Privacy policy

We believe strongly in protecting the privacy of our Members' personal information. This is a legal document that sets out how Social Professional handles data which identifies you. You should read it in conjunction with the Terms and Conditions, of which this Privacy Policy forms part.

  1. Emails from MarCom Professional.

    Service emails. We hate spam and will never ever send you unsolicited emails. But there are some emails that we will need to send you to provide you with a good service. These include:

    • Validation email – the email we use to verify your email address when you first register
    • Welcome emails – emails which explain how to use the site when you first join
    • Key service messages – if we need to notify you about changes to the service
    • Service suspension notices – if you break the house rules

  2. The information we gather and track.

    Information gathered on registration. When you register for the Service, you provide your name, affiliation information (eg, employer), your email address, the year you started in the industry and some optional notes about yourself ("profile"). They are available to you, and capable of being changed, through the your personal page, "My page".

    Cookies. We use small files known as "cookies" to enhance Members' experience of the Service as follows:

    • To facilitate optimal use of the Service by Members, by means of a temporary "session" cookie. These cookies disappear when the Member's browser session ends, or if the Member clicks the "Log out" text, which appears on the Service.

    In addition we use Google Analytics, an independent measurement and research service from Google. They use cookies and code on the site to gather non-personal data regarding the number and frequency of visitors to our site. Both the cookies and the embedded code provide general site and not personal statistical information about visits to pages on the site, the duration of individual page view, paths taken by visitors through the site and other general information. We use this type of information to help us improve our services to you. Further information regarding Google Analytics privacy statement can be found at www.google.com/privacy.html.

  3. Sharing and use of information. The over-riding principles we apply are these:

    • We will not supply your personal data to a third party for commercial exploitation - thus, you can rest assured that we will not sell the lists of our Members' email addresses to a third party; and
    • The only circumstances in which we will provide any of your personal data to a third party for non-commercial purposes are those contained in this Privacy Policy.

    Registration information. A Member's email address is never published. The Member's name and affiliation (eg, employer, university) is always listed against their posts and on their personal MarCom Professional page. Maintaining other profile information is entirely at the Member's discretion.

    Advertising. The Service may include interactive advertising for other businesses. We may use, and provide to third parties, anonymised demographic data provided by Members to target this advertising more appropriately.

    Companies in the Social Professional group. We may share data supplied by you (or collected about you) with our subsidiaries and other companies in our group, but only for the purposes described in this policy.

    Changes in our business. If all of the assets which Social Professional uses to operate its business (or substantially all of them) are acquired by a third party, we may transfer personal data we then hold to that party so that the acquirer can continue to provide the Service.

    Place of processing. The personal information held by us is held on and processed by computers situated in the United Kingdom.

  4. Security

    We have security measures in place to protect our customer database and access to this database is restricted internally. However, it remains each Member's responsibility:

    • to protect against unauthorised access to your details;
    • to ensure no-one else uses the Service on that Member's machine while it is "logged on" to the Service;
    • to log off or exit from the Service when not using it; and
    • to keep his/her password secret.

  5. Removing yourself from the Service. You may have your registration details removed at any time. To remove yourself please email cancelmembership@marcomprofessional.com.

  6. Disclosure for legal reasons. We reserve the right to communicate such of a Member's personal information as we hold to third parties which seek the disclosure of it, and which make a legally-compliant request for its disclosure.

  7. Data retention period. We will retain your personal data only as long as is necessary for the purposes to which you consent under the Terms and Conditions and this Privacy Policy, or as is required by applicable law, and then we will delete it.

  8. Contacting us. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of the MarCom Professional Service, or your dealings with Social Professional Limited, you can email us at info@marcomprofessional.com. You can also use this address if you wish to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you or a description of that data. Please note that by law we are entitled to charge you a small sum for providing this information.

  9. Links to third party websites. The Service contains links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices, or the content, of those websites.

  10. Data protection information. You can obtain further information about UK data protection laws by visiting the Information Commissioner's website at www.dataprotection.gov.uk. You can search for our Data Protection Notification there, should you so wish.

  11. Changes to this privacy policy. If we change this Privacy Policy, we will notify you of the changed document in the same way as we notify changes to the Terms and Conditions.