Privacy and cookie policy

Last updated December 2023.

We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data. This policy explains the terms on which we collect and process your personal data, how we use your personal data, how we protect your personal data and what your rights are with regards to that personal data. We will process your personal data in the following circumstances:

· When you visit our website at prdispatch.com;

· When you sign up to our newsletter;

· When you become a “Member” of PRDispatch;

· When you engage with us by any means, whether it is by email, phone, in person, social media or otherwise; or

· When we have obtained publicly available personal data of journalists, whether they are working as an employee of a company/publication or as a freelancer (“Press Contact”).

Since this policy covers a variety of circumstances, it is intended as a general explanation of our data protection and privacy processes. That being said, where there are differences in the way in which we process personal data depending on who it belongs to, this is flagged within this policy.

1. Who we are

This is the privacy and cookie policy of PRDispatch Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 10921386 and with its registered office at PR Dispatch, 33 Harrison Road, Halifax, HX1 2AF (“we” or “us”). We are the controller responsible for your personal data.

We comply with “Data Protection Requirements”, which means the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) (2016/679) (“GDPR”), and any applicable laws, regulations, and other legal requirements relating to (a) privacy, data security, and protection of personal data; and (b) the processing of any personal data, which may include, but are not limited to, the EU law retained version of the GDPR (“UK GDPR”), the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection 2020, Lei Geral de Protecao de Dados (Brazil’s General Data Protection Law), the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”), the Colorado Privacy Act (“CPA”), the Connecticut Data Privacy Act, the Utah Consumer Privacy Act (“UCPA”), and the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk) and our registration number is ZB028815. You have the right to make a complaint to the ICO at any time if you have any issues with how we process your personal data. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance by emailing hello@prdispatch.com. We’ll then take the necessary issues to resolve it for you.

2. What do we do

We provide award-winning PR memberships to in-house marketing teams so they can secure press exposure. As part of that membership, we have created a database of Press Contacts which we make available to Members (“Press Contact Database”). For us to be able to provide this service, we use publicly available personal data, as explained in this policy.

3. The data we may collect about you

Personal data/information means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It doesn’t include anonymous data. We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

· Identity Data includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth, gender, social media handle, job title, your company name, your profile photo, and the publication(s) you as a Press Contact are affiliated or have worked with.

· Contact Data includes home address, work address, email address, and telephone numbers.

· Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.

· Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.

· Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access our website.

· Profile Data includes your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback, and survey responses.

· Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products, and services.

· Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose, isn’t considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity to us. We may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature.

We don’t collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). We also don’t collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

4. How is your personal data collected?

We may use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

· Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity and Contact by filling in forms, by corresponding or engaging with us by post, phone, email, social media or otherwise, by joining our memberships.

· Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, including as a Member, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies.

· Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources, such as Google, Companies House, or the electoral register.

Press Contacts

If you are a Press Contact, we may obtain your personal data through the three methods set out above, although we may predominantly use the third (third parties or publicly available sources). For instance, we may obtain your Identity and Contact Data, specifically your name, email address, social media handle, job title, and publications you have worked with, by using the following means:

· By finding your name from the by-lines within publications available online or in print;

· By undertaking research into the publications you have worked with or you are affiliated with, including areas of specialism; or

· By looking you up on social media, including but not limited to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The reason we gather this personal data is so that the brands we work with can contact you with pitches of interest and hopefully, establish a mutually beneficial relationship between you. The way in which we share and store this publicly available personal data is explained within this policy. Where you are working as a freelancer, we will always ask you if you would like your contact details to be recorded in our Press Contact Database.

5. How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when we can rely on a legitimate (lawful) basis, such as:

· Where we need to perform the contract, we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.

· Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.

· Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

6. Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below the ways we may use your personal data, and which of the legitimate bases we rely on to do so:

7.              Marketing

You may receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased goods or services from us and you haven’t opted out of receiving that marketing. We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this won’t apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a product/service purchase, warranty registration, product/service experience or other transactions.

8. Cookies

Our website uses cookies in accordance with the relevant parts of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 and Data Protection Regulations to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our website. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive.

We use the following cookies:

· Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services.

· Analytical or performance cookies. These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.

· Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).

Please note that third parties may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These named third parties may include, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services. These third-party cookies are likely to be analytical cookies or performance cookies or targeting cookies:

· Google Analytics – this is a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. The cookies used by Google Analytics help us to analyse how users use our website and to count the number of people who use it. Google Analytics stores your IP address anonymously. Google does not associate your IP address with any personally identifiable information;

· Facebook Ads (the Facebook pixel) – these cookies collect information about how visitors use our website. This data is collected anonymously and is used to help improve our website’s functionality; and

· Google Ad Words – these cookies collect information about how visitors use our website. This data is collected anonymously, to help make our marketing communications more relevant, and is used to improve our website’s functionality.

We will always ask for your consent to use non-essential cookies. You are free to withhold consent to this, but it means that we might not be able to provide the full website experience to you, including some elements of video advertising. If at any time you wish to disable our cookies, you can do so through the settings on your browser, or whenever the pop-up appears on the website (each time you access the website).

9. Disclosures of your personal data

We may disclose your information in the following cases:

· If we want to sell our business, or our company, we can disclose it to the potential buyer;

· We can disclose it to other businesses in our group, as defined in the UK Companies Act 2006;

· We can disclose it if we have a legal obligation to do so, or in order to protect other people’s property, safety, or rights; and

· We can exchange information with others to protect against fraud or credit risks.

We may also contract with third parties to supply services to you on our behalf. These include:

· Credit card processing services;

· Order fulfilment service providers;

· Analytics service providers;

· Event/campaign management service providers;

· Website management service providers;

· Information technology and related infrastructure provision;

· Email delivery services; and

· Our auditors and legal advisors.

Specifically, the third party processors we currently use in our business activities include the following:

·    Active Campaign – manages our email marketing;

·    Airtable – stores the Press Contact details;

·    Calendly– schedules our calls

·    Circle – stores the data collected on our website;

·    Outseta – manages our PRDispatch membership;

·    Squarespace – hosts our website and stores the cookies our website collects;

·    Stripe – processes payments; and

·    Zapier – connects the platforms we use and pushes data from one platform to another.

It is important to note that these third party processors are bound by data protection obligations in the same way that we, or any company that processes personal data is. If you would like more information about how these third parties process and store your personal data, you can find out more information by clicking the links and visiting their terms and conditions and privacy policies.

10. Disclosure of Press Contacts to our Members

As stated above, the Press Contact personal data we have obtained in accordance with this policy is shared only with those brands that have a valid PRDispatch membership. If you are working as a freelancer, we will obtain your consent before adding you to the Press Contact Database. The Press Contact Database is held within Airtable and access to it is password protected.

While our Members will have access to the Press Contact Database, it is down to each Member to choose the right Press Contact for them. Members are then able to use the data within the Press Contact Database so that they can:

· Contact them with pitches of interest;

· Contact them to provide press releases or updates to their marketing;

· Contact them to correct any inaccuracies in the publications the Press Contacts have shared on that brand; and

· Send their products.

We ask our Members to ensure that they use the Press Contact Database appropriately, such as by contacting only those Press Contacts that they have a genuine interest in establishing a relationship with, or by choosing those working within the same industry.

If you as a Press Contact feel that certain Members are not respecting this, please do contact us and we can either assist you in addressing this or we can remove your contact details from our Press Contact Database entirely. You can find out more information in clause 14 below.

11. Data security

Data security is of great importance to us, and to protect your personal data we have put in place suitable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure data we collect. For instance, we are certified to ISO 27001. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

If there is an incident where we become aware that there has been a data breach, we will let you know without undue delay. We will then take all necessary steps, including informing the ICO, to limit the extent of the breach and to prevent a further reoccurrence.

It is important to note that we can only do our best to protect your personal data but the transmission of information over the internet is not entirely secure. Any personal data you share with us over the internet is done at your own risk.

12. International transfers

We may transfer your personal data outside of the UK or the European Economic Area (EEA) where we engage third parties to provide services on our behalf, such as to receive services or deal with payment. Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK or the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

· We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data; or

· Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA or the UK.

13. Data retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

Press Contacts

We are always looking to keep our Press Contact Database current and accurate, and so we audit the Press Contacts regularly. For those Press Contacts are no longer working in journalism, or have been asked to be taken off (as explained in clause 14), we will update the Press Contact Database to reflect this.

14. Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under the Data Protection Regulations in relation to your personal data:

· Request access to your personal data;

· Request correction of your personal data;

· Request erasure of your personal data;

· Object to processing of your personal data;

· Request restriction of processing your personal data;

· Request transfer of your personal data; and

· Right to withdraw consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us by emailing hello@prdispatch.com.

You won’t have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights), but we can charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive, or we can refuse to comply in these circumstances.

We may need you to provide evidence of your identity as a security measure and we may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month, but it could take longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Press Contacts

If you would like to exercise any of your rights as set out above, or if you would like us to remove your personal data from our Press Contact Database, or for anything else, please contact us by emailing hello@prdispatch.com.

15. Notice for California residents of privacy practices and rights

If you are a California resident, California law may provide you with additional rights regarding your personal data. The CCPA gives you the following rights:

● Right to know about the personal information we collect and share:

● The CCPA gives you the right to request that we disclose the specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you;

● Please see above for information on the data we collect on you, and how we process it; and

● We do not sell your personal information. However, we do disclose your personal data to limited third parties, as described above.

● Right of deletion:

● You have the right to request that we delete your personal information, subject to certain exceptions.

● If you wish to delete your personal data, please contact us at hello@prdispatch.com. Please note that we may require certain information from you in order to verify your identity before proceeding with your request.

We collect the categories of personal information from you in connection with your use of our website and our services as described above. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights.

16. Third party links

This policy only relates to our website and to our business activities. We might have links on/within our services to other websites, and these websites will have their own terms and conditions and privacy policies. You should check those privacy policies before providing your personal data to those websites.

17. Changes to this policy

We can update this policy from time to time as laws change or as our website or services change. If we make material changes to this policy, and we need your consent to those changes, we will contact you by email to do so.