Privacy Policy

1) Introduction

Digital Dairy Chain is committed to protecting your personal information. Our Privacy Policy contains important information about what personal details we collect; what we do with that information; who we may share it with and why; and your choices and rights when it comes to the personal information you have given us.

We may need to make changes to our Privacy Policy; so please revisit this page for updates from time to time. If there are important changes such as changes to where your personal data will be processed; we will contact you to let you know.

2) HOW TO CONTACT US

If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy or the information we collect or use about you, please contact [email protected]

3) INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND USE

Information about you that we collect and use includes:

• Information about who you are e.g. your name, company details and contact details.
• Information about your contact with us e.g. meetings, phone calls, emails/ letters.
• Information that you provide to us for the purpose of subscribing to our website services, email notifications and/or newsletters including name and email address.
• Information that is automatically collected e.g. via cookies when you visit one of our websites.
• Information relating to any transaction carried out between you and us, connected to any purchases you make of our products or services.
• Any other information that you choose to send to us.

We do not collect, process or store credit and debit card details that may be required for the purchase of our products or services.

4) USE OF COOKIES

A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser, and stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.

This allows the website, through its server to provide the users with a tailored experience within this website.

Our websites uses cookies to better the users experience while visiting the website; by tracking, saving and storing information about the user’s interactions and usage of the website. We may use both “session” cookies and “persistent” cookies on the website.

“Session” cookies will be deleted from your computer when you close your browser.

“Persistent” cookies will remain stored on your computer until deleted, or until they reach a specified expiry date.

Where applicable, our websites use a cookie control system allowing the user on their first visit to the website to allow or disallow the use of cookies on their computer / device. This complies with recent legislation requirements for websites to obtain explicit consent from users before leaving behind or reading files such as cookies on a user’s computer / device.

Users are advised that if they wish to deny the use and saving of cookies from our websites on to their computers hard drive they should take necessary steps within their web browsers security settings to block all cookies.

Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites. If you block cookies you may not be able to use all the features on our websites.

Our websites use tracking software to monitor visitors to better understand how they use them. This software is provided by Google Analytics 4 which uses cookies to track visitor usage. The software will save a cookie to your computer’s hard drive in order to track and monitor your engagement and usage of the website, but will not store, save or collect personal information. You can read Google’s privacy policy here for further information [http://www.google.com/privacy.html].

5) WHERE WE COLLECT YOUR INFORMATION

We may collect your personal information directly from you, from a variety of sources, including:

• An enquiry or an application for a product or service.
• Phone conversations with us.
• Subscribing to digital newsletters and project updates.
• Emails or letters you send to us.
• Our online services such as websites and social media.
• Participating in research surveys to help us understand you better to improve our products or services.
• We may also collect personal information on you from places such as business directories and other commercially or publicly available sources e.g. to check or improve the information we hold (like your address).

Digital Dairy Chain will collect your name and email address when you subscribe to our newsletter. All data is stored on our marketing automation platform, MailChimp, and our CRM platform, Salesforce.

6) WHAT WE COLLECT AND USE YOUR INFORMATION FOR

We take your privacy seriously and we will only ever collect and use information which is personal to you where it is necessary, fair and lawful to do so. We will collect and use your information only where:

• You have given us your permission [consent] to send you marketing and communications information about the products and services we provide (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require these communications).
• It’s necessary to provide the product or service you have requested e.g. we will require some personal information including your name, address and contact details.
• It’s necessary to send you statements and invoices or to collect payments from you.
• It’s necessary for us to meet our legal or regulatory obligations e.g. to tell you about changes to Terms and Conditions or for the detection and prevention of fraud.
• It’s in the legitimate interests of the Digital Dairy Chain e.g. where we need to process your information to better understand you and your needs so we can send you more relevant communications about our current products and services and to develop new products and services.

If you do not wish us to collect and use your personal information in these ways, it may mean that we will be unable to provide you with our products or services.

7) WHO WE MAY SHARE YOUR INFORMATION WITH

We may disclose your personal information to any of our project partners (see full list below), employees, officers, agents, suppliers or subcontractors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes as set out in this Policy.

Except as provided in this Privacy Policy, we will not sell, share or provide your information to third parties.

We may disclose your personal information:

• To the extent that we are required to do so by law;

• In connection with any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings;

• In order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk);

• To the purchaser (or prospective purchaser) of any business or asset that we are (or are contemplating) selling; and

• To any person who we reasonably believe may apply to a court or other competent authority for disclosure of that personal information where, in our reasonable opinion, such court or authority would be reasonably likely to order disclosure of that personal information.

Whenever we are required to share your personal information, we will do so in line with our obligations to keep your information safe and secure.

By signing up for a Digital Dairy Chain newsletter you have given consent to personal contact being processing (hosted on Mailchimp). Legislation gives individuals a specific right to withdraw consent and you have the right to withdraw consent at any time by unsubscribing from the newsletter or contacting the Digital Dairy Chain at [email protected]  regarding your data.

When submitting your details to Digital Dairy Chain via the sources listed above, you’re accepting that any of the project’s partners can get in touch about relevant delivery mechanisms or support on behalf of the Digital Dairy Chain. Please see the list of project partners below:

Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC)

First Milk

Kendal Nutricare

Lactalis

Cows & Co

SmartSTEMs

CENSIS

National Milk Records (NMR)

University of the West of Scotland (UWS)

University of Strathclyde

8) WHERE YOUR INFORMATION IS PROCESSED

The majority of your information is processed in the UK and European Economic Area (EEA).

However, some of your information may be processed by third parties we work with outside of the EEA, including countries such as the United States. Where your information is being processed outside of the EEA, we take steps to ensure that your information is protected to at least an equivalent level as would be applied by UK/ EEA data privacy laws.

9) HOW WE PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION

We take information and system security very seriously and we strive to comply with our obligations at all times. Any personal information which is collected, recorded or used in any way, whether on paper, online or any other media, will have appropriate safeguards applied in line with our data protection obligations.

Your information is protected by controls designed to minimise loss or damage through accident, negligence or deliberate actions.

Our security controls are aligned to industry standards and good practice. We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure (password- and firewall- protected) servers.

You acknowledge that data transmission over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.

10) HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION

We will keep your personal information only where it is necessary to provide you with our products or services while you are a potential or existing customer.

We may also keep your information after this period but only where required to meet our legal or regulatory obligations. The length of time we keep your information for these purposes will vary depending on the obligations we need to meet.

11) YOUR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

You have several rights in relation to how we use your information. They are:

Right to be informed

• You have a right to receive clear and easy to understand information on what personal information we have, why and who we share it with – we do this in our Privacy Policy.
• Right of access
• You have the right of access to your personal information. If you wish to receive a copy of the personal information we hold on you, you may make a data subject access request (DSAR).
• Right to request that your personal information be rectified
• If your personal information is inaccurate or incomplete, you can request that it is corrected.

Right to request erasure

• You can ask for your information to be deleted or removed if there is not a compelling reason for the Digital Dairy Chain to continue to have it.

Right to restrict processing

• You can ask that we block or suppress the processing of your personal information for certain reasons. This means that we are still permitted to keep your information – but only to ensure we don’t use it in the future for those reasons you have restricted.

Right to object to processing

• You can object to the Digital Dairy Chain processing your personal information where it’s based on our legitimate interests or for direct marketing.

Right to data portability

• You can ask for a copy of your personal information for your own purposes.

12) HOW TO MAKE A COMPLAINT

We will always strive to collect, use and safeguard your personal information in line with data protection laws. If you do not believe we have handled your information as set out in our Privacy Policy, please email: [email protected], and we will do our utmost to make things right.

If you are still unhappy, you can complain to our Supervisory Authority – the Information Commissioner’s Office (https://ico.org.uk).

13) EXTERNAL LINKS

Although our websites only look to include quality, safe and relevant external links, users are advised adopt a policy of caution before clicking any external web links mentioned throughout our websites.

We cannot guarantee or verify the contents of any externally linked website. Users should therefore note they click on external links at their own risk and we cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

14) SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Communication, engagement and actions taken through external social media platforms that we participate on are custom to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policies held with each social media platform respectively.

Users are advised to use social media platforms wisely and communicate / engage upon them with due care and caution in regard to their own privacy and personal details.

We will never ask for personal or sensitive information through social media platforms and encourage users wishing to discuss such details to contact us through primary communication channels such as by telephone or email.

Our websites may use social sharing buttons which help share web content directly from web pages to the social media platform in question. Users are advised before using such social sharing buttons that they do so at their own discretion and note that the social media platform may track and save your request to share a web page respectively through your social media platform account.

15) SHORTENED LINKS IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Our website and its owners through their social media platform accounts may share web links to relevant web pages. By default some social media platforms shorten lengthy urls.

Users are advised to take caution and good judgement before clicking any shortened urls published on social media platforms. Despite the best efforts to ensure only genuine urls are published many social media platforms are prone to spam and hacking and therefore we cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any shortened links.

 

Published by SRUC on behalf of the Digital Dairy Chain Consortium.

Published 18 July 2023