Privacy Policy

Draft: Last updated 24 March 2020

We understand your privacy is important. That’s why we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of all users. Our Privacy Policy, which is set out below, explains how we will look after the information you entrust to us and what we will do with it.

This Privacy Policy was last revised on25 May 2018.

About us and this Privacy Policy

The WT.social website (“WT.social”) is owned and operated by WikiTribune Limited (“we”, “us”). We are registered in England under company number 10713170 and our registered office is at 38 Berkeley Square, London, United Kingdom, W1J 5AE.

For the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 and GDPR, we are the data controller. We are registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office under registration number ZA248828.

This Privacy Policy has been prepared to meet the requirements of the UK’s Data Protection Act 1998 and The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 and GDPR. Its purpose is to help you understand our practices relating to the collection, protection, disclosure and use of any personal data that you provide to us, or that we collect from you, whilst you visit and contribute to WT.social.

By “personal data”, essentially, we mean any information about you that could be used to help identify you. This includes information such as your name, email address and profile picture or avatar, as well as any other information you provide about yourself on WT.social.

Nothing in this Privacy Policy limits your legal rights in relation to your personal data. By providing your personal data to us, you agree that we may collect and use the personal data you provide in the ways described in this Privacy Policy. Please read each of the following sections carefully to understand our views and practices. If you do not agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy, please don’t provide any personal data to us.

We may need to update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices and the law. We recommend that you check this page regularly to ensure that you have read the most recent version and that you are happy with any changes. You can find out when this Privacy Policy was last updated by checking the date at the top.

What personal data do we collect from you?

For a more detailed effort to meet the increased disclosure requirements of GDPR, we have added a page on Data Transparency which is your most detailed guide to the data that we collect and how and when we share it with others.

Generally, we try to limit the amount of personal data we collect from you. What we collect depends largely on how you interact with WT.social. For example, we will collect and process personal data when you undertake the following activities:

Registering a WT.social account.

You don’t need to register to enjoy WT.social, but if you want to contribute then you’ll need to set up a WT.social account. When you do that, we will collect your first and last names and the country where you live. You’ll also be able to upload an avatar and provide your Twitter username and a brief description of yourself, but these are optional.

Subscribing to the WT.social newsletter.

If you would like to receive WT.social news, alerts and updates, you can sign up to our newsletter. We send the newsletter by email, so if you want to receive it you’ll need to provide your email address. You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time – find out how to do so in section 8.2 below.

Starting, editing or contributing to a Story or Project.

If WT.social is to succeed, we need you to get involved. Everyone is encouraged to contribute to the community. When you add, edit or talk about a Story or a Project, we’ll collect any information about you that you volunteer.

Tipping us off.

You can contact us about an existing or potential story through our [email protected] email. When you do this, we will collect any information about you that you provide, which might include your name and contact details and anything else you volunteer about yourself.

Supporting WT.social

To help support WT.social in its mission to fix the news through honest fact-based journalism, you can make a one-off or regular contribution on our Support Page. When you contribute, we will collect the date, amount and currency of your contribution, but we do not store your payment details – we use third-party payment processors for that. See section 4 for more information. On occasion, we may need to obtain other information about you in connection with your contribution – please see the Contributions section of our Terms of Use for further details.

Contacting us

If you contact by telephone, post or any other means, we will collect your telephone number, postal address and/or other contact details you provide.

Just like many other websites, we also collect certain technical information from you automatically when you use WT.social. This information may include:

  • Technical information. This includes information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type and version, language preferences, time zone setting, operating system and platform.
  • Information about your visit. We may collect information about your use of WT.social, including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data and the resources that you access. We may also collect page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), methods used to browse away from the page and the website that referred you to WT.social.
  • We also use cookies and other similar technologies to distinguish you from other WT.social users and to collect information about your computer and browsing actions. This helps us to provide you with a more personalised experience when you browse WT.social and also allows us to improve the features and functionality of the website. For detailed information on the cookies and other technologies we use and the purposes for which we use them, please take a look at our Cookie Policy.We may also lawfully receive your personal data from other sources, such as business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, analytics providers and search information providers.Given the nature of WT.social, it is possible that we may also receive your personal data from a third party in connection with a Story or Project. You may have special rights to limit or prevent the use of your personal data in these circumstances. Please see our Notice and Takedown Procedure for more information on how to go about this.It is also possible that you or your contributions may be reported to us by another member of the WT.social community or a member of the public and in these circumstances, we may receive certain personal data about you from such third parties.How do we use your personal data?WT.social is about news. Plain and simple. We are not trying to sell you anything – and nor do we provide your personal data to anyone else for marketing purposes. We only use your personal data to help make WT.social work and to continually improve it for the community at large.We won’t publish, use or disclose your personal data except as set out in this Privacy Policy, but remember that any information you choose to make public on WT.social will be exactly that: public. Contributions you make on WT.social are a permanent public record and therefore please be considered in what you post and don’t volunteer anything about yourself or others that you would not wish to make public. Likewise, anything in your public profile will be viewable by others, so think carefully about what you are happy for others to see before they see it. You can update your profile and preferences at any time.We use the personal data you provide to us, as well as cookies and other automatically collected information about your access to and use of WT.social, to understand what you and other members of the WT.social community are interested in reading about and what community journalists are interested in writing about. This helps us ensure that WT.social is and remains relevant to the community.

The information below tells you more about the uses we make of your personal data:

  • To process and administer your registration if you choose to register a WT.social account
  • To send you our email newsletter if you have subscribed to receive it
  • To maintain our records relating to any financial contribution you make to WT.social through our Support Page. Although we don’t process payments ourselves, we keep track of your contributions and we may use your name and contact details and other information you provide about yourself in order to establish the provenance of your contribution and whether or not we are able to accept it.
  • There may also be circumstances in which we are legally required to disclose, or where it is desirable for us to disclose, your identity as contributor and the amount of any contribution you have made. Please see the Contributions section of our Terms of Use for further details.
  • To administer and maintain WT.social and our records and systems and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes. If we invite you to participate in a survey or market research, this will usually be by email, although you have no obligation to participate.
  • To carry out our obligations to you and to others, including any contractual obligations we may have with suppliers and others.
  • To allow you to participate in interactive services available through WT.social, such as adding, editing or commenting on a Story or Project.
  • To correspond with you about WT.social, including in relation to a Tip, Story or Project.
  • To respond to any query, complaint or other issue that you may raise with us, whether about WT.social or about another member of the WT.social community.
  • To investigate any complaint made to us by another person about you or your activities or content posted on WT.social.
  • To inform you of any changes to WT.social or anything else that may affect you. We will usually do this by email although we may also post important notices on WT.social from time to time.
  • To ensure that WT.social content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.We will only retain and use your personal data for as long as we need it for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy or as otherwise required by law.Where and how do we store your personal data?All information you provide to us is stored on the secure servers of our web services provider. We have in place a level of security appropriate to the nature of the information stored and the harm that might result from a breach of security.In certain circumstances, the information that we collect from you may also be transferred to other destinations outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”), including the United States of America, where it will be stored by us or by one of our suppliers. It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. Such suppliers and staff may be engaged in, among other things, the provision of support services. We will take reasonable steps to ensure adequate security for any of your personal data transferred outside the EEA, but please be aware that destinations outside the EEA to which your personal data may be transferred may have data protection laws which do not offer the same level of protection for your personal data as those in force within the EEA. By using WT.social and submitting your personal data to us, you agree to the transfer, storing and processing of such personal data outside the EEA as set out in this Privacy Policy.Unfortunately, the sending of information via the internet is not always secure and on occasion such information can be intercepted. We cannot guarantee the security of information that you choose to upload to WT.social or send us electronically and therefore uploading and sending such information is entirely at your own risk. If we become aware that the security of your personal data has been compromised, we will notify you by email or as otherwise required by law.If you register for a WT.social account, you are responsible for keeping your password confidential and you must not share it with anyone. If you have reason to believe that your password or any other aspect of your WT.social account has become compromised, you must inform us immediately using our contact details at the end of this Privacy Policy.

Processing payments on WT.social

All payments on WT.social are processed by PayPal or, for debit and credit cards, Stripe. When you make a contribution to WT.social, you are providing your payment details to the relevant third-party payment processor, and not to us. We do not receive and therefore do not store any of your payment details when you make an online payment.

You can find out more about how PayPal and Stripe process your personal data by reading their privacy policies. The PayPal privacy policy can be found here: paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full. INSERT Stripe.

Children

WT.social is aimed at anyone who is interested in honest fact-based journalism. However, we do not knowingly collect personal data from those under the age of 16. If you are under the age of 16, please do not try to register an account on WT.social or make a contribution or provide any personal data to us through WT.social. If you have already done so, please contact us so that we can remove that personal data from our systems.

Disclosing your personal data

We may share your personal data with any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006 (“Group”).

We will not disclose your personal data to any other party other than in accordance with this Privacy Policy and in the circumstances detailed below:

  • We may disclose your personal data to our sub-contractors and other suppliers and service providers who we engage to assist with our administrative or business functions and to deal with any other matters in connection with our site, our products and services and any agreements we enter into with you
  • We may disclose your personal data to analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of WT.social. See our Cookie Policy for more details about the use of analytics on WT.social
  • In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer.
  • If WikiTribune Limited or any member of the Group, or substantially all of its or their assets, are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its or their customers may be one of the transferred assets.
  • If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our Terms of Use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of WikiTribune Limited or any member of the Group or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.Links to third party websites

    This Privacy Policy only covers WT.social. On occasion, we include links to third parties on WT.social. If you follow a link to any of these third-party websites, you should be aware that these websites have their own privacy policies and the operators of those websites will handle your personal data in accordance with such policies and not with this Privacy Policy. We have no control over such third parties or their websites or privacy policies. For example, such operators might contact you or permit third parties to contact you for marketing purposes in accordance with their own privacy policies, unless you opt out of such communications.We do not accept any responsibility for third-party websites or their privacy policies and we strongly advise you to check such policies and the reputation of the website before you submit your personal data to, or carry out any transaction on, any third-party website.We welcome any feedback you may have about third-party websites linked to from WT.social.Controlling use of your personal data

    You are free to update your profile and preferences at any time by accessing your WT.social account. In particular, if any information we hold about you changes or is otherwise incorrect, please update it as soon as possible. Alternatively, you can contact us about it using the contact details at the end of this Privacy Policy. You can also delete your account altogether.You can opt out of receiving the WT.social newsletter email by using the unsubscribe button on the end of the newsletter. Please be aware that if you choose to opt out of receiving the newsletter this will not mean that you will not receive any other communications from us. There may be circumstances where we need to contact you about your WT.social account or where we make important changes to WT.social that you need to know about. Find out how to delete cookies and change your cookie preference in our Cookie Policy.In accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 you have the right to access any personal data that we hold relating to you, subject to certain limitations and exemptions set out in the Act. Please note that we reserve the right to charge a fee of GBP 10.00 to cover costs incurred by us in providing you with the personal data. If you would like to find out more about what personal data we hold about you, please write to us at the address below.Changes to this Privacy PolicyWe will update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices and the law. We recommend that you check this page regularly to ensure that you have read the most recent version and that you are happy with any changes. You can find out when this Privacy Policy was last updated by checking the date at the top.

 

By continuing to use WT.social following any changes to this Privacy Policy, you consent to those changes. If you are not happy with any changes, please don’t use WT.social. You can contact us if you have any concerns or queries about any changes we make using the contact details below.

Contacting us

Please do not hesitate to contact us regarding any matter relating to this Privacy Policy. Questions, comments and requests regarding this Privacy Policy are welcomed and should be sent to us by email at [email protected] or by snail mail to 38 Berkeley Square, London, United Kingdom, W1J 5AE.