Privacy Policy

Last Updated: 20th July 2021 (Clarified “Outreach” data)

Introduction

This is the privacy policy of Waterdown Media (we, our, us, Site, Website). This policy applies domain-wide across waterdownmedia.co.uk, including any subdomains (example.waterdownmedia.co.uk) and on every subpage (waterdownmedia.co.uk/privacy). This policy allows Waterdown Media to be completely transparent in our privacy practices on the Site, to inform you what data we collect and how we go about it. It will also inform you how long we keep it for, and your rights over it, including your right to have it deleted. 

In this policy, we may refer to data subjects (individuals we have data from) as “visitors”, “users”, or “you” or “your”. 

We process some of your data directly while other data gets processed by advertising, analytics and social media partners. These partners all have their own privacy policies which should be referred to for the specific privacy elements of said services and are linked here where applicable. 

This policy is designed to be a jargon-free way of explaining why that is the case while giving you all the details you deserve. For any questions regarding this policy, including exercising your right to have your data removed, please contact our Data Protection Officer using the contact details below. 

Contact Details

The data protection officer of Waterdown Media is Jake Symons. He can be contacted by email or phone.

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (+44) 07939 670 980 – Direct / WhatsApp / Signal  

These contact details are also included at the end of this policy for your convenience. 

Personal Data you may give us

You may choose to share your personal data with us by contacting us directly. 

It’s a completely voluntary action if you choose to share personal data with us. You are welcome to browse this Site without sharing such data. 

However not providing this data may limit your access to services that request it, for example, you’ll be unable to comment or access our paid services. 

Comments

See Also: Comments Policy

What are comments?

Comments are user-generated text that can appear under certain pages of our Site where users have the option to respond to existing comments, as well as add their own new ones. They may be posted by any visitor to the Site, our guest contributors, or the staff here at Waterdown Media. 

Data collected

To leave a comment on our Site, your name, email address and the message itself are all required. Your IP address is also collected for the purposes of spam prevention. 

Why we need that data

Name: We use a name to distinguish comments from each other to help with clarity of understanding for those reading the comments. A nickname or alias is acceptable provided it’s appropriate and doesn’t impersonate another commentator. 

Email Address: We use this to be able to identify comments if you want your data to be deleted. By providing your email address, Waterdown Media can fulfil our obligation to allow you to delete all of your comments by collecting and removing comments under that address. Your email address is not published with your comment. 

Comment Contents: When posting comments you are welcome to write what you like providing it’s in line with our Comments Policy. We encourage you not to include personal data in the comments you post. We are not responsible for any legal, physical or otherwise consequences you experience from posting a comment on our Site. 

Comment Responsibility Disclaimer

Whilst every care is taken to ensure the comments on this Site are not going to cause harm it is not possible for us to monitor them all and thus ultimately the sole responsibility of the comment is with the commenter. 

The Waterdown Media Team reserves the right to delete comments without warning or prior notice at our sole discretion. 

How long do you keep comments for?

We keep comments indefinitely unless they are deleted by the Waterdown Media Team, or requested to be deleted by the commenter. 

Please note comments may be archived using other services such as Google Cache or the Wayback Machine after they have been deleted from the Site. Other users can also screenshot comments and we have no ability to identify or delete your comments from individuals who engage in such practices.

How can I delete my comments?

We collect an email address when you leave a comment on the Site. This email address is used to identify your comment in the case you want to delete it.

To verify your comments are indeed your personal data, please send an email requesting this on the same email address that you used to post the comment. 

Waterdown Media discourages the use of temporary email addresses that you will lose access to. Please make sure to use an email address you have access to when commenting so that if you wish for your comments to be deleted, you can verify your identity. 

Please note if you are unable to verify your identity we have the right to decline your request to have your comment(s) deleted.

We do not request any documents such as a passport to verify your identity for this purpose. Please disregard any request for such documents. All emails from our team will end @waterdownmedia.co.uk. 

Contact Forms

What is it?

On our Site, we have contact forms that allow you to get in touch with our team. These contact forms are sent to our email address and are used to provide our services such as replying to your enquiry. 

Why do we collect data?

Contact forms on the Site provide a way for you to get in touch with us and provide the data we need to provide our services efficiently. This varies from page to page, for example on our blog services page we request that you send us the URL of the sites we’d be writing for, but that’s not needed on our general enquiries form. 

A copy of this data is sent to HubSpot (our CRM system) as well as a notification sent to our private Slack channel. 

This data is collected so the Waterdown Media Team can reply to you in responding to your contact form submission. We do not disclose contact form information to any other third parties unless we are required by law to do so or have your permission. 

How long do we collect this data?

As a general rule, we archive all contact form correspondence for up to seven years unless you request for your data to be deleted sooner.

This varies depending on the nature of your submission: 

• If we are providing paid services to you, then we may keep your contact form submission with the rest of your records for seven years. 
• If your contact form submission is in regards to a partnership we may keep your submission longer, until the partnership ends.
• If your submission is marked as spam it will be deleted within 60 days unless it’s reported by us to the relevant authorities. 
• If you have asked us to keep you on record, for example as a potential guest author, partner or employee we may keep your data indefinitely until you ask us to delete it or we choose to sooner. 

Under your “Right to be Forgotten” you can ask us to delete any contact form submissions we may have from you. You can do this by sending us an email from the same email address used on the contact form submission (so we can verify you). We’ll let you know within 24 hours that we’ve received your request and when we’ve deleted your data (within 30 days in most circumstances). We’ll also inform you if we’re unable to delete and the legal/regulatory reason why we have to keep it.

Please note we may not be able to delete your contact form submissions if you’re unable to verify the email address you provided. For that reason please only use a genuine email address you’ll retain access to.

Email

What is it?

Email correspondence to us covers any email you’ve sent to shared inboxes (example [email protected]) or individual email accounts [email protected]. 

Why do we collect data?

Emails are our main form of communication and we use them to have discussions over current or future work, resolve issues, take feedback and more. We collect this data because it’s essential to the operation of our business.

We cannot take responsibility for the security of email transmissions.

How long do we collect this data?

Our standard retention for emails is seven years to comply with regulatory record-keeping requirements here in the UK. 

You may request your emails deleted sooner by sending us an email using the same address as the emails you’d like us to delete. 

If Waterdown Media has provided you services (for example we have a contract), we are not in a position to delete any correspondence regarding this. 

We retain this data as required by law for seven years so we’re able to manage any disputes between us or requests to the data by HMRC. This includes emails where no official documentation has been transferred (for example a quick email requesting a blog post amendment). 

CVs & Portfolios

What is it?

When we open a job application, we are sent CVs directly. We may also receive CVs through third parties such as Indeed, and our recruiting partners. 

Why do we collect data?

Our first stage of hiring goes through CVs and portfolios to find a shortlist of candidates to proceed to the next round

How long do we collect this data?

We will delete all data from unsuccessful applicants within 30 days of the position closing. 

If you’ve been unsuccessful, we may ask that we keep your CV on file for a future position that may arise. It’s completely optional if you opt into this. You can opt out at any time.

If you become employed by us, we keep your details in your file for six years after you leave. +

Personal Data we collect ourselves

Outreach

What is it?

Our Sales Team conducts outreach to individuals and companies we believe could benefit from Waterdown Media’s services. This is commonly known as “cold pitching” or “cold emailing”. 

As part of this, we may collect and save public information collected ourselves, by our affiliates or using third-party tools.  

Why do we collect data?

We collect this data because we have a legitimate interest for companies that we believe could benefit from our services to hear about us. Our outreach ensures we’re not relying on inbound sales strategies, and keeps our business competitive and viable in the market. 

Any data we collect for the purposes of outreach is never sold or listed in exchange for compensation. Outreach data will only be shared with representatives of Waterdown Media and will be held securely in private files using software such as Airtable or Google Sheets.

How long do we collect this data?

If we don’t hear back from you, we may send a further follow up email. If there’s still no response within 30 days, we won’t send any further emails. 

We’ll retain your email on our “no contact” list to ensure you’re not contacted again. All other data will be deleted. 

Data that is collected automatically

When browsing this Site, we automatically collect information about your computer hardware and software. This includes your operating system and browser type, your IP address, the pages you’ve viewed, any widgets or downloads you’ve interacted with, clickstream data, access times and the website you’ve come from. This is collected automatically and stored in our server logs as well as by our partners. 

This helps provide statistics on how our Site is being used to identify any errors or security issues, find out what pages are performing poorly to improve them and overall provide a better website and service experience. 

Server Logs

Our server logs may store the above data collected automatically from you. We host this with SiteGround and you can read our Data Processing Agreement here. We do not transfer this data out of SiteGround or share it with third parties unless we are legally obligated to do so. We do not delete this data on request as per Recital 49 as it is necessary to retain this data to ensure network security.

Cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small pieces of data in the form of text files that are stored on your device when you use the Site. They can last for any duration of time; some disappear instantly, and others stay around much longer.

You can clear cookies from your browser at any time. A guide by Livewire explains how to remove cookies from every major browser. If you do not have a browser listed in the article, then a quick Google search should provide some assistance or consult your browser’s help centre for advice which you, if you use desktop, should be able to access by pressing F1 on your keyboard.

Our Cookies

To learn more about the cookies used on this Site please see our Cookie Policy. 

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this Site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account logged in to that website.

Twitter – Official embed tool used to display tweets in an interactive form as opposed to a static image – Privacy Link

Quora – Used to embedding helpful Quora answers directly into the post – Privacy Link

Instagram – Used to pull our Instagram feed into the Site– Privacy Link

YouTube – Displays Video Content in – Privacy Link

Anchor-FM – Hosts podcast episodes – Privacy Link

Note: YouTube

YouTube offers a “privacy-enhanced mode” which is enforced across YouTube media on this Site. YouTube claims this prevents them from recording any data on this Site until the video is played. If you’re signed into YouTube when viewing the Site, YouTube may associate the video you watch here with your account. 

Who we share your data with

To operate our business and ensure we’re continually improving our website and services we partner with a number of third-party services. For our partners to work effectively we have to share some of your personal data with them.

We only select industry-leading partners that have robust privacy and security policies in place which have been linked where appropriate. However as mentioned in our Security clause the Internet is not completely secure and we cannot guarantee and be liable for the security of your data – any transmission of said data is at your own risk.

The technologies below may use cookies to help them function – more detail of those can be found in the Cookie Policy.

Advertising Partners

Through our advertising partners, we may bring you advertisements on other sites for our own products and services (for example, through retargeting). We may also show you adverts on this Site from our partners based on your likely interests from their own data collection (such as your browsing history).

Please note that at any one time all, 1 or more, or none of the following services could be active on our website. We may turn advertising technologies on and off on our website at our discretion without prior notice. If we add advertising partners we will update this policy and a changelog of such updates is located at the end of this policy. 

To opt out of advertising, we recommend the following third-party tools:

1. https://www.networkadvertising.org/
2. https://www.youronlinechoices.com/

Google Ads

We use Google Ads to remarket to visitors that have visited our Site on other websites. You may see advertising for our Site on the Google Display Network (GDN) or on Google Search (RLSA).

You can learn more about Google Ad personalisation here opt out of Google Ad personalisation here.

Please note that you may still see advertising from us based on the keywords you search even if you opt out of ad personalisation.

Facebook

We use Facebook Custom Audiences to deliver website advertisements on Facebook to individuals who have previously visited our Site. You can opt out of Facebook remarketing here.

If you have contacted us on our business page “Advanced Matching” may link your Facebook account and your visit to the website. Facebook can also process this data and link it to your own Facebook account. Here is their privacy policy and more information on their GDPR policies.

MailChimp

We use MailChimp for an email newsletter sign up that you’re able to opt into across the Site. MailChimp is an opt in service, and you will be informed if you are signing up to MailChimp separately from regular email correspondence. 

Filling out a contact form or sending an email to a @waterdownmedia.co.uk address does not automatically add you to MailChimp to further protect your privacy. 

If you do opt into MailChimp, you’ll be ticking a box to state you agree for them to retain your details to receive the newsletter. MailChimp has its own comprehensive privacy policy available here.

You can unsubscribe at any time. 

Analytics Partners

Our analytics partners help us monitor and gather statistics on the usage of the Site to help us understand how visitors are using it, so we are able to make improvements to the website. Like our advertising partners, any number of the following may be active at any one time.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics collects data on the usage of the Site to help us make informed decisions to improve the experience on the Site.

This data may include the following:

• Browser data (such as version, e.g. Chrome 81) 
• Operating System (e.g. Windows 10) 
• The website that referred you to this Site (such as clicking a link on Twitter)
• What pages you’ve viewed on the Site and for how long
• The time and date of your visit to the Site
• Any errors you may have come across while visiting this Site
• Interaction with video content on the Site

This service also collects your IP address. IP anonymisation is in force across our website. This makes your IP address anonymous as soon as it is technically feasible to do so.

To request deletion of this data, we need your ClientID

If you’re using Chrome or Firefox navigate to developer tools while using our website. Other browsers may or may not have similar features, please check or use the two mentioned. Once there copy and paste in the following code:

ga.getAll()[0].get(‘clientId’);

This should then return a client ID. For example:

ga.getAll()[0].get(‘clientId’);

“394442183.1605267”

Please include your own ClientID within your request if you would like this data deleted. 

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is used to manage the HTML and JavaScript tags that are used for tracking and analytics on this website. Used by these services, GTM allows us to efficiently track analytics to continue to improve user experience and ensure the success of the Site.

Pixels contained in GTM:

• Pinterest Tag – Privacy Link
• Facebook Pixel – Privacy Link
• Twitter Universe Website Tag – Privacy Link
• LinkedIn Insights Tag – Privacy Link

Waterdown Media uses these on this Site to help measure the performance of our ads on the respective platforms. 

Operations Partners

Our operations partners help our business function and ensure we’re able to provide an efficient high-quality service to every visitor to our Site.

HubSpot

We use HubSpot as our CRM to manage our communications and marketing on this Site. Most correspondence you have with Waterdown Media is stored in our HubSpot account, including live chat, emails and Facebook Messenger conversations. 

To protect your privacy, we have opted out of HubSpot’s company insights database. 

This data is stored so we’re able to provide you with a better service by responding efficiently. HubSpot’s privacy policy can be found here. 

When deleting your data from the HubSpot service, we use GDPR compliant deletion.

Jake Symons, Managing Director, has signed a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) with HubSpot on behalf of the Site. You can view the signed copy in full here. 

Elementor

We use Elementor to design our Site and to power contact forms across the Site. When you fill out a contact form your browser and IP address are included in the message for the purposes of spam prevention. This information will be viewable by the Waterdown Media Team who answer contact submissions with a copy retained on our server.

Gravatar

Gravatar is part of the Automattic (WordPress) family and it allows users to have a custom avatar in their comments. Gravatar checks your email address against the Gravatar database and if it finds a match (i.e. you have a Gravatar account) it displays your Avatar with your comment.

Gravatar is a popular plugin and is used by many sites such as Stack Overflow and GitHub. We’ve also installed the Avatar Privacy plugin to protect your email address further.

However, there is still the possibility that in using the Gravatar service you may make your email address public and we cannot guarantee your privacy using the service. Gravatar may also be able to log the sites you visit. If this is something of concern to you please do not use the Gravatar service or comment on our Site.

Privacy Link

Heateor

We use Heateor’s Sassy Social Sharing Plugin to add sharing icons to the blog pages of the Site. This plugin sends an API request to the third party website which includes your IP address. Heateor claims this data is not stored or shared with any third parties. 

A Facebook widget is embedded which allows you to see the number of shares on our webpage. This may collect your IP address, web browser and user agent, store and retrieve cookies on your browser, embed additional tracking and monitor your interaction with the widget which may link the data to your Facebook account if you are logged into Facebook. 

We also use a Twitter Tweet widget that makes requests to Twitter so you’re able to tweet our webpages. This makes your IP address visible to Twitter.

We also use the Pinterest save widget to allow you to pin images from the post. These requests make your IP address visible to Twitter.

We also use a LinkedIn share widget to share our posts with your network. This also tracks your IP address. 

We also use a Reddit badge widget which may log information when you interact with the widget. This may include your IP address, user-agent string, browser type, operating system, referral URLs, device information and IDs, pages visited, links clicks, user interactions and the requested URL and hardware settings in accordance with their privacy policy. 

We use Google Analytics, already mentioned to track these social shares. 

Privacy Link

Google reCAPTCHA

We use this Google service to prevent spam abuse of our contact forms and our login page. This service may use your IP address to verify if you are a human on the Site. Learn more.

Cloudflare

We use Cloudflare DNS and CDN to improve the performance of the Site. Information from our website to your browser and vice-versa may be transmitted through the Cloudflare network. Jake Symons, Managing Director, and Cloudflare have entered into an Enterprise Subscription Agreement to ensure any data is processed under their GDPR and privacy policies. 

WordFence

Our Site uses Wordfence security to protect ourselves from malicious individuals who could attempt to hack the Site and put our wider data security at risk. This service stores your IP address, user agent and referer in our database. Privacy Link. 

Off-Site

Facebook Page Insights

We actively monitor Facebook Page Insights, which is Facebook’s built-in analytics software which shows the actions that are taken on the Waterdown Media Facebook page. Our team processes these insights to see what content is performing well on the Facebook Page. You can view Facebook’s policies in relation to this data here. We do not have access to your personal Facebook data in these insights. Click here for more information on Facebook’s GDPR compliance.

Other Social Media

Waterdown Media cannot be liable for your data or privacy after you leave the Website, even when interacting with us, such as on social media. When sharing posts or communicating with us on other platforms, the website in question is responsible for your data. 

Private messages are kept confidential and will never be shared outside the Waterdown Media team unless there is a legal obligation to do so, or we have your permission. 

If you require your data to be deleted on a third party site, then please contact the social media site in question to have your data deleted. These sites should also have their own privacy policy, to use as a reference on how to do this. 

Waterdown Media has an active presence on other social media platforms which also collect their own analytics data. We have no control over the analytics which are collected by the sites you visit (such as Facebook or Twitter). However, the platforms choose to share some of that data with us.

Your Data Rights

Right to be informed

You have the right to be informed about how we use your personal data when visiting this Site. This policy has been created to be completely transparent and fully inform you what happens with your data.

Right to Access

You have the right to access your personal data at any time. We match comments and emails to your email address. 

To access your personal data please send the same email address so we can verify your identity. You’ll then be sent a zip/pdf with your personal data. 

Right to rectification

You have the right to correct any data we may have about you. 

We will use our discretion as to whether your comment is edited, or deleted. 

Previous correspondence (such as emails) cannot be modified. 

Right to erasure

Also known as the right to be forgotten, you can request your data to be deleted at any time. 

To ask for your data to be deleted, please send an email using the same address attached to the data you want to be deleted. There is no set format for this email, a simple list of the data you want deleted is acceptable, however, you can also use a template if you prefer. 

You will be informed within 24 hours when your request has been received, and your personal data will be removed from us within 30 calendar days. 

We will inform you of any data we retain and the legal/regulatory reason why that is the case. 

Right to restrict processing

You have the right to restrict us from processing your data. 

For example, you may no longer want to be contacted after filling out a contact form.

Please let us know this is the case by sending an email to [email protected] or to our data protection officer and you won’t be contacted further.

Right of Portability

You have the right to take the data Waterdown Media holds and use it for your own purposes. Please file an access request for a downloadable zip containing your data.

Right to object

You have the right to object to Waterdown Media processing your data. If you wish to exercise this right, please do not submit comments, fill out our contact form, or send us emails. 

If you wish to object to automated data collection you may turn off cookies when you visit the Site. Please clear your cookies and revisit our Site where you’ll be able to set your preferences again. 

Please note we still collect necessary data with cookies disabled so if you object to that use, please terminate your use of the Site.

Right to withdraw

You have the right to withdraw your consent to having your data processed at any time by contacting Waterdown Media 

California Privacy Rights (CCPA)

As a resident of California, you have the right to know how we collect use and share your data as a business. Waterdown Media does not sell your personal data to third parties. We may share it for the reasons stated above. The reasons we may share your personal data are as follows:

• Understand how users are interacting with our website so that we can optimise it
• Send marketing and promotional material to generate business sales to opted-in users.
• Send outreach emails to relevant, targeted businesses who could benefit from our services.
• Promote relevant information to you from our partners, including advertising partners.
• Contact you in regards to an enquiry or an existing order.
• Meet legal and regulatory requirements.

Right to know

You also have the right to know the categories of information we’ve collected in the last 12 months. 

Contact Information – we get this directly from you or our third-party service partners – used for communicating with you in regards to our services

Financial Data – we get this from you if you make a purchase from us – used for processing payment in exchange for our services.

Geolocation – collected by third-party analytics partners – used to see what parts of the world our visitors are coming from to inform marketing/business strategy.

Internet/electronic activity – collected by third party analytics partners – used to understand the Site better and in error diagnostics (for example, seeing if users of a particular browser have an increase in errors). 

Right to non-discrimination

You have the right to non-discrimination so if you choose to exercise your privacy rights, you will not be discriminated against. However, exercising some of your privacy rights may prevent you from fully accessing our services. For example, if you choose not to provide us with financial information, we will not be able to offer you any of our paid services.

Right to access

You have the right to access the personal information we’ve collected from you in the last 12 months. Please email our DPO ([email protected]) who will send you a PDF or ZIP file with this data.  

Right to deletion.

You have the right to deletion, subject to the exemptions above. Please email our DPO with your request and you’ll be notified in 24 hours we’ve received your request, and informed when your data has been deleted (and what we’re unable to delete) within 14 days. 

Security

At Waterdown Media, we take reasonable steps to provide electronic and physical safeguards against your personal data to prevent its theft, unauthorised access, modification or loss. 

We have a number of administrative processes in place to limit the number of individuals that have access to your data to the smallest number possible.

We only work with third-party providers that have a rigorous privacy and security policy which have been linked above for your reference. 

However as already stated no transmission over the Internet cannot guarantee to be secure and as such we are unable to guarantee the security of any personal data that you transfer over the Internet to us.

Contact

This privacy policy has the aim of being as clear as possible. If you have any questions or wish to use any of your rights outlined above, then don’t hesitate to contact the Data Protection Officer whose details are below.

Data Protection Officer

Site: https://waterdownmedia.co.uk 

Name: Jake Symons

Email: [email protected]

Phone:(+44) 07939 670980 – Direct / WhatsApp / Signal 

Last Updated: 20th July 2021

Changelog

20.07.2021: Clarified “Outreach” section

05.05.2021: Updated External Links

26.04.2021: Removed Google Adsense Program

15.04.2021: Updated DPO’s details, formatting and grammatical tweaks

03.01.21: Included Signed DPA Agreement Between Jake Symons and HubSpot 

23.11.20: Added information regarding new Heateor social plugin.