Privacy Policy

Effective: 19 October 2011

This document discloses the data protection and privacy practices for That Social Media Thing Limited including:

• What personally identifiable information of yours is collected
• What organisation is collecting the information
• How the information is used
• With whom the information may be shared
• What choices are available to you regarding collection, use and distribution of the information
• What kind of security procedures are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under That Social Media Thing Limited’s control
• How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.

Questions regarding this privacy policy should be directed to That Social Media Thing Limited via our contact form.

1. Under 18s

Children are not eligible to use our services and we ask that minors (under 18 years of age) do not submit any personal information to us.

2. Information We Collect

Our primary goal in collecting personal information from you is to provide you with a smooth, efficient, and personalised experience while using our services. This allows us to provide services and features that most likely meet your needs, and to customise our service to make your experience easier and quicker.

To fully use our services, you will need to join as a Member, where you will be required to provide us with your contact information. We automatically track certain information about you based upon your behaviour on our site. We use this information to do internal research on our users’ demographics, interests, and behaviour to better understand and serve our users.

We use a web analytics tool to analyse site usage, how our users arrive at our site, what they do on the site, what browser they are using and on what operating system etc. This analytics data, collected via a tag in the pages of our site, may be tied to personally identifiable information.

In addition, we use cookies on certain pages of our site. We may also offer certain features that are only available through the use of a cookie. Cookies can also help us provide information which is targeted to your interests as well as being used to monitor site performance and to measure site traffic and usage. Cookies are stored on your hard drive, not on our site. Most cookies are “session” cookies, meaning that they are automatically deleted at the end of a session. The other type of cookie we use is a “persistent” cookie. This stays on your hard drive and we use this to automatically identify who you are. We use this cookie so that you do not need to log in manually every time you visit the site if you are a registered user. The cookie itself contains no personally identifiable information but it does pass an ID to our server which allows us to tie the cookie to your personal information. We use the cookie to track how often you visit the site so we know who our most active users are. You are always free to decline our cookies if your browser permits, although in that case you will not be able to use certain features on our site. For example, if you disable cookies, you will need to log in manually each time you visit the site as we cannot use a cookie to remember who you are.

Surveys & Contests. From time to time our site may request information from users via surveys, contests or for a particular service (e.g. newsletter). Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Information requested will include contact information (as supplied to the site during registration) and supplementary information on your professional interests, opinions and preferences (e.g. choice of software, working practices, opinions on industry issues, feedback on the That Social Media Thing Limited website). We will use the contact information to notify winners. We will not publish winners’ details on the site though on request we will provide details of any winner’s name and organisation. If the survey or contest has a sponsor then we may share information given by entrants with the sponsor, but only with the user’s consent.

Payment Processing. In order to process payments online we require the billing address for the credit card used and our external payment provider, PayPal requires your credit card details

Supplier Profile. We have a Supplier Directory which contains profiles of suppliers, agencies, vendors, consultancies and freelancers offering service or products related to Social Media, Marketing and Business Consultancy. If you represent such a Supplier we require a minimum amount of information for each supplier profile so that it is useful for users of the directory. We also offer a “Full Profile” which allows you to add further information but we may choose to make this a paid-for service. Secondly, we store details of contributions to the site made by individual members belonging to a membership account that has a supplier profile.

Blog Comments. In order to leave a comment in our Blog you either have to be a logged in Member or you have to give us at least your Name and Email address. You can choose whether to post as yourself, or anonymously. We require name and email address even for anonymous posts for quality control purposes.

3. Our Use of Your Information

We use personally identifiable information about you to improve our marketing and promotional efforts, to statistically analyse site usage, to improve our content and product offerings and to customise our site’s content, layout, and services. We believe these uses allow us to improve our site and better tailor it to meet our users’ needs.

We use your email address to send you newsletters or other communications that you have requested from the Site or that relate to your membrship. Out of respect for our users we offer an opt-out (see Section 4 below).

We use information in the file we maintain about you, and other information we obtain from your current and past activities on the Site, to resolve any disputes, troubleshoot problems and enforce our Terms & Conditions. At times, we may look across multiple users to identify problems or resolve disputes, and in particular on rare occasions we may evaluate your information to look for users using multiple User IDs or aliases.

Payment Processing. We take online payments for our services. We use PayPal as our external payment provider. In addition to the information outlined above, we require the billing address of the credit card you use so that we can pass this to Paypal who check the address against the cardholder’s details for security purposes. We also use the billing details in case we need to contact you regarding payments e.g. for an outstanding invoice or failed transaction. Paypal requires that you provide your credit card details to process the transaction.

Your Personal Information is stored in our databases. Please note that the information you enter may be transferred outside the European Economic Area to the United States of America where it will be stored for the purposes of processing by That Social Media Thing Limited or any of its affiliates including subcontractors. By submitting your information, you consent to this transfer.

That Social Media Thing Limited complies with the UK Data Protection Act 1998.

4. Email Communications

As part of the registration process for joining as a That Social Media Thing Limited member you have the opportunity to opt in or out of various email communications. If at any stage you wish no longer to receive any emails that you receive from the site you can stop them by clicking ‘unsubscribe’ at the end of the email.

5. Our Disclosure of Your Information

We do not sell or rent any personally identifiable information about you to any third party.

Unfortunately, due to the existing regulatory environment, we cannot ensure that all of your private communications and other personally identifiable information will never be disclosed in ways not otherwise described in this Privacy Policy.

By way of example (without limiting the foregoing), we may be forced to disclose information to the government or third parties under certain circumstances, or third parties may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications. We can (and you authorise us to) disclose any information about you to law enforcement or other government officials as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate, in connection with an investigation of fraud, Intellectual Property Rights infringements, or other activity that is illegal or may expose us to legal liability.

Advertisers. We do aggregate personally identifiable information and disclose such information in aggregate to advertisers and for other marketing and promotional purposes. However, in these situations, we do not disclose to these entities any information that could be used to personally identify you. There are some cases where we do pass on your personal details, however we only do this if you explicitly agree to this, typically by checking an opt-in checkbox where the default position will be that you do not agree to your details being passed on. For example, where we have events you may choose to opt-in, at the time of registering for the event, to allow your details to be passed on to those presenting.

Visibility of your information on the Site. Following are details of how your information is visible across the site depending on the site section and what you are doing:

• Blog Comments and Forum Posts. If you post a comment to our Blog then, by default, your name (first name, last name) will be published against your post
• Training bookings. We do not publish personal details of users who have booked particular events or training. However, as non-personally identifiable information, we do occasionally publish job titles and company names of those booked to attend a particular event.
• Supplier Directory Profile. We require a minimum amount of information for each supplier profile so that it is useful for users of the Supplier Directory. We also offer a “Full Profile” which allows you to add further information but this may be a paid for service. You should be aware that any information you publish on your supplier profile is visible to everyone and anyone, not just other That Social Media Thing Limited Members, and may appear in search engines and elsewhere on the internet. For example, we cannot prevent others trying to contact you if you publish contact information. Furthermore, you should be aware that, once published, just because you subsequently update your supplier profile information it does not mean that it will be updated everywhere across the internet, as it may already exist elsewhere, for example in the cache of search engines. These links are generated automatically and cannot be edited or removed by you. If you do not want them to show then you should not create a supplier profile.

Payment and Credit Card Details. In order to process payments online we require the billing address for the credit card used and our external payment provider, PayPal requires your credit card details

None of your card details, or billing details, are published on the site in any way, nor are they visible to other users on your membership account.

Your Account. Bronze, Silver and Gold level memberships only have one user per membership account.  Membership accounts with multiple memberships are available upon request.

Legal Requests. That Social Media Thing Limited cooperates with law enforcement inquiries and other third parties to enforce laws, Intellectual Property Rights and other rights. Local and international law enforcement agencies can request and may receive your personally identifiable information.

Suppliers and Other Service Providers. From time to time we use third party Suppliers and Service Providers to facilitate our services. Where any Service Provider collects information directly from you (such as the situation where we ask a Service Provider to conduct a survey for us) you will be notified of the involvement of the Supplier or Service Provider, and all information disclosures you make will be strictly optional.

6. Control of Your Password

Except as specifically permitted by this section, you may not disclose your That Social Media Thing Limited password to any third parties nor share it with any third parties. If you lose control of your password, you may lose substantial control over your personally identifiable information and may be subject to legally binding actions taken on your behalf. Therefore, if your password has been compromised for any reason, you should immediately change your password.

You may, however, disclose your password to certain third parties with whom That Social Media Thing Limited has entered into specific contractual and technical arrangements designed to safeguard your password, in order to enjoy the benefits of those third parties’ services in relation to the That Social Media Thing Limited services.

7. Reviewing and Changing Your Personally Identifiable Information

You can at any time ask to see and have removed any information that we have stored on you, though we reserve the right to charge for this service. Please contact That Social Media Thing Limited if you would like your personal information removed. We will retain in our files information you have requested to remove in some circumstances, such as to resolve disputes, troubleshoot problems and enforce our Terms & Conditions. Further, such prior information is never completely removed from our databases due to technical constraints and the fact that we back up our systems. Therefore, you should not expect that all of your personally identifiable information will be completely removed from our databases in response to your requests that it be removed.

8. Other Information Collectors

Except as otherwise expressly discussed in this Privacy Policy, this document only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. To the extent that you disclose your information to other parties, whether they are other members of the Site or other sites throughout the Internet, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the personal information you disclose to them.

9. Security

On the That Social Media Thing Limited site we use best endeavour to safeguard the confidentiality of your personally identifiable information but we do not use encryption (such as SSL) or firewalls to further protect the information as it travels across the Internet. This is because we do not believe that, apart from the credit card information processed by Paypal, the personal information we currently collect warrants such measures and the accompanying loss of speed experienced. You should be aware that “perfect security” does not exist on the Internet.

10. Changes to Privacy Policy

If we are going to use your personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection we will make any changes to this Privacy Policy and post them to our site. It is up to you whether you then continue to use the site and That Social Media Thing Limited’s services following such changes. However, it is assumed that you accept such changes if you continue to use the site and services. If you do not accept such changes then you should stop using That Social Media Thing Limited’s site and services and contact us, should you wish to have any of your details removed.

11. Mailing Address