1. Who we are
This site and the services and products made available on this site are operated by The School of Sound CIC, a company registered in England under company number 3336538 (referred to as The SOS, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy), with its registered address at 62 Old Road, Oxford, OX3 7LL, UK. You can contact us by email at sos@schoolofsound.co.uk or by telephone at +44 (0)1865 308746.
2. Purpose of the policy
This Privacy Policy explains in detail the types of personal data we collect from customers when they purchase something from us and explains how, why and when we collect and process that personal data. It also explains how we’ll store and handle the data, and how we keep it safe.
The SOS is totally committed to protecting the privacy of our site visitors and customers. We pledge to handle data carefully and legally at all times and we will not disclose information about our customers to any third parties except where it is a necessary part of providing a service to you or complying with legal requirements, for example EU VAT regulations.
We record and store the minimum amount of your data and personal information needed to administer your purchases, your participation in our online events, your contributions to our website and communications between you and The SOS. We will not sell your information to third parties for marketing purposes nor will we ‘harvest’ or collect data about your use of our site.
Our Privacy Policy conforms to the requirements of The Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018) which sets out the framework for data protection law in the UK. It updates and replaces the Data Protection Act 1998, and came into effect on 25 May 2018. It was amended on 01 January 2021 by regulations under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, to reflect the UK’s status outside the EU.
This policy, which applies when visitors or customers visit us online or via a mobile device, provides you with information about:
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- How we collect and use customer information
- Communication and marketing
- How we check your details and protect your data
- Cookies
- How long we keep your data
- Your consent
- Your rights
- How to contact us
3. The following explains how we manage data from the various parts of our website:
a. Email Database
We hold the email addresses of people who have asked to be included on our mailing list to receive information about the School of Sound and related activities through our newsletters. Our mailings may include information about a small number of other organisations that work with us and whom we believe may be of interest to you.
We also hold the emails of a small number of people or organisations who may not have asked to subscribe but who we contacted for marketing purposes and who we believe to have a legitimate interest in sound and the related topics we address.
Our newsletters are sent through Mailjet who stores our mailing list in their system. You can read their Privacy Policy at Mailjet: Security and Privacy.
From January 2023, we will ask customers for their consent to allow us to add their email addresses to our mailing database. Without this consent, their emails will only be used as needed for their participation in our events and website activities (contributing articles, making comments, etc.).
If you no longer wish to be on our database and receive information from us, please contact us at sos@schoolofsound.co.uk to remove yourself from our mailing list or to find out which personal information we hold for you.
The ‘Unsubscribe’ option is included on all our newsletters.
b. Registration for past events
For those who have attended a School of Sound in-person event in the past, we hold your name, academic or professional affiliation, job title, city and country of residence, and email address. For emergency use only, and for our own private use, we hold the telephone numbers of those who have attended past (pre-2023) School of Sound events.
c. Comments
When visitors leave Comments on the site we collect the data shown in the Comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address for spam detection.
d. Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
e. Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
f. Cookies
What are cookies?
A cookie is a small text file that is sent to and stored in your device when you visit a website. If you have registered with us or have left a Comment you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another Comment.
Our site uses cookies to:
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- Manage your account including log-in information
- Run our online shop including your shopping cart, checkout and payments
- Utilise Google analytics (anonymised to comply with EU regulations)
- Provide spam protection
4. The personal data we collect is as follows
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- As requested at checkout, we collect your name, email, address, telephone and VAT number.
- Your organisation details, if provided
- Your IP address – a numerical code to identify your device, together with the country, region or city where you are based, for VAT purposes.
- We do not store any payment details from online transactions as all payments are taken externally through PayPal and Stripe.
- For users that register on our website, we store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time. Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
- Communication between us, including emails and telephone calls.
5. How we collect and use customer information
Once you have purchased an item or service through our website, we use your information:
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- To send service messages and notifications by email once you have purchased an item or registered for an online event
- To send information by email about future events, new products and services
- To meet our legal, statutory and contractual obligations and to provide you with our products and services.
6. How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
We will hold on to other information for as long as it is needed to be able to provide our services to you.
7. Your Consent, checking your details and protecting your data
We will not share, rent or sell your name, address, e-mail address, credit card information or personal information to any third party without your permission. If you have purchased from us, subscribed to one of our newsletters, or advised us of your e-mail address, post and telephone number, we may occasionally update you on news and special opportunities via e-mail or post. However, if you would prefer not to receive this information from time-to-time, please contact Larry Sider or Diane Sider in our office.
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
If you wish to verify the details you have submitted to The SOS, please contact us via the e-mail address, telephone number or address given below.
8. Your rights
Regarding your personal information, you have:
- The right to be informed about how your personal information is being used
- The right to access the personal information we hold about you
- The right to request the correction of inaccurate personal information we hold about you
- The right to request that we delete your data
- The right to stop direct marketing messages
- The right to complain to your data protection regulator (the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK) but we hope you would contact us first so we can resolve any issues for you.
Contact us at
The School of Sound CIC
62 Old Road
Oxford OX3 7LL
UK
Telephone +44 (0)1865 308746
Email:
sos@schoolofsound.co.uk