Third Parties: We may pass aggregate information on the usage of our website to third parties but this will not include information that can be used to identify you. Where you have consented we may also allow carefully selected third parties to contact you occasionally about products and services that may be of interest to you. If you change your mind about being contacted by these companies in future please let us know.

2.4 Compliance with law: We will release personal information on our customers where we are required to by law. We may also exchange other information with other companies and organisations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

By submitting your personal information to us, you agree that it may be transferred outside the European Economic Area. Countries outside the European Economic Area do not always have strong data protection laws. We will, however, always take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is used by third parties in accordance with this policy.

3. SECURITY

All personal information is received by us and retrieved using secure technology. In order to provide a safe and secure environment for your personal information we have physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in place with a view to protecting that information against loss, misuse or unauthorised alteration. In certain areas we use industry standard SSL-encryption to protect data transmissions and firewalls are used to block unauthorised traffic to the servers and the actual servers are located in a secure location which can only be accessed by authorised personnel.

4. IP ADDRESSES AND COOKIES

We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration. This is statistical data about out users’ browsing actions and patterns and does not identify any individual.

For the same reason, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file. A cookie is a small data file that certain web sites write to your hard drive when you visit them. The only personal information a cookie can contain is information a user supplies him or herself. A cookie can’t read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. Cookies, however, enhance our web site performance in a number of ways including providing a secure way for us to verify your identity during your visit to our website and personalising your experience on our site making it more convenient for you. We therefore use cookie technology to track or record information about visitors to our site. Your privacy and security are not compromised when you accept a cookie from our website. You can refuse cookies by turning them off on your web browser and you do not need to have cookies turned on to successfully use our service, however you may not be able to access the full functions of our site.

5. YOUR RIGHTS

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for the purposes set out in this privacy policy, including without limitation marketing purposes, at any time except insofar as we are obliged to process and/or disclose such data to comply with legal or regulatory requirements or a court order. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by contacting us at info@youthmedia.co.uk. You can also indicate as part of the registration process and any future sign up process that you do not want information to be used for marketing purposes by checking the appropriate box. Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

We will comply with our obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998 (the “Act”) in respect of the data we collect from you. We will hold your data securely and keep it for only so long as is necessary in respect of the service being provided to you. The Act gives you the right to access personal information held about you. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the Act. Any access request may be subject to a fee of £10 to meet our costs in providing you with details of the personal information we hold about you.

6. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We may change the terms of our privacy policy from time to time without having to provide you with prior notification. Any changes to our privacy policy in the future will be posted to the web site and/or, where we think it is appropriate, through email notification.

7. USERS UNDER 16 YEARS

We take the privacy of young persons very seriously and make special provisions to ensure any personal information relating to young persons is kept secure. Where a person is under 16 years of age then personal data will only be collected by us with the explicit and verifiable consent of their parent or guardian unless the person is over 12 years, understands what is involved and the information collected is restricted to that necessary for us to send the limited communications set out in this privacy policy.

Notwithstanding any other section in this privacy policy where personal data is collected from a person under 16 years we will not disclose any of the data without their parent or guardian’s explicit and verifiable consent unless the person is over 12 years and it is clear that they understand that the information is being disclosed and the consequences of disclosure. We retain the right to disclose any information necessary to comply with legal and regulatory requirements or a court order.

8. CONTACT

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our data protection and privacy policy or believe we are not properly adhering to it, please send an e-mail to info@youthmedia.co.uk or write to us at Youth Media (UK) Limited, 1 Square Rigger Row, Plantation Wharf, Battersea, London SW11 3TZ.