We make every effort to ensure we protect your personal information and manage your data in line with the UK Data Protection Act.
This website – www.bbcearthmagazine.com – is owned and operated by River Publishing Ltd (The River Group Ltd). The River Group produces BBC Earth magazine on behalf of BBC Worldwide.
This Privacy Policy (“Policy”), in conjunction with our terms and conditions, explains how River Publishing Ltd may use the information we collect about you, as well as the rights you have over any personal information we hold about you. Please read this policy and our terms and conditions carefully; by accessing the website you confirm you have understood and agreed to them.
We employ other companies to perform functions on our behalf, including sending emails and postal mail, and analysing data. We ensure that these companies only use such information under our direction to perform these functions, and that they have adequate procedures in place to deal with your data securely.
Information we collect
We collect information about you (such as your name, email address, phone number, and gender) when you:
- Take part in our promotions, competitions, customer surveys and questionnaires
- Contact us via email, phone or letter
- We collect non-personally identifiable website data known as cookies to identify the performance of the website
How we use your information
We collect your personal information to help BBC Earth magazine better understand you and to enable us to personalise the website, offers and promotions to your needs. We use your information to:
- Manage, develop and improve the website
- Personalise our services, offers and promotions to you
- Operate your account
- Tell you about important changes to the website and our offers
- Develop and improve our products and services
- Manage promotions, competitions, customer surveys and questionnaires
- Check and verify your identity, and prevent or detect crime
We may share your personal information across the BBC Earth magazine/The River Group of companies so they can provide you with relevant products and services. However, this data will never be shared without your opt-in consent to any other business outside of BBC Earth magazine/The River Group of companies or as otherwise outlined in this policy.
Marketing and customer research
With your prior consent, we may contact you:
- With details of offers and information about BBC Earth magazine products or services
- With offers and information about products or services from selected partners prior to your opt-in consent, or for customer research, e.g. to help improve our services or the website
It is your choice if you wish to receive or not to receive this information. If you tell us you don’t want to receive marketing information from us, we will remove your details from our opt-in marketing database.
You may choose to no longer receive marketing information from us by:
- Clicking on the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of our emails
- Calling us on 020 7420 7000
- Writing to us at BBC Earth magazine, The River Group, 16 Connaught Place, London W2 2ES
COOKIES
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we’ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the BBC Earth Magazine website. However, if you would like to, you can change your cookie settings at any time.
To help you better understand the cookies we use on the website, we use a classification that was developed by the International Chamber of Commerce UK. You can find more information about cookies at www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.eu.
The website will be using Google Analytics which uses the following cookies:
__utma Cookie
A persistent cookie – remains on a computer, unless it expires or the cookie cache is cleared. It tracks visitors. Metrics associated with the Google __utma cookie include: first visit (unique visit), last visit (returning visit). This also includes Days and Visits to purchase calculations which afford ecommerce websites with data intelligence around purchasing sales funnels.
__utmb Cookie & __utmc Cookie
These cookies work in tandem to calculate visit length. Google __utmb cookie demarks the exact arrival time, then Google __utmc registers the precise exit time of the user.
Because __utmb counts entrance visits, it is a session cookie, and expires at the end of the session, e.g. when the user leaves the page. A timestamp of 30 minutes must pass before Google cookie __utmc expires. Given__utmc cannot tell if a browser or website session ends. Therefore, if no new page view is recorded in 30 minutes the cookie is expired.
This is a standard ‘grace period’ in web analytics. Ominture and WebTrends among many others follow the same procedure.
__utmz Cookie
Cookie __utmz monitors the HTTP Referrer and notes where a visitor arrived from, with the referrer siloed into type (Search engine (organic or cpc), direct, social and unaccounted). From the HTTP Referrer the __utmz Cookie also registers, what keyword generated the visit plus geolocation data.
This cookie lasts six months. In tracking terms this Cookie is perhaps the most important as it will tell you about your traffic and help with conversion information such as what source / medium / keyword to attribute for a Goal Conversion.
__utmv Cookie
Google __utmv Cookie lasts “forever”. It is a persistant cookie. It is used for segmentation, data experimentation and the __utmv works hand in hand with the __utmz cookie to improve cookie targeting capabilities.
Using browser settings to manage cookies
You are able to use the settings in your browser to control the cookies that can be put onto your computer. The Help menu on the menu bar of most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, and how to disable cookies altogether. However, cookies are essential to allow you to take full advantage of some of the website’s features, so we recommend that you leave them turned on. For example, if you block or otherwise reject cookies, you will not be able to add items to your shopping basket, proceed to checkout, or use any of our products and services that require you to sign in, i.e. to track your Rewards For Life points. If you leave cookies turned on, remember to sign off when you finish using a shared computer.
Security
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow the UK Data Protection Act standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. When you enter certain information (such as a credit card number) on our order forms, we encrypt the transmission of that information using 256-bit secure socket layer technology (SSL). If you have any questions regarding security, you can contact us at the address below.
Disclosing your information
We will never disclose your information to anyone outside of the BBC Earth magazine/River Publishing Ltd group of companies except where we have your consent; where we are required or permitted to do so by law, such as when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process; where other companies who provide a service to us as part of our order process require that data, i.e. delivery companies, payment providers; or companies who send out email communications on our behalf; or where they are successors in title to our business. We will never share your data with other companies for marketing purposes without your consent.
Other websites
The website may contain links to other sites that are outside our control and not covered by this policy. The operators of these sites may collect information from you that will be used by them in accordance with their policy, which may differ from ours.
Accessing your information
We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. If you wish to cancel your submission or request that we no longer use your information to provide you services, contact us at the address below. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements.
If you would like to know what information is held, you can write to us with your request. We reserve the right to charge £10 for providing this information. You have the right to ask us to correct any information that you believe is wrong.
Contact us
If you have questions or complaints regarding our privacy policy or practices, please contact us at:
BBC Earth Magazine, The River Group, 16 Connaught Place, London W2 2ES
