This personal information is required to provide products to you. If you do not provide personal information we ask for, it may delay or prevent us from providing products to you.
3. How Your Personal Information is Collected. We collect this personal information directly from you—in person, by telephone, text or email, and via our website and apps.
4. 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 products to you | For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract |
| To prevent and detect fraud against you or Porter & Co. | For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to minimize fraud that could be damaging for us and for you |
| Other processing necessary to comply with professional, legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business, e.g. under issued by our professional regulator | 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 |
| 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 you |
| Operational reasons, such as improving efficiency, training and quality control | 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 |
| 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 informationTo comply with our legal and regulatory obligations |
| 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 unauthorized 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 youTo 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 contractTo comply with our legal and regulatory obligationsFor 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 |
| Statutory returns | To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations |
| Ensuring safe working practices, staff administration and assessments | To comply with our legal and regulatory obligationsFor our legitimate interests or those of a third party, e.g. to make sure we are following our own internal procedures and working efficiently so we can deliver the best service to you |
| Marketing our services and those of selected third parties to:¾ existing and former customers;¾ third parties who have previously expressed an interest in our services;¾ 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 |
The above table does not apply to special category personal information, which we will only process with your explicit consent.
5. Promotional Communications. We may use your personal information to send you updates (by email, text message, telephone or post) about our products, including exclusive offers, promotions or new products and also others’ promotions and products.
We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information for promotional purposes (see above “How and why we use your personal information”). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you promotional communications. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.
We will always treat your personal information with the utmost respect and never sell or share it with other organizations outside Porter & Co., including its successors and affiliates, for marketing purposes.
You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications at any time by:
· Contacting us at ljames@porterandcompanyresearch.com
We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you instruct us to provide further products in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.
6. Who We Share Your Personal Information With. We routinely share personal information with:
· Our affiliates;
· Service providers we use to help deliver our products to you, such as payment service providers;
· Other third parties we use to help us run our business, such as marketing agencies or website hosts;
· Third parties approved by you, including social media sites you choose to link your account to or third-party payment providers.
We only allow our service providers to handle your personal information if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal information. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers relating to ensure they can only use your personal information to provide services to us and to you. We may also share personal information with external auditors.
We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies 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 re-structuring. We will typically anonymize information, but this may not always be possible. The recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations.
7. Personal Information We Sold or Disclosed for a Business Purpose. We have not sold or disclosed to a third party any personal information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household.
8. Where Your Personal Information is Held. Information may be held at our offices and those of our 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”.
9. How Long Your Personal Information Will Be Kept. We will keep your personal information while you have an account with us or while we are providing products to you. 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 your behalf;
· To show that we treated you fairly; or
· 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 anonymize it.
10. Transferring Your Personal Information Out of the EEA. To deliver services to those who visit or use our products from the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom and Switzerland, it is sometimes necessary for us to share your personal information outside the EEA, e.g.:
· With your and our service providers located outside the EEA; or
· If you are based outside the EEA.
These transfers are subject to special rules under European and UK data protection law.
Certain non-EEA countries may 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 use standard data protection contract clauses that have been approved by the European Commission.
If you would like further information, please contact us (see “How To Contact Us” below).
11. Your Rights Under the GDPR.
| Right to Access | The right to be provided with a copy of your personal information (the right of access) |
| Right to Rectification | The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal information |
| Right to be Forgotten | The right to require us to delete your personal information—in certain situations |
| Right to 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 |
| Right to 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 |
| Right to Object | The right to object:¾ at any time to your personal information being processed for direct marketing (including profiling);¾ in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information, e.g. processing carried out for the purpose of our legitimate interests. |
| Right 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, see the guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individual rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.