Privacy Policy

• What does this policy cover?
• How does Wilmington Group safeguard my privacy?
• What personally identifiable information does Wilmington Group collect from me?
• How does Wilmington Group use cookies and monitoring?
• How does Wilmington Group use my information?
• With whom does Wilmington Group share my information?
• How can I access my information?

What does this policy cover?

This policy covers the processing of personal data by Wilmington Group plc and its associated companies ("Wilmington Group") whose registered office is at 19 - 21 Christopher Street, London EC2A 2BS. Wilmington Group can be contacted at enquiries@wilmington.co.uk.

This policy will help you understand how Wilmington Group (or its successors in title) will treat your personal information. This policy may change from time to time so please check back regularly.

How does Wilmington Group safeguard my privacy?

It is very important to us that you should be able to use and enjoy our websites and services without having to compromise your privacy in any way.

Wilmington Group includes companies which are members of the Direct Marketing Association, the Data Publishers' Association and the Periodical Publishers Association. Where you see the symbols of these organisations on any of our websites you have the further assurance of our commitment to the standards set by the relevant body.

Wilmington Group takes technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of your data. Your data will be processed securely in the UK and will only be exported outside the European Economic Area to other Wilmington Group locations or when protected by contract.

Please keep in mind that whenever you voluntarily disclose personal information online - for example on message boards, through email, or in chat areas - that information can be collected and used illegally by others. In short, if you post personal information online that is accessible to the public, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return.

Ultimately, you are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your passwords. Wilmington Group staff will NEVER compromise your security by asking for your password online. Please be careful and responsible when you are online.

No data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed entirely secure. While we strive to protect your personal information, Wilmington Group can neither ensure nor warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

What personally identifiable information does Wilmington Group collect from me?

Wilmington Group collects information in several ways from different parts of our network of websites and in the course of our activities.

Some personal information is gathered when you register for our websites, publications or events. During registration, Wilmington Group may ask for your name, telephone number, email address, birth date, gender, company, title, address and post code and personal and professional interests and responsibilities. The more accurate the information you volunteer, the better we are able to customise your experience of our websites and our messages.

In addition to registration we may ask you for personal information at other times, for example when you enter a competition or promotion run or sponsored by Wilmington Group and when you report a problem with one of our sites or services. If you contact Wilmington Group we may keep a record of that correspondence. Wilmington Group also occasionally asks users to complete surveys that we use for research purposes.

Your responses help us to sell data and appropriate advertising space and so minimise the cost of our services to you - or even provide some of them at no charge at all. They also enable us to personalise services to our readers.

Whenever Wilmington Group collects personal information we try to include a link to this Privacy Policy on the page in question.

How does Wilmington Group use cookies and monitoring?

Wilmington Group uses cookies as a means of offering and providing customisable and personalised services. However, your browser has settings that will allow you to accept all cookies, be informed as cookies arrive or reject all cookies. The downside of rejecting all cookies is that we are then unable to match the site content we offer you to what we know about your preferences from your previous visits.

In addition, advertising networks that serve ads onto Wilmington Group sites may use their own cookies.

Wilmington Group collects IP addresses for system administration, for independent audit and to report aggregate information to our advertisers. By this we can see how our sites are being used, for example, what services and facilities are popular, and how long users spend on particular pages. This is data about our users' browsing actions and patterns and it does not identify anyone individually.

When you telephone a Wilmington Group company, or someone who is dealing with calls on our behalf, we may record the conversation to ensure the security of any transaction discussed, to help us to review our quality of service and to assist in the training and development of the employees who take such calls.

How does Wilmington Group use my information?

Wilmington Group's primary goal in collecting your personal information is to provide you with a customised experience of our website(s). By knowing a little about you, Wilmington Group is able to deliver more relevant advertisements and content to you, and by demonstrating the quality of our users we are able to secure data sales and advertising funding which keeps down the costs of the services we provide to our users.

With your permission or under the specific terms and conditions of some of our Websites, Wilmington Group companies will use your information to contact you with relevant offers concerning our products and services. For non-contractual uses, you will be given the opportunity to accept or decline these offers when you sign up with us.

When delivering targeted advertisements, Wilmington Group acts merely as the middleman. Advertisers give us an advertisement and tell us the type of audience they want to reach (for example, GPs for pharmaceutical companies). We take the advertisement and display it to users meeting the relevant criteria.

When you join one of our email newsletter services the emails you receive may include advertising material and links to advertisers' websites. This does not mean that your details have been passed to the advertiser in question. Furthermore, at the end of each newsletter you will find either a hyperlink or a description of a route to have yourself removed from further editions of that newsletter.

Wilmington Group undertakes research on our users' demographics, interests and behaviour based on the information provided to us upon registration, during a promotion, from our server log files or from surveys. We do this to better understand and serve you, the user. This research is compiled and analysed on an aggregated basis. Wilmington Group may share this aggregated data with advertisers or business partners. We will use our reasonable endeavours to ensure, where reasonable, that our business partners and advertising customers have effective on-line privacy policies and have notified their processing under the Data Protection Act 1998 (as all of our relevant businesses have).

Please be aware that Wilmington Group advertisers or websites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. The information practices of those websites linked to Wilmington Group are not covered by this privacy statement.

With whom does Wilmington Group share my information?

Wilmington Group plc and its associated companies are prohibited by virtue of the Data Protection Act 1998 from disclosing any of your personally identifiable information except when we have your permission or under special circumstances, such as when we believe in good faith that the law requires it or when it is necessary under the circumstances described below. The following describes some of the ways that your information may be disclosed.

When you are on a Wilmington Group site and are asked for personal information, you may not be sharing that information with Wilmington Group alone. Some services are offered jointly with a partner company. In order to provide this co-branded service to you, it is necessary for us to share your personal information with those partner companies.

Promotions and competitions that run on Wilmington Group's sites may be sponsored by companies outside the Wilmington Group or may be co-sponsored by us and another company. Some or all data collected during a promotion may be shared with the sponsor. If personally identifying data about you will be shared, we will tell you when we collect the data.

If you make a purchase from a site hosted by Wilmington Group, the information obtained during the purchasing transaction, and the information you give such as your credit card number and contact information, is provided to the merchant concerned. This is to enable transactions to take place. You agree that Wilmington Group plc and its associated companies have no responsibility or liability for any such independent store privacy policies.

From time to time, you may be offered the opportunity to receive materials or special offers from selected third parties outside the Wilmington Group. If you consent to receive information from these third parties you are giving us permission to share your name and email and/or physical address details with them.

Some services are offered on condition that you provide personal information and allow that information to be shared with third parties.

Under confidentiality agreements, Wilmington Group may match user information with third party data. Also, Wilmington Group companies may disclose aggregated user statistics (for example, “58% of users are executives in SMEs”) in order to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties, and for other lawful purposes.

Wilmington Group may also disclose account information in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be violating Wilmington Group's Terms, Database Rights or Copyright or may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) Wilmington Group's rights or property, other Wilmington Group users, or anyone else that could be harmed by such activities.

On some types of Wilmington Group promotions, we will ask for your email address in order to update you on your score, entries and status. When you participate in these types of promotions, you automatically receive promotion-related email. Sometimes these promotion-related email messages may include targeted advertisements.

As indicated here, from time to time Wilmington Group may allow user information to be used by other reputable organisations as permitted under the Data Protection Act 1998. If you do not wish to allow your data to be shared, you can choose not to use a particular service, not to participate in certain promotions or contests, or you can select to opt-out of your information being shared on the registration page as appropriate.

How can I access my information?

If you have any requests concerning access to your personal information or any queries with regard to these practices, please contact our Data Protection Officer by e-mail: enquiries@wilmington.co.uk.