SMP

Privacy Policy

Privacy for the Social Media Portal (SMP)

Elemental Communications Limited (?Elemental?) is a private company run by individuals who believe that you really should treat others as you would like them to treat you.  With this in mind we use any personal information that you give us strictly in accordance with this Privacy Policy.  Not only that, we also comply with UK and EU data protection legislation.

Your agreement
By using the website found at http://www.socialmediaportal.com you are agreeing to us using the personal information that you provide us with in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Any changes to this policy and therefore the ways in which we may use or disclose your personal information will be posted here.  With this in mind, we recommend that you read this policy now and also from time to time if you choose to use SMP.

This Privacy Policy discloses information about Elemental, SMP and the privacy practices relating to SMP.

Who are Elemental?
Elemental is a company set up and run by individuals who are passionate about online marketing, who wanted to provide a place for people to go to understand the online marketing, social media and landscape.

What services does this policy apply to?
This policy applies to all personal information collected through http://www.socialmediaportal.com (?SMP?). It does not apply to third parties who either may have links on our Website or may be involved in your payment for the Services (as defined in the Terms and Conditions) namely, PayPal.  We recommend that you review the privacy policies of such other businesses.

What is Personal Information?
Personal information means information that can either alone or together with other information identify you as an individual. It does not mean anonymised information.

What if I don?t want to give you any personal information?
You can just use SMP without registering as a member and you will not have to provide any personal information to Elemental.  However if you do, you will not have access to the full functionality of SMP.

How do we collect information and what do we do with it?
The main way we collect information is by asking you for it and you giving it to us. By filling in registration forms for the Services you will be giving us certain items of personal information, including name, email address, address and telephone numbers.  You may have to provide credit/debit card details to PayPal, our payment service provider.  We use this information you provide to us to process your order for the Services and then to keep in contact with you afterwards to make sure that we continue to give you the best service possible and so that we have a way of contacting you regarding your membership in the future.

In addition to this we also collect information about your SMP browsing habits and relate this to your account if you are a registered member.  With this information we hope to make your visit smooth, efficient and more relevant to you.

Some information you choose to give us may qualify as ?sensitive personal information? according to the Data Protection Act 1998.  We can only disclose information of this nature to other parties with your express permission.

Information regarding credit cards is not currently retained by us but may be by our payment partner PayPal, if you give them permission to do so.  They have their own privacy policy that we recommend you review.  We, ourselves, do not use your credit card details for any purpose.

Other ways we use your information
We will use your information to validate your order.  We may also use your information on an ongoing basis as you use the Service.   We also will use the information to prevent and detect criminal activity, fraud and misuse of or damage to our services or networks and prosecute those responsible and to contact you to invite you to form part of our consumer panel or research groups.

We will also use your information to update you with information about changes to our services and send you newsletters (if you want them).

What other information do we collect?
We also collect information from visitors to our websites and registered customers to help us improve the websites and services that we make available. The type of information collected includes how many visitors visit our web sites, how many customers log in, when they visited, for how long and which areas of our services. This information allows us to continuously improve our services and develop them according to the taste of our customers and visitors.
No personal information is collected unless you register for our services or contact us in another way.

What else do we do with your information?
We take your information and anonymise it.   We then use to do internal research on our user demographics, interests and behaviour, as well as our sales and the traffic patterns on our site to better understand our users.  This aggregated data may also be provided to third parties in this aggregated form. This information can not personally identify you.

How long do we keep your information?
We only keep it for as long as we strictly need it, either for the purpose of providing you the Services or because we have a continuing obligation in law.

Do we disclose your information to third parties?
Sometimes, yes.  For instance we always comply with applicable laws and regulations, and also with lawful government or law enforcement requests. We may also disclose information if we need to do so to protect ourselves or our systems or even, in specific instances, our users.

We may also provide anonymised (non-personal) information for some third parties.

We may also from time to time have to share some information with other companies that help us to provide services to you and/or to distribute our products.  These companies will be restricted to using the information only in accordance with our instructions and therefore in accordance with this privacy policy and relevant legislation.

Steps we take to protect your information
When providing your information to us, we provide access via a secure server.  This encrypts the information that you input before it?s transmitted to us.  We also have strict security procedures covering the storage and disclosure of your information in order to prevent unauthorised access and to comply with the Data Protection Act 1998.  This means that sometimes we may ask you for proof of identity before disclosing any personal information to you.

SMP is hosted by Quadra Hosting, a division of Net Quadrant Pty Ltd, a company based in Australia, on servers it maintains in the US.  Such is the nature of the Internet!  Their facilities in Dallas, Texas are world class and based on this and Quadra?s reputation for being a world class supplier of hosting services we have chosen them to host SMP.  This means that all data, personal or otherwise is transferred from wherever you are into the US where the data is protected to best extent possible on shared hosting servers.

Use of log files
We use web server log files to analyse trends, track users? movement and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.  The information can include the URL that you just came from (whether its on SMP or not), which URL you go to next, what browser and operating system you use, your IP address and some other information.  None of this information, including your IP addresses is linked to any personal information.  
Cookies

We mainly use two types of cookies: sessional cookies which basically means that your visit to our site should be easier; and persistent cookies which basically saves members the bother of having to log in each time they visit SMP.  Once you leave and exit your browser a sessional cookie is deleted the persistent one is more ? you guessed it, persistent.

Third party advertising
We also use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and would like to know your options in relation to not having this information used by these companies, click here http://www.doubleclick.com/privacy/faq.aspx and here http://www.google.co.uk/privacy_ads.html

For your information we list below the contact details of Elemental Social Media Portal (SMP) c/o Elemental Communications Limited Registered address: Lincoln House, 75 Brokesley Street, London, E3 4QJ

Email: info @ elementalcomms.co.uk
Company Number: 04192923, VAT Number: GB 893 5571 78

© Elemental Communications Limited 2009