Privacy Policy

We – meaning Harkster Limited, doing business as Harkster (“we”, “our”, “us” or “Harkster”) – take the privacy of your information very seriously. Our Privacy Notice is designed to tell you, the user of our software and services (the “Services”) about our practices regarding the collection, use and disclosure of your data which may be provided via our websites, our software, and their associated portals and apps (the “Service”) or collected through other means such as in person by us, by an online form, email, or telephone communication.

By accessing or using our Services, you are agreeing to this Privacy Policy and our ‘Terms of Service’.

This notice is governed by applicable data protection legislation including the Data Protection Act 2018, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) and any equivalent or successor legislation.

Information that we collect

Customer information

We may collect and process the following personal data about you:

• Log-in details and account information provided when registering with our Service (“Account Information”). Account information may include certain personal information, such as your name, email address, business name and job description. It may also include information about whom your use of the service is associated with in cases where you have invited others or been invited by others to use the service if a third party account holder (e.g. your employer) has taken out a subscription to our service on your behalf and you are using our service under their subscription then we are the ‘processor’ of this information (see section 5 below) under the terms of our data processing addendum (please see below).
• Contact information enabling us to get in touch with you. This is often included in your account information and can include name, email address and phone numbers. (“Contact Information”).
• A record of any correspondence or communication between you and us and any information we may require from you when you report a problem or submit a complaint (“Communication Information”);

We will collect information either from you directly or from a third party (for instance your employer or an introducer). If we do obtain your personal data from a third party your privacy rights under this notice are not affected and you are still able to exercise the rights contained within this notice.

You do not have to supply any personal information to us but our Service may not be available in practice without providing data to us. You may withdraw our authority to process your personal data (or request that we restrict our processing) at any time (but our Service may not be available or may need to be withdrawn should you do so).

Legal basis on which we process personal data

The personal data we hold about you, as detailed above, will be processed because:

• the processing is necessary in order for us to comply with our obligations under a contract with you, specifically for the provision of our services; or
• the processing is necessary in pursuit of our “legitimate interests”. A legitimate interest in this context means a valid interest we have, or a third party has, in processing your personal data which is not overridden by your interests in data privacy and security.

We will process Account Information, Contact Information and Communication Information in order to comply with our obligations to provide our services and in pursuit of our legitimate interests in providing our services to users.

Service Interaction Information & Cookies

We may process data about your use of our website and 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 service navigation paths, as well as information about the timing, frequency and pattern of your service use (other statistics related to your usage of the service may also be captured). We may also use tools to collect analytics data (including the use of third-party tools). These tools use cookies and other tracking technologies to capture this data.

We use these tools for the following purposes:

• Service security – this facilitates your access to tools that help us identify any irregular behavior on the site and improve overall security.
• Performance Tracking – these tools allow us to assess performance on the service through analytics practices which help us understand how customers use our services.
• Functional operations – this allows you to make use of the functionality when accessing our services. It may include tracking specified preferences or historic use of the system.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. To change your browser settings you should go to your advanced preferences. Once you close your browser, our access to the cookie terminates.

We are required to obtain your consent to use cookies. We will obtain this consent (as necessary) with a toolbar which appears when you first visit our website.

If you would prefer not to accept cookies or to disable the tracking technologies we use, you can adjust the settings on your browser to achieve this (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies and tracking technology will usually result in disabling certain functionality and features of this site. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

If you have any questions regarding cookies or tracking technology that are not answered in this Privacy Policy, please contact us, via the ‘Contact’ page on our website, for more information.

How we use this information

Customer Information + Service Interaction Information & Cookies

Your customer information and the information collected through your use of the service via cookies or tracking technology may be used for the following purposes:

To provide our products and services to you, including:

• Managing and administering your account information
• Verifying your identity to prevent fraudulent activity
• Responding to customer service queries and requests
• Providing you access to specific features and functionalities of the Service
• Billing/payment processing for services you have purchased
• Contacting you to provide information/updates on products or features that may be of interest and tracking the performance of this communication
• Contacting you to provide updates on any policy/plan/fee changes that may affect your use of the service
• Ensuring our terms and policies are being adhered to
• Carrying out activities to verify and maintain the security and quality of our Services

To analyse and improve our services, including:

• Detecting activity that may be in breach of our terms of service and ensuring systems are secure and data is protected.
• The use of analytics to derive insights into ways to improve, upgrade or enhance our Service or for the development of new features.
• The use of analytics for business analysis purposes.
• Customising existing features and functionality to optimise the user experience.
• Logging to detect bugs in existing features which may impair functionality or user experience.
• Measuring engagement in our Services and promotional material.

We use some third-party services to facilitate our marketing activities and to perform analytics on how our Services are used. We share information via these third parties only to the extent required for them to provide these services to us.

We may use your personal information for other activities that are either clearly disclosed to you at the time of providing the information or with your consent.

When required by law to share your data we must comply providing the law authority has the necessary warrant, subpoena or court order.

We may use your information for any other legitimate business purpose that does not conflict with contents of this Privacy Policy.

Sharing your information

We do not disclose any information you provide to any third parties other than as follows:

• from time to time we will transfer personal data to our sub-processors which will include Microsoft Azure, and other service and technology providers
• if you are a user of our services under a subscription taken out by an enterprise, from time to time we may share certain data with the relevant enterprise customer (i.e. usually the organisation, firm or entity for whom you work)
• we may be required to disclose certain data to regulators or other lawful authorities
• we may disclose information to our group companies
• if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation (for example, if required to do so by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime)
• in order to enforce any terms and conditions or agreements for our services that may apply
• if we are sub-contracting services to a third party we may provide information to that third party in order to provide the relevant services
• we may transfer your personal data to a third party as part of a sale of some or all of our business and assets to any third party or as part of any business restructuring or reorganisation, but we will take steps with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected
• to protect our rights, property and safety, or the rights, property and safety of our users or other third parties. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction
• if you engage with content owned by publishers who use our analytics platform, we will share user data with the respective publisher.

Other than as set out above, we shall not disclose any of your personal data unless you give us permission to do so. If we do supply your personal data to a third party, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that your privacy rights are protected and that such third party complies with the terms of this notice.

Information we hold as processor

There is certain information we collect for which we may not be the data controller if you are using our services under a subscription taken out by another person (e.g. your employer). We may hold this information as a ‘processor’ if we have entered into a data processing addendum. Our account holder (generally your employer or the firm or organisation for whom you work) is the controller for this data. Accordingly the manner in which this data is held and processed will be governed by data processing addendum.

Data Retention

Harkster Business Data

We will hold information relating to your account including Account Information and Communication Information for a period of 7 years from the date on which we collect the data, or if later, from the date on which your Account is closed.

How we secure your data

We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that appropriate technical and organisational measures are carried out in order to safeguard the information we collect from you and protect against unlawful access and accidental loss or damage. These measures may include (as necessary):

• protecting our servers with software firewalls;
• locating our data processing storage facilities in secure locations;
• encrypting all data stored on our server with an industry standard encryption method that encrypts the data between your computer and our server so that in the event of your network being insecure no data is passed in a format that could easily be deciphered;
• when necessary, disposing of or deleting your data so it is done so securely;
• regularly backing up and encrypting all data we hold.

We will ensure that our employees are aware of their privacy and data security obligations. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that the employees of third parties working on our behalf are aware of their privacy and data security obligations.

This notice and our procedures for handling personal data will be reviewed as necessary.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to the Site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use the strict procedures and security features referred to in this clause to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Your rights in respect of your data

The GDPR gives you the following rights in respect of personal data we hold about you:

The right to be informed	You have a right to know about our personal data protection and data processing activities, details of which are contained in this notice.
The right of access	You can make what is known as a Subject Access Request (“SAR”) to request information about the personal data we hold about you (free of charge, save for reasonable expenses for repeat requests). If you wish to make a SAR please contact us as described below.
The right to correction	Please inform us if information we hold about you is incomplete or inaccurate in any way and we will update our records as soon as possible, but in any event within one month. We will take reasonable steps to communicate the change to any third parties to whom we have passed the same information.
The right to erasure (the ‘right to be forgotten’)	Please notify us if you no longer wish us to hold personal data about you (although in practice it is not possible to provide our Service without holding your personal data and we may need to keep your data in some circumstances). Unless we have reasonable grounds to refuse the erasure, on receipt of such a request we will securely delete the personal data in question within one month. The data may continue to exist in certain backup, but we will take steps to ensure that it will not be accessible. We will communicate the erasure to any third parties to whom we have passed the same information.
The right to restrict processing	You can request that we no longer process your personal data in certain ways, whilst not requiring us to delete the same data. However again, some of our Services will not be available if processing is restricted.
The right to data portability	You have right to receive copies of personal data we hold about you in a commonly used and easily storable format (please let us know a format which suits you). You may also request that we transfer your personal data directly to third party (where technically possible).
The right to object	Unless we have overriding legitimate grounds for such processing, you may object to us using your personal data for direct marketing purposes (including profiling) or for research or statistical purposes. Please notify your objection to us and we will gladly cease such processing.
Rights with respect to automated decision-making and profiling	You have a right not to be subject to automated decision-making (including profiling) when those decisions have a legal (or similarly significant effect) on you. You are not entitled to this right when the automated processing is necessary for us to perform our obligations under a contract with you, it is permitted by law, or if you have given your explicit consent.
Right to withdraw consent	If we are relying on your consent as the basis on which we are processing your personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Even if you have not expressly given your consent to our processing, you also have the right to object (see above).

All SARs and other requests or notifications in respect of your above rights must be sent to us in writing via the ‘Contact’ page on our website.

We will endeavour to comply with such requests as soon as possible but in any event, we will comply within one month of receipt (unless a longer period of time to respond is reasonable by virtue of the complexity or number of your requests).

Data Breaches

If personal data we hold about you is subject to a breach or unauthorised disclosure or access, we will report this to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and/or our data protection manager.

If a breach is likely to result in a risk to your data rights and freedoms, we will notify you as soon as possible.

Other websites

Our Service may contain links and references to other websites. Please be aware that this notice does not apply to those websites.

We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of sites that are not operated by us, even if you access them via the Site, our Portal, or any other service that is operated by us. We recommend that you check the policy of each site you visit and contact its owner or operator if you have any concerns or questions.

In addition, if you came to this Service via a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners or operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site and contact its owner or operator if you have any concerns or questions.

Transferring your information outside Europe

As part of the Service offered to you the information you provide to us may be transferred to, processed and stored at, countries or international organisations outside of the EEA.

If we transfer your information outside of the EEA, and the third country or international organisation in question has not been deemed by the EU Commission to have adequate data protection laws, we will provide appropriate safeguards and we will be responsible for ensuring your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this notice. In particular we will ensure that there is a contract in place with our partners to ensure that your data is processed in accordance with this notice.

If you use our Services while you are outside the EEA, your information may be transferred outside the EEA in order to provide you with those Services.

By submitting your personal information to us you agree to the transfer, storing or processing of your information outside the EEA in the manner described above.

Notification of changes to the contents of this notice

We will post details of any changes to our policy on our website to help ensure you are always aware of the information we collect, how we use it, and in what circumstances, if any, we share it with other parties.

Data processing addendum

Harkster offers Data Processing Addendums (DPAs) to enterprise users who are taking out a subscription on behalf of a group of users upon request. The DPA includes standard contractual clauses that are the mechanism for GDPR-compliant data transfer. To request a DPA, please contact us via the ‘Contact’ page on our website providing the email address associated with your Harkster account.

Contact us

If at any time you would like to contact us with your views about our privacy practices, or with any enquiry or complaint relating to your personal information or how it is handled, you can do so via the ‘Contact’ page on our website.

If we are unable to resolve any issues you may have, or you would like to make a further complaint, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office by visiting https://ico.org.uk/ for further assistance.