Privacy Policy

1. What does our Privacy Policy cover?

Protecting the privacy and personal data of individuals is an important aspect of the way our company, South West Media Group Limited (SWMG), organises and implements its activities both on-line and off-line.
This Privacy Policy covers the website accessible from www.whatsonsouthwest.co.uk.
Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.
SWMG is the data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998. We are a limited company incorporated in England and Wales with registered number 00210591 our registered office is at Northcliffe Accounting Centre, Po Box 6795, St George Street, Leicester, LE1 1ZP. Our VAT number is GB 243 5711 74.

2. What information do we gather?

We may collect and process the personal data that you:

volunteer on forms you submit to us (including but not limited to registration, subscription order, survey, and competition forms), and in emails you send to us;
upload, post, comment or submit to a discussion board, story blog, wiki, forum, chatroom or similar discussion or opinion group.
submit when you report a problem with our site or contact us we may keep a copy of that correspondence; and
leave as a result of your visits to our site (including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, whether this is required for our own billing purposes or otherwise) and the resources that you access.

The personal data we collect (as described above) is used to

allow us to develop our sites in a way that will enhance the online experience of the greatest number of users.
ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.
to provide you with information, products or services that you request from us or which we feel may interest you, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes.
to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.
to allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so.
to notify you about changes to our service.

Our web sites enable you to communicate with other visitors or to post information to be accessed by others. When you use these services, other visitors could collect your data. We have no control over this and accept no liability for any consequences of this.

Users posting comments via the Story Comments facility on our sites will have their submitted details stored along with their IP address. Your IP address will not be disclosed to anyone accept in cases of the story comments facility being abused or unless we are required to do so by law.

3. Does the company use cookies?

We use cookies to hold session information, ensure effective advertising tailored to the users' needs and save an individual user's password, once entered, so that it does not have to be re-keyed during the session. We do not use persistent cookies, which means that the site will not remember who users are when they visit again later.

We do not associate the information stored in a user's cookie with any other personal data about that user. The information collected includes your IP address, operating system and browser type.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to our site.

Please note that our advertisers may also use cookies, over which we have no control.

4. Do we disclose users' personal data to third parties?

We will ensure that your personal data will not be disclosed except insofar as you have consented to such disclosure or we are required to do so by law.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties:

In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets; or
If South West Media Group Limited or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.

Your personal data may be disclosed to other companies within the South West Media Group Limited group which means our subsidiaries or parent company.

You may choose to give your consent to us disclosing your personal data and to receiving promotional or marketing information from other third parties selected by South West Media Group Limited. by ticking the relevant boxes at the points where our sites collect personal data. Leaving the relevant boxes unchecked indicates to us that you would prefer your personal data not to be disclosed and that you would prefer not to receive such material.

[We do not disclose information about identifiable individuals to our advertisers, but we may provide them with aggregate information about our users (for example, we may inform them that 500 men aged under 30 have clicked on their advertisement on any given day). We may also use such aggregate information to help advertisers reach the kind of audience they want to target (for example, women in SW1). We may make use of the personal data we have collected from you to enable us to comply with our advertisers' wishes by displaying their advertisement to that target audience.]

Can I access the personal data you are holding about me?

By sending an email or by contacting us by any of the other means available by clicking the "contact us" link in "About us" on the site, you may request that we confirm whether or not we are holding personal data about you which will be provided free of charge. You may also request a copy of any such data which we do hold, in which case a £10 fee is payable for dealing with this request (as permitted under the Data Protection Act 1998).

Upon receipt of such a request from you, we will endeavour to meet your request within 40 days of our receiving all that information which we require in order to deal with the request. Insofar as the law permits, however, we reserve the right to refuse to provide you with information. In the event of our refusing to provide you with information we will provide you with the reasons behind the refusal.

All information that we provide to you as a result of a request will be provided free of charge.

6. Can I request that any data that you are holding about me is amended?

You may request that we amend any personal data that we are holding about you which is factually inaccurate, free of charge.

If you have agreed to the disclosure of personal information and to receiving marketing and promotional information, but no longer wish to do so, then please contact us.

7. What steps have been taken and what security is in place to keep my personal data secure?

All of our employees who have access to your personal data and/or are associated with the processing of that data are contractually obliged to respect the confidentiality of your personal data.

To protect the integrity and security of your personal data we will take steps to verify your identity before granting access to your data or making corrections to it.

We have put in place appropriate technology measures and security policies and procedures to protect the personal data that we have under our control from unauthorised access, improper use, alteration, unlawful or accidental destruction or accidental loss.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.