Privacy policy

This is the Privacy Policy of the Ekco Group. We take your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share your personal information. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal information and how to contact us or supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.

We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are subject to the General Data Protection Regulation and we are responsible as a ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.

Who is responsible for the processing of your personal information

The Ekco group entity responsible for the processing of your personal information depends on how you interact with our sites, which Ekco group entity you or your employer interact with and where you are located in the world. The Ekco group entities are referred to as “our”, “we” and/or “us” in this Privacy Policy. Please find a list of the Ekco group entities and their contact details here.

What is personal data?

Personal data is information that relates to a person who is identified or identifiable. A person is identifiable if the data can be used to identify him or her direct or indirectly. So information such as your name, email address, contact details, ID number, recordings, CCTV footage may all be considered personal data.

Personal information we collect about you

We may collect and use the following personal information about you:

• your name and contact information, including job title, email address and telephone number and details of the organisation you work for
• your contact history with us
• Information about how you use our website, IT, communication and other systems
• As well as the information that you actively provide to us if you visit our site to browse, read or download information from our website, certain statistical information is available to us via our internet service provider. This information may include:
• The IP address from which you access our website
• The top-level domain name used (for example .ie, .com, .org, .net)
• The type of browser and operating system used to access our site
• The date and time of your access to our site
• The pages you visit
• Any previous website address from which you reached us, including any search terms used.

If you fill out a form on our website providing us with your personal data as outlined above, this may enable us to identify you on future visits to the website by combining the personal data that you have provided to us in the form and your IP address. This will enable us to identify your particular preferences and to particularly market those products and services to you. If you are already a client of Ekco, we may chat to you about these particular products and services. Unless you provide us with your personal data through the form we will not be able to identify you on future visits to the website by your IP address although we may be able to identify more generally the company with which you work.

We also use cookies to facilitate the use of our website. For more information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them, see our Cookie Policy.

How your personal information is collected

We collect most of this personal information directly from you— for example, in person, on a contract, by telephone, email and/or via our website (including our website’s chat feature). However, we may also collect information from the organisation you work for (for example, in order to set up an account for you to use our services under our contract with your employer). In limited circumstances we also collect personal information from cookies on our website—for more information on our use of cookies, please see our Cookie Policy.

How and why we use your personal information

Under data protection law, we can only use your personal information if we have a proper reason for doing so, e.g.:

• to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
• for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
• for our legitimate interests or those of a third party; or
• where you have given consent.

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.

The table below explains what we use (process) your personal information for and our reasons for doing so:

What we use your personal information for	Our reasons
To provide you with demos, webinars, or other information or assistance you have requested	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to provide you with the information you have requested
To provide services to the organisation you work for	For performance of our contract with you For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to provide our customer with the service they have contracted for
To prevent and detect fraud against you or us	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to minimise fraud that could be damaging for us and for you
Conducting checks to identify users of our services and verify their identity	To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Gathering and providing information required by or relating to audits, enquiries or investigations by regulatory bodies	To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to help ensure we act as a responsible business services provider.
Ensuring business policies are adhered to, e.g. policies covering security and internet use	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to make sure we are following our own internal procedures so we can deliver the best service to our customers
Operational reasons, such as improving efficiency, training and quality control, and confirming with you changes you have requested to the products and services we provide to your organisation	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service to our customers at the best price
Ensuring the confidentiality of commercially sensitive information	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to protect trade secrets and other commercially valuable information To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Understanding how people interact with our website and email communications	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to help us compose, present and communicate information about us and our services.
Statistical analysis to help us manage our business, e.g. in relation to our financial performance, customer base, product range or other efficiency measures	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service for you at the best price
Preventing unauthorised access and modifications to systems	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for us and for you To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Updating and enhancing customer records	For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, e.g. making sure that we can keep in touch with our customers about existing orders and new products
Marketing our services to: —existing and former customers; —third parties who have previously expressed an interest in our services; —third parties with whom we have had no previous dealings.	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to promote our business to existing and former customers Where we engage in direct email marketing, we will ask for your consent to this (unless you work for a prospective customer who is a company or other corporate organisation or a public body)
Understand the effectiveness of our email marketing campaigns. Email marketing messages that we send may contain tracking beacons, tracked clickable links or similar server technologies in order to track recipient activity within email marketing messages.	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to promote our business to potential, existing and former customers.
To enforce or review or defend claims under our customer agreements or other contracts	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to ensure that our rights and obligations are adequately maintained in any dispute.

Promotional communications

We may use your personal information to send you updates (by email, phone or post) about our services, including exclusive promotions or new services.

To personalise and send our marketing and promotional emails, and to store our email communications with you, we use HubSpot, Inc., 25 First Street, 2nd Floor, Cambridge, MA 02141 USA (“HubSpot”). HubSpot enables us to measure responses to our marketing emails. This includes the rates for opening, link clicks, bounce, delivery, unsubscribe in respect of the emails. This measurement is carried out through pixel-tags embedded in the email, which collect information such as the IP address, browser type/version, email client and time of retrieval. The pixel-tag also allows us to track whether you have opened an email we sent you, or clicked on any links it contains.

Where consent is required to send you any promotional materials, we will ask for this consent separately and clearly. We will always treat your personal information with the utmost respect and never sell it to other organisations for marketing purposes.

You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications at any time by:

•     contacting us at the contact points above
•     using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails or ‘STOP’ number in texts.

We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you instruct us to provide further services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.

Facebook remarketing

We may from time to time use Facebook’s Pixel remarketing services. This allows us to serve ads to you in a more efficient way. The collected data remains anonymous and we cannot see the personal data of any individual user. However, the collected data is saved and processed by Facebook. If you have a Facebook account, Facebook may be able to connect the data with that account and use it for their own advertising purposes (in accordance with Facebook’s Data Use Policy, here). You can opt-out of Facebook’s use of cookies and Facebook Pixel remarketing through settings on your Facebook Account.

Who we share your personal information with

We routinely share personal information with:

•     companies within the Ekco group on the basis of our intra-group data sharing agreement
•     third parties we use to help deliver our services to you, e.g. payment service providers, and people who help host and maintain our databases.
•     Our marketing and promotional service providers such as HubSpot, which power our email, website analytics and parts of our website (including our website chat feature). We also use Hubspot to store details of interactions with prospective or current customers, including email correspondence, and our quotes and contracts, which may contain personal data such as your name and contact details. HubSpot’s Privacy Policy is here.
•     other third parties we use to help us run our business, e.g. professional advisers such as lawyers and accountants; website hosts; or our customer relationship management service providers (HubSpot also helps us with this).
•     if you use our services on behalf of one of our customers, we will share details on your usage of our services with that customer
•     social media networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, in relation to buttons and widgets which are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our site. LinkedIn’s privacy policy is here. Facebook’s Privacy Policy is here.
• We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies and others to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

We may also need to share some personal information with other parties, such as potential buyers of some or all of our business or during a merger, company sale or corporate re-structuring. Usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible.

We may also need to share some personal information with other parties, such as potential buyers of some or all of our business or during a merger, company sale or corporate re-structuring. Usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible.

Where your personal information is held

Information may be held at our offices and those of our group companies, third party agencies, service providers, representatives and agents as described above (see above: ‘Who we share your personal information with’).

Some of these third parties may be based outside the European Economic Area. For more information, including on how we safeguard your personal information when this occurs, see below: ‘Transferring your personal information out of the EEA’.

How long your personal information will be kept

We will keep your personal information as long as you have an account with us or we are providing services to the organisation you work for. Thereafter, we will keep your personal information for as long as is necessary:

• to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on behalf of the organisation you work for;
• to keep records required by law.

We will not retain your personal information for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. Different retention periods apply for different types of personal information.

When it is no longer necessary to retain your personal information, we will delete or anonymise it.

Transferring your personal information out of the EEA and U.K.

To power the uses of your personal information referred to above, it is sometimes necessary for us to share your personal information outside the European Economic Area (EEA), e.g.:

•  with our offices outside the UK and EEA;
• with your and our service providers located outside the UK and EEA (including in the USA);
• where there is an international dimension to the services we are providing to the organisation you work for.

These transfers are subject to special rules under European and UK data protection law.

These non-EEA countries do not have the same data protection laws as the United Kingdom and EEA. We will, however, ensure the transfer complies with data protection law and all personal information will be secure. Our standard practice is to ensure that any person to whom we transfer your personal information outside the UK and EEA is under safeguards prescribed by data protection laws, in particular, standard data protection contract clauses that have been approved by the European Commission (see here for more information about these clauses).

If you would like further information about these safeguards please contact us.

Your rights

You have the following rights, which you can exercise free of charge:

Access	The right to be provided with a copy of your personal information (the right of access)
Rectification	The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal information
To be forgotten	The right to require us to delete your personal information—in certain situations
Restriction of processing	The right to require us to restrict processing of your personal information—in certain circumstances, e.g. if you contest the accuracy of the data
Data portability	The right to receive the personal information you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or transmit that data to a third party—in certain situations
To object	The right to object: —at any time to your personal information being processed for direct marketing (including profiling); —in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information, e.g. processing carried out for the purpose of our legitimate interests.
Not to be subject to automated individual decision making	The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, please contact us.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:

• email, call or write to us using the contact details above; and
• let us have enough information to identify you;
• let us have proof of your identity; and
• let us know what right you want to exercise and the information to which your request relates.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to access it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

How to complain

Please contact us at dataprotection@ek.co. We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you may raise about our use of your information.

The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the European Union (or European Economic Area) State where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns or telephone: 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this privacy policy

This privacy notice was published on 12 February, 2020 and last updated on 20 March 2023.

We may change this privacy notice from time to time—when we do, we will inform you via our website or, if appropriate, by email.