Privacy Policy
At Stories from Science, we’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
No, seriously, we mean it. We recommend reading ‘Attention Merchants’ by Tim Yu. It’s no exaggeration to say that many of the biggest technology companies play fast and loose with your personal data, making billions every year out of harvesting your personal details. Protecting your privacy – and that of your family – is something we all need to take really seriously.
Starting now.
So this Policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people who visit our website, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.
We may change this Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. We’ll also try to update some of the jokes. By using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.
Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to [email protected]. A real person will answer your email and respond to any and all queries.
Who are we?
Stories from Science is a creative digital platform, which seeks to build a community interested in science in Abingdon and the Science Vale. The core of the platform is the Stories from Science podcast, and it is run by Dr Mark Thornton. It literally is run out of his kitchen.
Mark is an employee of Firefly Cage Ltd (no. 05794785), whose registered address is 35 Hobbs Close, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 3UX.
How do we collect information from you?
If you visit the Stories from Science digital platform, read our content and listen to our podcast, then we do not collect any personal information about you.
However, we hope that you’ll think “Wow, what a great idea” and may subscribe and join our community. In this case, you may be using the crowdfunding platform Patreon, or paying via PayPal). We also run an email newsletter (with a third-party service called Mailchimp). In this case, we obtain information from you when you subscribe to any or all of these services via webforms. We may also collect information when you contact us to enquire about getting involved with the show, or how to get involved with our community.
What type of information is collected from you?
The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address, IP address, and information regarding what pages are accessed and when. If you subscribe to paid-for Stories from Science products your credit card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions, as explained below.
How is your information used?
We may use your information to:
- process a subscription that you have made;
- process orders that you have submitted;
- to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us;
- dealing with entries into a competition;
- seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
- notify you of changes to our services;
- send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about latest episodes of the podcasts, events and promotions of our services;
- We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations. We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.
That last bullet point is a bit wordy, so here’s an example: if you are a subscriber through Patreon, we will hold your personal information as long as your regular subscription remains valid.
Who has access to your information?
For information that we hold directly:
- We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.
- We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.
However, we do use Third Party Service Providers who work on our behalf (most notably Patreon, PayPal and Mailchimp). In order to provide services to us and you, we may pass your information to our third party service providers for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process subscriptions and send you mailings). However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes.
Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.
Third Party Product Providers we work in association with:
Patreon: Patreon are one of the world’s largest and most trusted platforms to allow creators in every sphere of human artistic endeavour to get paid for their work through a crowdsourcing / reward model. You can read more about their third-party privacy provision here.
Mailchimp: Mailchimp is also a world-leading company, only this time in the field of email newsletters. You can read about their third-party privacy provision here. Because Mailchimp are, like, the world leader in email marketing, they work extremely hard to protect their reputation in a world of spammers. Their privacy statement is enormous, but you’ll be wanting to scroll down to the bit that says ‘Safeguarding Your Information’ because that’s the bit that refers directly to the information we collect from you, and place in Mailchimp’s hands.
PayPal: You’ve probably heard of PayPal. They provide financial services to allow Internet users to pay for and receive payment for goods and services worldwide (interesting fact: they were originally founded by Elon Musk, you know the Tesla guy who builds rockets). Again, they have a really excellent third-party privacy policy and it can be found here.
If you have any questions regarding secure transactions and payments, please contact us.
Your choices
You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. The default is always that you don’t unless you positively tick the relevant boxes situated on the form on which we collect your information, or if you select a service from us (e.g. a paid subscription) that requires us to communicate with you and let you know things that directly relate to your subscription (i.e. a new podcast has been published).
We will not contact you for marketing purposes by email, phone or text message unless you have explicitly given us your prior consent. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us at [email protected]
How you can access and update your information
The accuracy of your information is important to us. If you change email address, or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please email us at: [email protected]
You have the right to ask for a copy of the information Stories from Science holds about you. We may charge £12 for information requests to cover our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.
Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information
When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely. Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our websites, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.
Profiling
We may analyse your personal information to create a profile of your interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information relevant to you. We may make use of additional information about you when it is available from external sources to help us do this effectively. We may also use your personal information to detect and reduce fraud and credit risk.
Use of ‘cookies’
Like many other websites, the Stories from Science website uses cookies. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. They collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns and do not identify you as an individual. This helps us to improve our website and deliver a better more personalised service.
It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences. For more information on how to switch off cookies on your computer, visit our full cookies policy. Turning cookies of may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.
Links to other websites
Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations – after all, that’s how the Internet works. However, this privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit (yes, we cannot promise they will be as well written and entertaining as this one). We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.
In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site.
16 or Under
We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.
Transferring your information outside of Europe
For at least another year (we wrote this policy in early 2018) the UK is still part of the EU, we’re very happy to say.
As part of the services offered to you through this website, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the European Union (“EU”). By way of example, this may happen if any of our servers are from time to time located in a country outside of the EU. These countries may not have similar data protection laws to the UK. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing. If we transfer your information outside of the EU in this way, we will take steps to ensure that appropriate security measures are taken with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this Policy.
If you use our services while you are outside the EU, your information may be transferred outside the EU in order to provide you with those services.
Goodness knows what will happen when we actually leave the EU. Considering our politicians don’t have a clue yet, we’ll have to wait until we actually leave, and if the country still has a functioning economy, then we’ll update our privacy policy at this time.
Review of this Policy
We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated in February 2018.