Introduction
Smartology respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from) and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
This policy describes Smartology’s approach to handling personal data for our clients and partners, including publishers, advertisers, agencies and web users.
Smartology is an advertising technology company, which helps brands market thought-leadership content through semantic profiling and relevancy matching. Its proprietary technology uses advanced Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing to serve readers with highly-relevant advertiser content.
1. Important information and who we are
Purpose of this privacy notice
This privacy notice aims to give you information on how Smartology collects and processes your personal data through one or more of the following interactions with you:
- Sales and marketing of our company and services
- Delivery of a service you, or your company, has purchased
- You visiting our website at www.smartology.net
- Adverts appearing in your browser that have come from our SmartMatch advertising services smartology.co
This website and our commercial services are not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.
It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.
Controller
Smartology Limited is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as Smartology, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).
We have appointed a data privacy manager who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the data privacy manager using the details set out below.
Contact details
Our full details are:
Full name of legal entity: Smartology Limited (Company registration number 04597890)
Name or title of data privacy manager: Chief Technology Officer
Email address: privacy@smartology.net
Postal address: Associates House, 118A East Barnet Road, New Barnet, Herts, EN4 8RE
If you are in the European Union, you may address privacy-related enquiries to our EU representative pursuant to Article 27 GDPR:
Mr D Gilmurray
Baltrasna,
Ratoath Road,
Ashbourne,
A84 AK44,
Ireland
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.
Changes to the privacy notice and your duty to inform us of changes
This version was last updated on 14th June 2024 and historic versions can be obtained by contacting the data privacy manager.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
Third-party links
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.
2. The data we collect about you
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (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, last name, username or similar identifier, social network name or profile URL, marital status, title, year of birth, age and gender.
- Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, post code or zip code, email address and telephone numbers.
- Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, device and user ID, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system, platform, telecommunications network and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
- Profile Data includes your username and password (login data), job title, employer, 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 your communication preferences, emails and conversation notes.
- Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences, emails and conversation notes.
Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but anything that directly identifies you has been removed, so is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data with other users, after removing your personal data, to calculate the number of adverts that were delivered and the percentage of people who clicked on that advert and share this with the advertiser. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.
We do not 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). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.
If you fail to provide personal data
Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
3. How we collect and use your personal data
International Standards
IAB TCF
We actively supports version 2.2 of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Transparency and Consent Framework and respect the choices you make independently on each website you visit. Our legitimate interest assessments can be found here.
CCPA
We actively support the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and will not bid on any bid request where the user has opted-out of the sale of his or her personal information pursuant to 1798.120 and 1798.
We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:
- 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 or regulatory obligation.
- Where you have consented to the use of your personal data either on our website or through a publisher website, for the purposes of advertising. We will also seek your consent for direct marketing communications to you via email. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.
Purposes for which we will use your personal data and lawful basis
We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we collect and use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.
Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.
| Purpose/Activity | Type of data | Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest |
|---|---|---|
| To register you as a new customer |
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To process and deliver your order including:
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To manage our relationship with you which will include:
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To enable you to:
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| To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) |
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| To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you |
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| To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences |
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| To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you |
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Opting out
We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain personal data uses, particularly Marketing and Communications Data. You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out link on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time.
Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a service purchase, service experience or other transactions.
Cookies
Please see our cookie policy.
Change of purpose
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.
If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
4. DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA
We may have to share your personal data with third parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table in paragraph 4 above. These include:
- Amazon Web Services based in the United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore and United States of America (USA) who provide cloud IT on which Smartology runs advertising services.
- Logz.io, based in the USA and Israel, provides a service to combine logs from many of our servers to allow us to monitor our services and fix faults quickly.
- Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based within the EEA and who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
- HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
- Customers and advertising agencies who we provide with aggregated data for the purposes of us carrying out our contractual obligations for such parties.
- Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
5. International transfers
When you use our website or your browser loads a SmartMatch advert, your browser’s request will go to the server that is geographically closest to your location, however, this may mean your request crosses UK boundaries.
Some of our third parties whose services we use are based outside of the UK, so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside of the UK.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
- We will transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission. For further details, see European Commission: Adequacy of the protection of personal data in non-EU countries.
We transfer your personal information subject to appropriate safeguards as permitted under the applicable data protection laws. Specifically, when your personal information is transferred out of the UK without adequate safeguards, we have the required contractual provisions for transferring personal information in place with the third parties to which your information is transferred. For such transfers, we rely on legal transfer mechanisms such as Standard Contractual Clauses,
- Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.
6. Data security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need 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.
7. Data retention
How long will you use my personal data for?
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
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 requirements.
By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see your rights below for further information.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
8. Glossary
LAWFUL BASIS
Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us
Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.
Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.
Consent means processing your personal data having asked for your permission to do so first.
Your legal rights
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. These rights are to:
Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:
- (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy;
- (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;
- (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
- (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us.
No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
What we may need from you
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). 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 to speed up our response.
Time limit to respond
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.