Privacy Policy (GDPR)
Privacy Policy
We have taken the new General Data Protection Regulation seriously and have reviewed and implemented a new Privacy Policy to better protect the privacy of our valued customers.
Overview
In order for us to operate our business and provide our services to You, it is sometimes necessary for us to collect or process information about You. In general terms, this information will take one or more of the following forms:1 Information that you provide to us directly, such as in the situation where you complete an online form or send us a message via our website;
2 Information that is automatically sent to us by Your computer’s internet browser when you visit our website, such as your computer’s technical address (or ‘IP address’) or information about which particular internet browser you are using and so on;
3 Information about how you use our website or our services, such as which pages you visit, how frequently you visit the site and so forth.
This privacy policy sets out the detail of what information we collect, as well as how that data is used and protected.
Our commitment to data privacy
We are fully committed to maintaining the privacy of any information (‘personal data’) that you provide to us. Furthermore, we commit to ensuring that such data is held securely, used appropriately and only retained for as long as is necessary.Our systems and services are designed with privacy in mind, and we operate a ‘data minimisation’ principle wherever possible – that is to say that we will only ever ask you for the minimum amount of information required to provide our services efficiently; we have no desire to retain (and therefore maintain) any more information than is necessary. We aspire to comply to the fullest extent possible with applicable data protection regulations, in particular the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) and ePrivacy Directive, where applicable.
Who we are
In terms of your use of this website, Gary Pickles acts in the capacity of Data Controller, and should you have any questions or concerns about the data we hold about you, we can be contacted using the information below:Data Controller: Gary Pickles
Email correspondence: gary@metallicgarden.co.uk
Definition of ‘personal data’
When we refer to ‘personal data’ we mean any information that allows us to identify you personally. Obvious examples include your name, email address, postal address etc. We will always seek to gain your explicit consent to providing this information before we collect it from you, although this may not be the only legal basis on which we collect the data.Other types of information, such as your computer’s ‘IP’ address or broad geographical location do not, generally, allow us to identify you directly. However, because in their current form, European data privacy regulations are somewhat vague in this regard, we will cover the use of such data here also.
Who we share data with
We operate on a strict ‘need to know’ basis for all data that we work with, and that is particularly true for any personal data. The only people/organisations that are granted access to personal data are:• Employees who provide design and/or support services;
• Delivery services providing distribution to our customers;
• Our web hosting technology suppliers who provide the physical server infrastructures that our website(s) operate on. We ensure that all servers in use reside physically either in the UK or EU, and that no customer data is transferred to data centres outside the EU.
• Our cloud storage and technology supplier whose services we use for secure backup storage and email relay services.
In all cases where our 3rd party service providers have an establishment outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), we ensure adequate protection of personal data via the accepted EU Model Contract Clauses or EU-US Privacy Shield framework.
How your data is protected
We take the security of all personal data very seriously, and that data is protected in a number of ways:
• Access control: access to personal data is strictly limited in line with our policy detailed in the ‘who we share data with section’ on this page. Access is controlled by individual user accounts, where a strong password policy is enforced
• Dedicated security software: We operate dedicated security scanning and access control software on all of our websites. This software is responsible for limiting login attempts to our site, blocking potentially malicious attempts to access our services, and regularly performing full file system scans.
• Data encryption: where data is stored in a cloud facility (such as the storage of website backup files), that data is encrypted both ‘in transit’ and ‘at rest’ – meaning that all data is securely obscured both during the process of transfer to the cloud provider, and then additionally when it is in storage at its final location. This applies to our own administrative access to the website as well as that of users of our services.
Additionally, we ensure that our own dedicated secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) is used when we access the site from anywhere on a public wifi network.
• Selection of third party service providers: we use a very limited number of third party service providers, but some are essential for the provision of physical hosting environments and cloud services. One of the core factors in the selection of such providers is their ability to provide secure systems and processes. We have written Data Processing Agreements with each of our core service providers that sets out the requirements for data security.
Access to your personal data
In the situation where you have directly provided personal information to us (such as by completing an online form or contacting us for further information), you have a number of rights regarding the personal data that we hold:• You have the right to obtain from us confirmation about whether any such data is being held;
• You have the right to require that we provide you with whatever data we are holding/processing about you, including the right for that data to be transferred to another data controller;
• Even if you have consented to Us processing your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that permission at any time;
• You have the right to require us to rectify any incomplete or incorrect information held about you;
• You have the right to require us to erase the data held about you (the ‘right to be forgotten’);
In the situation where we collect personal data automatically (such as from your internet browser or via internet Cookies or other similar technologies):
• You have the right to object to the legal basis upon which we are collecting this data, and We have an obligation to consider and respond to that objection;
• You have the right to request the prevention of further processing of your data while your objection is considered;
• You have the right to make a complaint to the relevant data protection authority (which, in the UK, is the Information Commissioner’s Office or ‘ICO’)
• In most circumstances, you can exercise these rights without paying a fee to us.
Types of data collected
Website contact forms
When you complete one of the contact forms on our website, we will ask you for a number of pieces of personal information, such as your name, email address and other contact details. This is obviously required for us to respond to your request.If you do not use or submit an online form on the website, no data will be collected in that regard.
Website Analytics
We use Google Analytics to better understand what people look at on our website. When people visit our site, information about their visit (such as which pages they look at, how long they spend on the site and so on) is sent in an anonymous form to Google Analytics (which is controlled by Google) The data contains information about anyone who uses our website from your computer, and there is no way to identify individuals from the data.We ensure that no personally identifiable information is ever contained within the data sent to our analytics providers, and we also perform a process which partially obscures your IP address information. As analytics information is not personal data, we do not specifically ask for your prior consent.
Other Google Services
In addition to Google Analytics, we may now, or in the future, use a number of industry-standard Google services to provide particular pieces of website content. These include:• Google Maps: We may use the Google’s mapping services to provide dynamic geographic maps on our website
• Google Recaptcha: We may use Google’s Recaptcha service (which provides the ‘I Am Not A Robot’ functionality) on our web contact forms. This is a security measure to prevent the abuse of our contact forms by automated programs.
Each of these services involve our website making a connection to one or more Google servers, and may result in Google placing cookies on your device.
More detail
If you are not logged into Facebook when you view our site, then it is not possible for any personal information about your visit to be collected, and therefore we do not specifically ask for your prior consent.
If you are logged into Facebook when you view our site, then Facebook will know when you visit us. We do not have any access to the detail of that personal data, as you have consented to share it with Facebook, not us. We just get to see anonymised data about the numbers of people who have responded to our advertising or other social media activity.
Facebook, may use cookies, web beacons, and other storage technologies to collect or receive information from your websites and elsewhere on the internet and use that information to provide measurement services and target ads. You can learn about Facebook’s privacy policy here.
There are a number of ways of controlling the ads that you see based upon your activity on Facebook. The following resources may help to understand those choices:
• How to opt-out of Facebook interest-based advertising on your browser or mobile device: https://www.facebook.com/help/568137493302217
• About Ads: http://www.aboutads.info/choices
• Your Online Choices: http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/
You can always use your browser’s ‘private’ or ‘incognito’ mode to browse websites anonymously.
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