General Privacy Policy

Key details

Policy prepared by: Christopher Nelson

Approved by board / management on: Gary Kitchin on 22/05/2018

Policy became operational on: 25/05/2018

Next review date: 25/04/2020

What and who does this Policy apply to?

This Privacy Policy applies to both individuals and companies who are suppliers, partners, customers, purchasers and delegates of our online content, services, our training courses and programmes, our free and chargeable events, webinars, podcasts and any other registered-user content we provide, along with any other interactions (e.g. customer enquiries) you may have with HMK Automation Group Ltd.

Information we collect

When You Visit Our Website

You are free to explore our website without providing any information about yourself. When you visit our website, fill one of our forms or subscribe to one of our Services, we request that you provide Personal Information about yourself, and we collect Navigational Information.

"Personal Information"

This refers to any information that you voluntarily submit to us and that identifies you personally, including contact information, such as your name, e-mail address, company name, address, phone number, and other information about yourself or your business. Personal Information can also include information about any transactions, both free and paid, that you enter into on our website, as well as information about you that is available on the Internet, such as from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google, or publicly available information that we acquire from service providers.

"Navigational Information"

This refers to information about your computer and your visits to our website, such as your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, the length of the visit and pages viewed. Please see the "Navigation Information" section below.

Account/Payment Information

We may collect and process company details, personal data and payment information provided by you for the purpose of providing a service(s) or product(s) and managing your account. This may include bank account details, credit cards numbers and billing information. Except for this, we do not collect Sensitive Information from you.

Our lawful basis for processing your data

It’s in HMK Automation Group Ltd’s legitimate business interest to keep its customers, members and contacts informed of our latest content, products and services and to manage and administer their memberships, contracts and purchases.

We process customer and client data and use direct marketing as part of this legitimate interest. It’s necessary for us to use a variety of direct marketing channels and messages to ensure our contacts are kept informed, and wherever possible we make sure the messages we send are targeted and relevant. Any direct marketing we undertake complies with e-privacy rules on consent.

We will keep your data safely and securely for as long as necessary or according to your instructions, and we review the data we hold at least once every two years. If you’d like more information about how we store your data (GDPP2018), please contact us directly.

How we use information we collect

Use of Personal Information

In addition to the uses identified elsewhere in our Privacy Policy, we may use your Personal Information to: (a) improve your browsing experience by personalising our website and to improve the Subscription Service; (b) send information to you which we think may be of interest to you by post, email, or other means; (c) send you marketing communications relating to our business or the businesses of carefully-selected third parties which we think may be of interest to you, and (d) provide other companies with statistical information about our users -- but this information will not be used to identify any individual user. We may, from time to time, contact you on behalf of external business partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you. In those cases, we do not transfer your unique Personal Information to the third party. In addition, we may share data with trusted partners to contact you based on your request to receive such communications, help us perform statistical analysis, or provide customer support. Such third parties are prohibited from using your Personal Information except for these purposes, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information.

Use of Navigational Information

We use Navigational Information to operate and improve our website. We may also use Navigational Information alone or in combination with Personal Information to provide you with personalised information about our website.

Customer Testimonials and Comments

We post customer testimonials and comments on our website, which may contain Personal Information. We obtain each customer's consent via email prior to posting the customer's name and testimonial.

Use of Credit Card Information

If you give us credit card information, we use it solely to check your financial qualifications and collect payment from you. We use a third-party service provider to manage credit card processing. This service provider is not permitted to store, retain, or use the information you provide except for the sole purpose of credit card processing on our behalf.

Security of your Personal Information

We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your Personal Information from unauthorised access, use or disclosure. We secure the Personal Information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorised access, use or disclosure. When sensitive Personal Information (such as a credit card number and/or geo-location data) is collected on our website and/or transmitted to other websites, it is protected through the use of encryption, such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol.

If you have any questions about the security of your Personal Information, you can request to see our (GDDP2018) Document.

Social Media Features

Our Websites include Social Media Features, such as the Facebook Like button and Widgets, such as the Share This button or interactive mini-programs that run on our sites. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our sites, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social Media Features and Widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our website. Our Privacy Policy does not apply to these features. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy and other policies of the companies providing them.

External Websites

Our website provides links to other websites. We do not control and are not responsible for, the content or practices of these other websites. Our provision of such links does not constitute our endorsement of these other websites, their content, their owners, or their practices. Our Privacy Policy does not apply to these other websites, which are subject to any privacy and other policies they may have.

Retention of Personal Information

We retain Personal Information that you provide us as long as we consider it potentially useful in contacting you about the Subscription Service or our other services, or as needed to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements, and then we securely delete the information. We will delete this information from the servers at an earlier date if you so request, as described in "Opting Out and Unsubscribing" below. If you provide information to our customers as part of their use of the Subscription Service, our customers decide how long to retain the personal information they collect from you. If a customer terminates its use of the Subscription Service, then we will provide the customer with access to all information stored for the customer by the Subscription Service, including any Personal Information provided by you, for export by the customer according to our agreement with our customer. After termination, we may, unless legally prohibited, delete all customer information, including your Personal Information, from the Subscription Service.

International Transfer of Information

To facilitate our global operations, we may transfer and access Personal Information from around the world, including outside of the EU. This is only performed given the territory or country ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of the data subjects in relation to processing of personal data.

Corporate Events

If we (or our assets) are acquired by another company, whether by merger, acquisition, bankruptcy or otherwise, that company would receive all information gathered by HMK Automation Group Ltd. In this event, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our website of any change in ownership, uses of your Personal Information, and choices you may have regarding your Personal Information.

Compelled Disclosure

We reserve the right to use or disclose your Personal Information if required by law or if we reasonably believe that use or disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, comply with a law, court order, or legal process.

Use of Cookies

HMK Automation group Ltd uses cookies and other third party tracking technologies in our websites and across other websites that help us collect other information about our customers’ and users’ preferences. You can choose to permit or restrict the use of these technologies through your personal browser settings. HMK Automation Group Ltd Cookies do not contain any personally identifying information.

Third Party Data

HMK Automation Group Ltd may receive data about organisations, industries, website visitors, marketing campaigns and other matters related to our business from our partners, affiliates or others, that we use to make our own information better or more useful. This data may be combined with other information we collect and might include aggregate level data, such as which IP addresses correspond to business addresses. Or it might be more specific: for example, how well an online marketing or email campaign performed.

Our expectations of our content partners

Any personal data we share with our content partners is shared only the basis that the data will be used by the partner under a lawful basis of legitimate interest and according to the requirements of the GDPR. We specify this in our contracts with all our content partners.

Data processing partners

HMK Automation Group Ltd may provide your personal information to a subsidiary of the HMK Automation Group Ltd, any affiliated companies or other trusted businesses or persons, acting under a confidentiality agreement, for processing personal information on behalf of HMK Automation Group Ltd. These parties are required to process such information based on instructions from HMK Automation Group Ltd and in accordance with this Policy. They do not have any independent right to share this information.

HMK Automation Group Ltd. may transfer Your Data if HMK Automation Group Ltd is acquired by or merged with another company. HMK Automation Group Ltd will provide notice before this occurs and will post a new Policy if necessary

Credit checking

HMK Automation Group Ltd may share your personal information with a credit checking company or with a credit card processing company to bill users for products & services. These third parties do not retain, share, or store any personally identifiable information except to provide these services and are bound by strict confidentiality agreements which limit their use of such information.

Your rights over the personal data we hold

You can reasonably request access to the personal data we hold on you, at any time, and we will provide that information free of charge within one month of your request at the latest.

You can request inaccurate or incomplete personal data held on you to be rectified or completed or for your personal data to be suppressed or erased, and we will respond within one month of your request at the latest. We will supply any data you request in a CSV file.

Your right to object

You have the right to opt out of our direct marketing at any point, and we will deal with your request right away. You can unsubscribe from our emails automatically by submitting this unsubscribe form. Alternatively, you can amend your email preferences via our preference centre. To opt out of our direct mail or telephone marketing please call us on +44 (0)1260 279 411 or email sales@hmkdirect.com

How we store data we collect

Information can be held in any of the following areas:

• Locked filing cabinets at our Congleton offices;
  
• Office desks whilst being worked on;
  
• Secure servers with offsite backup;
  
• Our ERP and CRM systems
  
• Correspondence with customers is also held on our email system;
  
• Bank details are also held in our Bankers secure online banking system. This data is only accessible by a restricted number of key staff and is protected via bank pin numbers and access card readers;
  
• Note that if we receive notification of a change to your bank details we will telephone our customer contact for confirmation as a security measure before any amends are actioned;
  
• Credit and debit card details are held on our Barclaycard online processing system. This system can only be accessed by members of the order processing team;
  
• Archived information (information over 2 years old) is archived and held in our office in Congleton.
  
• Who has access to the data we collect
  
• HMK staff who have access to our server, emails and hard copy files held in locked cabinets;
  
• HMK Staff who have access to our Dynamics NAV ERP system. Each member of staff has system permissions set in accordance with their role and duties;
  
• Bank details are also held in our Bankers secure online banking system in payment templates. This data is only accessible by a restricted number of key staff and is protected via bank pin numbers and access card readers;
  
• Credit and debit card details and only be accessed by members of the order processing team/finance team. Details are also held on our secure online Barclaycard system.

For more information on how we manage and protect data internally, you can request to see our General Data Protection Policy (GDDP2018) by calling 01260 279 411 or emailing sales@hmkdirect.com.

This Privacy Notice may be changed by the Data Office of HMK Automation Group LTD any time.