Privacy Policy

Introduction

This policy covers the processing of personal data by Ridstar UK, and its associated companies (“Ridstar”, “we” or “us”). Ridstar is committed to protecting the privacy of your personal information whilst striving to provide the very best user experience. We want our websites to be safe and enjoyable for everyone. Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation 2021 (GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and related laws, we have a legal duty to protect the personal information we collect from you. GDPR says that ‘personal data’ is any information relating to a living individual who can be identified, either directly or indirectly, from that information. This could include your name, email address, postal address or telephone number, or information collected online and used to identify you.

For the purposes of GDPR, Ridstar UK are responsible for, and control, the processing of your personal data for the purposes of Ridstar’s services.

What data do we collect and how de we use it?

What lawful basis do we rely on for processing?

In order to process your personal data, we must have a lawful reason for doing so. GDPR sets out six lawful bases under which organisations can collect, use and store personal data. We rely on four of the lawful bases:

Necessary for the performance of a contract

If you are our customer, for example a subscriber of a magazine or an attendee at one of our events, we will process your personal data on the basis that it is necessary for us to provide our products and services to you.

Consent

In some instances we rely on your specific consent to process your personal information. This is where you have actively agreed and ‘opted-in’, for example to receive marketing communications from us, and you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

Compliance with laws

We may have to process and share your personal data in order to comply with our legal obligations, or to protect our rights or the rights of others. For example, we are required to collect certain information from you when processing your subscription payment for tax or financial reporting reasons.

Legitimate interests

In some situations we rely on our legitimate business interests in order to collect and use your personal data. In these situations, we have conducted a balancing test to carefully consider the impact of the processing on your interests, rights and freedoms. We will only undertake the processing if we are satisfied there is no negative impact on you. We rely on Legitimate Interests for the following activities:

providing, maintaining, improving and developing our products and services;
sending direct marketing communications about our products and services to customers, which may, for example in the US, include content we send on behalf of advertisers;
sending marketing communications related to the products and services of carefully selected companies in a business-to-business context;
managing suppression and unsubscribe requests;
researching publicly available business contact details;
managing certain aspects of our events;
analysing the use of our products and services;
using aggregated, non – personally identifiable statistical and analysis data to identify usage trends, such as your visits and activity on our sites, and to determine the effectiveness of campaigns;
allowing you to comment on our sites, provide feedback or take a survey;
dealing with queries and complaints;
notifying you of product recalls or providing other information concerning products you have purchased;
personalising your experience on our sites;
Improving merchandise selections and your overall shopping experience;
using your data in hashed non-identifiable form to help find you or similar audiences through Facebook’s audience function and Google customer match;
identifying fraudulent behaviour and ensuring our websites and systems are secure;
building and enriching profiles of users based upon, for example, product selection and online behaviour; and
sharing the information you provide and other information held about you within Ridstar, for the purposes of this policy.

If you object to our reliance on Legitimate Interests for any purpose, please contact us.

Who may we share your data with?

Agents

We use third parties to perform certain functions on our behalf including fulfilling orders, sending emails, organising and managing events, running competitions and promotions, conducting surveys or polls, removing repetitive information from customer lists, comment hosting, website analysis, data analysis, and processing credit card payments. They will have access to your personal information if necessary to perform their function but they cannot use it or disclose it for any other purpose unless you have specifically given them consent to do so.

Auditing organisations and other professional advisors/companies

We may share your personal data with any third party in order to meet our legal and regulatory obligations, including statutory or regulatory reporting or the detection or prevention of unlawful acts. We may also share your data with our own professional advisors and auditors for the purpose of seeking professional advice and services or to meet our audit responsibilities.

Aggregate Information

We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information, such as demographics and website usage statistics, with advertisers, sponsors, and other organisations. This may include, for example, tracking your cookie ID, IP address and engagement metrics, when you are online in the course of business, which is then aggregated to create a profile of a company, not an individual.

Products or services offered in partnership with third parties

Certain products or services available through this website may be provided to you in partnership with a third party. That third party may require you to disclose personal information to them in order to receive such products or services. If you request a product or service offered in partnership with a third-party, the identity of the third party will be disclosed to you and your personal information will be transferred to that third party.

We are not responsible for such third-party’s data collection or practices and you should look to such third-party privacy policies for more information.

Sweepstakes, Contests and Promotions

We may offer sweepstakes, contests, and other promotions (any, a “Promotion”) through the Site that may require registration. By participating in a Promotion, you are agreeing to official rules that govern that Promotion, which may contain specific requirements of you, including, allowing the sponsor of the Promotion to use your name, voice and/or likeness in advertising or marketing associated with the Promotion. If you choose to enter a Promotion, personal Information may be disclosed to third parties or the public in connection with the administration of such Promotion, including, in connection with winner selection, prize fulfilment, and as required by law or permitted by the Promotion’s official rules, such as on a winners list.

Changes in ownership

If we sell any parts of our business, for example a website or a magazine, we may have to share your personal data with the purchaser. For example, to enable them to continue providing a subscription or other service to you. The new owners will use your personal data as set out in their Privacy Policy.

Ad serving plus measurement and reporting services

We may use a third-party network advertiser to serve the advertisements on this website. Network advertisers are third parties that display advertisements based on your visits to this website and other websites you have visited. This third-party ad serving enables us to target advertisements to you for products or websites you might be interested in. We may also use an audience or traffic measurement service to analyse the traffic on this website. Audience and traffic measurement services allow us to collect traffic and behavioural information from the website by monitoring anonymous visitor activity. This website’s advertisers, sponsors and/or traffic measurement services may themselves set and access their own cookies on your computer if you choose to have your cookies enabled in your browser. Please see What data is collected on our websites? and our Cookies Policy for further details and information on opting out.

Advertisers and advertising networks

We may also share de-identified information and/or aggregated information with a third party who is helping us select and deliver interesting and relevant advertising to you and/or other potential customers. This includes sharing data with advertising networks and search engines, in order for us to deliver relevant advertising to you, based on what you appear to be interested in. For example when you are searching for information or browsing other sites.

This could also be in the form of an anonymous data segment or an online identification code called a privacy-protective identifier. (A privacy-protective identifier is where we convert the original information, such as an email address or phone number, into a value to keep the original information from being revealed). These third parties may use this code to link demographic or interest-based information you have provided in your interactions with them in order to limit the number of times you see a particular ad, enable interest-based content or provide you with targeted advertising. You have the right to express a choice regarding our sharing of this data for the above purposes; of the creation of this code or of our sharing of the code with our advertising partners.

Behavioural remarketing services

After you have visited our site, we may use remarketing services provided by companies such as Facebook and Google and Bing, to show you advertising on third-party websites, based on your browsing patterns and interactions. For this purpose, visitors are grouped by certain actions on our services, for example, by duration of visit. This enables us to understand your preferences and to show you personalised advertising even if you are currently on another website within the network.

Social media

We may also share de-identified information with social media platforms for advertising purposes. For example, we may share a hashed, non-identifiable version of your email with, for example, Facebook or Google, with the aim of showing you advertising on those platforms. Alternatively, we may use this data with the aim of excluding you from seeing our advertising on those platforms. We only share data in this way if you have agreed to receive marketing communications from us. Our ability to subsequently tailor (or exclude) ads in this way are determined by your account settings on those platforms.

Some of our sites enable our users, and contributors, to share information with sites such as Youtube. On these occasions, our websites interact directly with YouTube (via its APIs), and make use of YouTube API services, for example interacting periodically with the YouTube APIs in order to keep any analytical data previously gathered up to date and complete.

By using these services, users are agreeing to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service, which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/t/terms. In addition to our normal procedure for deleting stored data, users can revoke access to their data as it relates to the YouTube API by visiting the Google security settings page at https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions.

When we share information with third parties, we only permit them to process this data for specified purposes. We do not share more information with them than is necessary for the relevant purpose and we require them to treat this information with at least the same protection we do.

Privacy rights - UK and EU consumers

You have the right to request:

Access to the personal data we hold about you.
The correction of your personal data when incorrect, out of date or incomplete.
The deletion of your personal data.
That we stop using your personal data for direct marketing if you object to it.
That we stop any consent-based processing of your personal data after you withdraw that consent.
The right to request a transfer of your data to another service provider.

Your right to withdraw consent

Whenever you have given us your consent to use your personal data, you have the right to change your mind at any time and withdraw that consent.

Where we rely on our legitimate interest

In cases where we are processing your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interest, you can ask us to stop for reasons connected to your individual situation. We must then do so unless we believe we have a legitimate overriding reason to continue processing your personal data.

Direct marketing

You have the right to stop the use of your personal data for direct marketing activity through all channels, or selected channels. We must always comply with your request. Remember, you can always stop direct marketing messages by clicking on an unsubscribe link in any of our emails or by contacting us.

Exercising your rights

If you wish to exercise any of your rights, please contact us.

It would be very helpful for us if you could include your full name, your postcode, details of the service you are using and/or magazine subscription information when contacting us.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). If you have authorised a third party to submit a request on your behalf, we will ask them to prove they have your permission to act. This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request. We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. If this is the case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

No fee usually required

You will not usually have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the rights), however, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances. If we choose not to action your request we will explain to you the reasons for our refusal.

Policy changes

We review this Privacy Policy annually and may also amend it from time to time, so we encourage you to check it periodically. If we make material changes we will endeavour to provide you with appropriate notice before such changes take effect.

Any questions?

We hope this Privacy Policy has been helpful in setting out the way we handle your personal data and your rights to control it.

If you have any questions that haven’t been covered, please contact us.

Information you provide to us	When you participate in, access, purchase or sign up to any of our services, activities, online accounts or online content, such as magazine subscriptions, newsletters, surveys, vouchers, competitions, events, webinars, white papers or community forums we receive personal information about you which we use to provide these services. This may consist of data such as your name, email address, postal address and telephone number. We will use this to provide the specific products and services you are seeking, and will ensure we have a lawful basis for doing so, in accordance with the country in which you reside.
Ordering a product or service from us	If you order a product or service from us, you will need to provide certain personal details, including payment information, so the order can be fulfilled. This may be collected, for example, as part of the registration process or when creating an account. In some cases, we will use or direct you to a third party who will collect this information from you and fulfil your order. For example, if you order a subscription to our publications, you may be able to access those products through a digital newsstand such as Apple Newsstand.
Attending an event	If you attend one of our events, awards or conferences we may receive personal information about you, including your name and contact details and any dietary and accessibility requirements. If you attend one of our events remotely, we may share your name and contact details with the platform hosting the event.
Content you share with us	When you choose to share comments, photos, videos and other content with us we may receive personal information about you, for example when you interact with us on social media.
Information we collect automatically when you use our sites/services	We may collect technical and/or behavioural information about your use of our websites or other content online, and the device(s) you use to access the services. For example, this information may include details about how you browse our website and the devices and technology you use to browse our website. This may also include unique online identifiers such as device ID, device type, IP address and approximate location at the time of browsing. This may also include video viewing data and may link to your activity on other sites and allow us to recognise you or your device. We may use this to build a more detailed profile of you and your interests. We may also provide you with location-based services (for example, advertising and other personalised content), where we collect geo-location data. Please see What data is collected on our websites? and our Cookie Policy for further details about how we use this data and information on opting out.
Information for analysis, reporting and research	We also collect statistical and analytical data about your visits and activity on our sites, such as the pages you view, how long for, and which links are followed. This helps us to improve the way we deliver content and the products and services offered to you. We also use this anonymised data to report on our performance and to sell advertising. In addition, we may need to contact you about your experience of a product or service we provide you.
eCommerce	Some of our websites contain links to products and services offered by third-party websites. If you click on those links we will use data collected about your activity on our site to direct you to the third party site. We and the third party may collect data to show us that you have clicked on the link and whether you purchased any products and services. We may receive a commission from the third party if you link to their site from a Ridstar site and purchase goods and services from them.
Direct marketing	We use the information you provide us with, such as email, address, or phone number, to send you marketing communications, either based on your consent or where we have legitimate grounds to do so.
Email tracking and online behaviour	We use web beacons in our emails to track the success of our marketing campaigns so if you open an email from us, we can see which of the pages of our website you visited. Our web beacons don’t store any information on your computer but, by communicating with our cookies on your computer, they can tell us which emails you’re interacting with and how you’re interacting with them. For example, we will know when you have opened an email from us and the devices used. We may keep track of the emails that we send you and may use the information we collect to personalise the emails we send to you. We also keep a record of the communications you have selected to receive or not to receive or that you have agreed to receive emails deemed of interest to you from Ridstar We may also use your email in a hashed, unidentifiable form to help us understand your online behaviour. This may in turn be used for analytics and targeting. For use of your email for advertising purposes, see below.
Data matching, to recognise you or your device, and to serve targeting advertising	We may share information that we collect from you (for example, when you browse through our websites or use our mobile applications), such as your email (in hashed, pseudonymous form), IP address, your mobile advertising ID or information about your browser or operating system, with our partners, and their group companies, who use this information to create an online identification code for the purpose of recognising you on your device. This code does not contain any of your identifiable personal data and cannot be used to re-identify you. We place this code in our first-party cookie or use a partner’s cookie, and allow it to be used for online and cross-channel advertising. This hashed, pseudonymous code may be shared with our advertising partners and other third-party advertising companies globally for the purpose of enabling interest-based content or targeted advertising throughout your online experience (e.g. web, email, connected devices, and in-app, etc). These third parties may in turn use this code to link demographic or interest-based information you have provided in your interactions with them. Where we have your email address, We and our partners will store and/or access information on your device and will use the unique advertising identifiers and other personal information for personalized ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights, and to develop and improve our products. To do this, personal information may be used to match and combine offline data sources.
When you contribute articles and content	If you write for us, or provide us with content in return for payment, through one of our sites, we may collect your social media profiles, such as Facebook and Twitter, on registration. This allows us to show links to your social media profiles within the content that you write, allowing other users of the site, and yourself, to share your content with others. This may also involve giving you access to the areas of a website that directly interacts with or makes use of YouTube APIs. This enables us to collect other information needed to upload content such as the source of the video, (for example, from an existing article or original content or playlist), also analytical data such as view counts, and how long watched. We will also use the information you provide us with, such as bank details, to ensure we pay you the correct fees for the content you provide for us.
Research surveys	We may use the information you provide to invite you to participate in surveys and focus groups about our products, clients and services. Participation is always voluntary and the answers you provide are anonymous and aggregated to support our learnings and inform changes we can make to improve our products and services.
Information from other sources	We may receive information about you from other sources (for example, missing information about your postal or email addresses) and add it to the personal information we hold about you. We may also receive data from other sources, such as our business partners and social media platforms. For example, when you visit one of our Facebook pages. Other information, such as inferred data and demographics data, may also be collected and used to match, combine and enrich profile information we hold on you. For example, linking your contact or subscriber information with your activity across our sites.