GuestTalk - privacy and cookies policy

  1. Introduction

1.1    We are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our website visitors and GuestTalk service users.

1.2    This policy applies where we are acting as a data controller with respect to the personal data of our website visitors and service users; in other words, where we determine the purposes and means of the processing of that personal data.

1.3    We use cookies on our website. Insofar as those cookies are not strictly necessary for the provision of our website and services, we will ask you to consent to our use of cookies when you first visit our website.

1.4    In this policy, “we”, “us” and “our” refer to GuestTalk Ltd. For more information about us, see Section 16.

  1. How we use your personal data

2.1    In this Section 2 we have set out:

(a)    the general categories of personal data that we may process;

(b)    in the case of personal data that we did not obtain directly from you, the source and specific categories of that data;

(c)    the purposes for which we may process personal data; and

(d)    the legal bases of the processing.

2.2    We may process information relating to our customer and prospective customer relationships, including contact information and communications content (“customer relationship data“). The customer relationship data may include your name, your employer, your job title or role, your contact details, and information contained in communications between us and you or your employer. The source of the customer relationship data is you or your employer. The customer relationship data may be processed for the purposes of managing our relationships with customers, communicating with customers, keeping records of those communications and promoting our products and services to customers. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interests, namely the proper conduct and management of our customer relationships.

2.3    We may process information relating to transactions, including purchases of services, that you enter into with us and/or through our website (“transaction data“). The transaction data may include your contact details, your card details and the transaction details. The transaction data may be processed for the purpose of supplying the purchased services and keeping proper records of the transactions. The legal basis for this processing our legitimate interests, namely the proper administration of our website and business.

2.4    We may process information that you provide to us for the purpose of subscribing to our email notifications and/or newsletters (“notification data“). The notification data may be processed for the purposes of sending you the relevant notifications and/or newsletters. The legal basis for this processing is consent.

2.5    We may process information used in case studies and other marketing materials we produce (“marketing data“). This data may include your name, your employer and quotations from your regarding our services. The source of this data is you or your employer. This data may be processed for the promotional, publicity and other marketing purposes. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interests, namely the marketing of our business.

2.6    We may process data about your use of our website and the GuestTalk services (“usage data“). The usage 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 usage data is our analytics tracking system. This usage 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.

2.7    We may process the content of and metadata relating to messages sent by means of the GuestTalk service (“message data“). We will only use the message data for the purposes of analysing the use of the GuestTalk service and improving the GuestTalk service, including the creation of new message templates. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interests, namely monitoring and improving our services.

2.8    We may process any of your personal data identified in this policy where necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims, whether in court proceedings or in an administrative or out-of-court procedure. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interests, namely the protection and assertion of our legal rights, your legal rights and the legal rights of others.

2.9    We may process any of your personal data identified in this policy where necessary for the purposes of obtaining or maintaining insurance coverage, managing risks, or obtaining professional advice. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interests, namely the proper protection of our business against risks.

2.10  In addition to the specific purposes for which we may process your personal data set out in this Section 2, we may also process any of your personal data where such processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject, or in order to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of another natural person.

  1. Providing your personal data to others

3.1    We may disclose your personal data to our insurers and/or professional advisers insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes of obtaining or maintaining insurance coverage, managing risks, obtaining professional advice, or the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims, whether in court proceedings or in an administrative or out-of-court procedure.

3.2    Y‌our personal data that is processed by our website or the GuestTalk services will be stored on the servers of our hosting services infrastructure providers; and information about your use of our website and services will be stored by our analytics services providers.

3.3    Financial transactions relating to our services may be handled by our payment services providers, Stripe, Inc. We will share transaction data with our payment services providers only to the extent necessary for the purposes of processing your payments, refunding such payments and dealing with complaints and queries relating to such payments and refunds. You can find information about the payment services providers’ privacy policies and practices at https://stripe.com/privacy.

3.4    Under our agreements with some of our business partners, those partners have a right to audit personal data that we hold to ensure that commission payments are correct and to monitor contractual compliance. We may disclosure your personal data to such partners, but only for these limited purposes.

3.5    In addition to the specific disclosures of personal data set out in this Section 3, we may disclose your personal data where such disclosure is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject, or in order to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of another natural person. We may also disclose your personal data where such disclosure is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims, whether in court proceedings or in an administrative or out-of-court procedure.

  1. International transfers of your personal data

4.1    In this Section 4, we provide information about the circumstances in which your personal data may be transferred from within the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Economic Area (EEA) to a place outside the UK and the EEA.

4.2    Our analytics services provider, Google Inc, has facilities situated in outside the UK and EEA and may store and process your personal data at these facilities. Transfers to each of these countries will be protected by appropriate safeguards.

4.3    You acknowledge that personal data that you send in an email or SMS communication, or submit for publication through our website or services or any third party website or services, may be available, via the internet, around the world. We cannot prevent the use (or misuse) of such personal data by others.

  1. Retaining and deleting personal data

5.1    This Section 5 sets out our data retention policies and procedure, which are designed to help ensure that we comply with our legal obligations in relation to the retention and deletion of personal data.

5.2    EU and UK data protection law require that, when we process personal data for a particular purpose or purposes, that personal data shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.

5.3    We will retain your personal data as follows:

(a)    customer relationship data will be retained for a minimum period of 6 years following the end of the relevant customer relationship, and for a maximum period of 7 years following that date;

(b)    transaction data will be retained for a minimum period of 10 years following the date of the transaction, and for a maximum period of 11 years following that date;

(c)    notification data will be retained until you unsubscribe from the relevant notification service or we discontinue the relevant notification, upon which it will be deleted except to the extent retained for suppression purposes

(d)    usage data will be retained for a period of 36 months following collection; and

(e)    marketing data will be retained for the period during which it is in planned or active use, after which it may be kept in our archives indefinitely; and

(f)    message data will be retained for up to 3 months following collection, after which period it will be deleted or anonymised.

5.4    Notwithstanding the other provisions of this Section 5, we may retain your personal data where such retention is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject, or in order to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of another natural person.

  1. Security of personal data

6.1    We will take appropriate technical and organisational precautions to secure your personal data and to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal data.

6.2    We will store all your personal data on secure servers, personal computers and mobile devices.

6.3    Data that is sent from your web browser to our web server, or from our web server to your web browser, will be protected using encryption technology.

  1. Amendments

7.1    We may update this policy from time to time by publishing a new version on our website.

7.2    You should check this page occasionally to ensure you are happy with any changes to this policy.

  1. Your rights

8.1    In this Section 8, we have summarised the rights that you have under data protection law. Some of the rights are complex, and not all of the details have been included in our summaries. Accordingly, you should read the relevant laws and guidance from the regulatory authorities for a full explanation of these rights.

8.2    Your principal rights under data protection law are:

(a)    the right to access;

(b)    the right to rectification;

(c)    the right to erasure;

(d)    the right to restrict processing;

(e)    the right to object to processing;

(f)    the right to data portability;

(g)    the right to complain to a supervisory authority; and

(h)    the right to withdraw consent.

8.3    You have the right to confirmation as to whether or not we process your personal data and, where we do, access to the personal data, together with certain additional information. That additional information includes details of the purposes of the processing, the categories of personal data concerned and the recipients of the personal data. Providing the rights and freedoms of others are not affected, we will supply to you a copy of your personal data. The first copy will be provided free of charge, but additional copies may be subject to a reasonable fee.

8.4    You have the right to have any inaccurate personal data about you rectified and, taking into account the purposes of the processing, to have any incomplete personal data about you completed.

8.5    In some circumstances you have the right to the erasure of your personal data without undue delay. Those circumstances include: the personal data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed; you withdraw consent to consent-based processing; you object to the processing under certain rules of applicable data protection law; the processing is for direct marketing purposes; and the personal data have been unlawfully processed. However, there are exclusions of the right to erasure. The general exclusions include where processing is necessary: for exercising the right of freedom of expression and information; for compliance with a legal obligation; or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

8.6    In some circumstances you have the right to restrict the processing of your personal data. Those circumstances are: you contest the accuracy of the personal data; processing is unlawful but you oppose erasure; we no longer need the personal data for the purposes of our processing, but you require personal data for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; and you have objected to processing, pending the verification of that objection. Where processing has been restricted on this basis, we may continue to store your personal data. However, we will only otherwise process it: with your consent; for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; for the protection of the rights of another natural or legal person; or for reasons of important public interest.

8.7    You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data on grounds relating to your particular situation, but only to the extent that the legal basis for the processing is that the processing is necessary for: the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of any official authority vested in us; or the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by us or by a third party. If you make such an objection, we will cease to process the personal information unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override your interests, rights and freedoms, or the processing is for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

8.8    You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes (including profiling for direct marketing purposes). If you make such an objection, we will cease to process your personal data for this purpose.

8.9    You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data for scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes on grounds relating to your particular situation, unless the processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out for reasons of public interest.

8.10  To the extent that the legal basis for our processing of your personal data is:

(a)    consent; or

(b)    that the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are party or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract,

and such processing is carried out by automated means, you have the right to receive your personal data from us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. However, this right does not apply where it would adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others.

8.11  If you consider that our processing of your personal information infringes data protection laws, you have a legal right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority responsible for data protection. You may do so in the EU member state of your habitual residence, your place of work or the place of the alleged infringement.

8.12  To the extent that the legal basis for our processing of your personal information is consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of processing before the withdrawal.

8.13  You may exercise any of your rights in relation to your personal data by written notice to us.

  1. Third party websites

9.1    Our website includes hyperlinks to, and details of, third party websites.

9.2    We have no control over, and are not responsible for, the privacy policies and practices of third parties.

  1. Updating information

10.1  Please let us know if the personal information that we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated.

  1. Acting as a data processor

11.1  In respect of personal data that we collect or process on behalf of our customers, including guest contact information and guest communications, we do not act as a data controller; instead, we act as a data processor.

11.2  Insofar as we act as a data processor rather than a data controller, this policy shall not apply. Our legal obligations as a data processor are instead set out in our terms and conditions of service.

  1. About cookies

12.1  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.

12.2  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.

12.3  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.

  1. Cookies that we use

13.1  We use cookies for the following purposes:

(a)    authentication – we use cookies to identify you when you visit our website;

(b)    status – we use cookies to help us to determine if you are logged into the GuestTalk application; and

(c)    cookie consent – we use cookies to store your preferences in relation to the use of cookies more generally.

  1. Cookies used by our service providers

14.1  Our service providers use cookies and those cookies may be stored on your computer when you visit our website or use the GuestTalk services.

14.2  We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of our website and the GuestTalk services. Google Analytics gathers information about use by means of cookies. The information gathered is used to create reports about the use of our website. Google’s privacy policy is available at: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.

  1. Managing cookies

15.1  Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies and to delete cookies. The methods for doing so vary from browser to browser, and from version to version. You can however obtain up-to-date information about blocking and deleting cookies via these links:

(a)    https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647?hl=en (Chrome);

(b)    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cookies-website-preferences (Firefox);

(c)    http://www.opera.com/help/tutorials/security/cookies/ (Opera);

(d)    https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17442/windows-internet-explorer-delete-manage-cookies (Internet Explorer);

(e)    https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21411 (Safari); and

(f)    https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10-microsoft-edge-and-privacy (Edge).

15.2  Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites.

15.3  If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website or services.

  1. Our details

16.1  This website is owned and operated by GuestTalk Ltd.

16.2  We are registered in England and Wales under registration number 05669039, and our registered office is at Clearstream Operations Centre, Station Rd, Church Village, CF38 1AF

16.3  You can contact us:

(a)    by post, to the postal address given above; or

(b)    using our website contact form.

  1. Data protection registration

17.1  We are registered as a data controller with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office.

17.2  Our data protection registration number is ZA496151.