Date of issue: 1 January 2023

The Chaser is a media organisation and publisher. Data protection law includes certain exemptions when personal data is processed for the purposes of journalism. Those exemptions apply to some of the ways the Chaser uses personal data. This privacy policy does not cover personal data that the Chaser processes for the purposes of journalism.

The Chaser ensures that we treat your personal data in line with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the UK. To comply with the GDPR regulations, the Chaser should inform you of the data that we hold for you, why we hold it and who we share it with.

How we collect personal data

We collect personal data when you:

• become a supporter on www.thechasernews.co.uk
• make contributions to fund and support the Chaser
• pay for a subscription or purchase any other products/services for yourself or others
• attend our events (in person and virtually)
• enter our competitions, prize draws, bids and surveys
• take part in our call-outs
• sign up for our editorial emails
• post in our online comments
• sign up for marketing communications
• use mobile devices to access our content
• access and interact with any of our sites
• through cookies and other similar technologies
• when you contact us via email, social media, or similar technologies or when you mention us on social media
• test our products, participate in focus groups or provide us with feedback
• We will never sell, or pass on, any data or personal information that we hold for you to any third parties unless required to do so by government authorities, or in the event of debt recovery, of which will only be done with the appropriate confidential protection.

You can contact the Chaser at any time at: info@thechasernews.co.uk, where you can request to have your data removed from our records, or to request a copy of the information that we hold for you. Any request such as this will be dealt with in a confidential manner and at no cost to you.

Code of conduct

Our code of conduct for data is that it shall be:

1. fairly and lawfully processed;
2. processed for limited purposes;
3. adequate, relevant and not excessive;
4. accurate；
5. not kept longer than necessary;
6. processed in accordance with the data subjects’ rights;
7. secure; and
8. not transferred to countries outside the EU without adequate protection.

Company Awareness

The Chaser and its employees are made aware of the law and GDPR requirements. Only those persons within the news platform that require access to your data to enable them to complete our service of your account have access to that information. This may include, for example; your name, address and contact details to provide the news information, or email addresses to enable us to send you the news articles and related links.

The information we hold

We store your data for no longer than necessary in relation to the purpose under which such data was collected. This is determined on a case by case basis and depends on things such as the nature of the data provided, why it was collected, the legal basis we rely upon to process the data, and our relevant legal or operation retention requirements.

Please note that we evaluate deletion requests against our processing for the purposes of journalism, which includes original content and accompanying comments. When we receive a request to delete your personal data from our organisation, we are prepared to anonymise your comments by removing your email address and alias from your public account profile. In doing so, your comments are disassociated with your public account profile and therefore you are no longer publicly identified as the author of your comments. However, we keep your data because we may receive claims for libel and or/defamation in relation to user comments.

Journalism

We use personal information for journalistic activities to support a free press and to support individual and societal rights to receive information.

Message boards, blogs and other public forums

Our websites may provide message boards, blogs and other user generated content facilities. Anything that you share will become public information. You should always be careful when deciding to disclose your personal information.

Comment Moderation

We monitor comments for offensive/objectionable content and disruptive behaviour that breach our Terms.

Delivering services

By using our websites and other products and services, we may process your information, including your name, phone number and email address, for the purpose of providing you with such products and services and managing our relationship with you, which shall include (without limitation):

• managing your accounts, entitlements and subscriptions;
• communicating with you in relation to your account or service, service updates or other non-marketing communications;
• delivering customer services and support;
• dealing with and responding to you about a comment you have submitted on our message boards or other such user generated content facilities;
• ensuring the integrity of votes, competitions and polls;
• maintaining records of our communications with you if you get in contact with us; and
• responding to press complaints submitted both direct to us and via the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).
• We may also record phone calls or customer enquiries via online chat for quality, training and management purposes.

Security of your Data

Any data that we hold for you is stored securely. We have implemented appropriate technical and organisational controls to protect your personal data against unauthorised processing and against accidental loss, damage or destruction. Unfortunately, sending any information, including personal data, via the internet is not completely secure. We cannot guarantee the security of any personal data sent to our site while still in transit and so you provide it at your own risk.

With external organisations:

YouTube because we use their unbranded embedded player to provide video content on our websites and apps. The embedded player relies on the YouTube API, which is a type of software that allows data to be communicated between our website and apps and the YouTube player. This will include personal data which will also be collected by cookies. We will provide this data about how you interact with videos to enable YouTube to provide statistical information such as how many views a video has, or how many users watch the entire video. More information about how YouTube will use this personal data, which includes usage data when you interact or use the embedded YouTube player, can be found at the Google Privacy Policy: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy.

Patreon because we use to engage with subscribers who have purchased memberships from Patreon to support the creator’s creations. More information about how Patreon will use the personal data, which includes usage data when you interact or use the details of membership, can be found at the Patreon Privacy Policy: https://www.patreon.com/en-GB/policy/terms-of-use.

Your privacy and data protection rights

You have a number of rights with regard to the personal data that we hold about you and you can contact us with regard to the following rights in relation to your personal data:

• You have the right to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• You have the right to correct the personal data we hold about you
• You also have the right to ask us to delete your personal data or restrict how it is used. There may be exceptions to the right to erasure for specific legal reasons which, if applicable, we will set out for you in response to your request
• Where applicable, you have the right to object to processing of your personal data for certain purposes
• Where you have provided us with consent to use your personal data, you can withdraw this at any time

If you would like to exercise any of your rights specified above, please email info@thechasernews.co.uk. We will respond to requests within one month.