bizee.co – Data Privacy Policy
You can contact us about anything to do with our handling of personal data by emailing hello@bizee.co
OUR PROMISE ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
At bizee.co, we promise respectful treatment of the personal information of everyone we have contact with.
This Policy explains how we do that – when and why we collect information, how we use it, the limited situations when other people can see or use it, and how we keep it secure.
But just to set the scene, in case you don’t want to read through all the details just now, we can be clear up front.
We don’t sell, rent or trade email lists with anyone else.
We’ve split this Policy into sections, depending on who you are.
Section A is for everyone.
Section B is for you if you are, or work for, a “prospect”, that is a potential client.
If you are, or you work for, a “client” – that is a purchaser of our services – then section C is for you.
And if you’re a supplier, section D is for you.
Section A: For everyone
Whoever you are, our intention is to use your information to make things work smoothly for you in your experience of dealing with bizee.co. If that’s not how it turns out for you, please make sure to give us a shout. Call the office on 0208 144 1811 and ask for the Data Protection Manager, or email hello@bizee.co
This Privacy Policy is up to date to April 2021. We keep this Policy under regular review, and we may revise it at time goes on. Please check back here from time to time to make sure you’ve got the latest information.
Words or phrases with special meaning
In this Policy, there are words and phrases that have a specific meaning or that we are using in a special way. They are:
“personal data” any information about an identifiable living human being.
“process” we “process” your personal data when we do anything with it, which might include: collecting, recording, organising, storing, adapting, altering, retrieving, using, combining, disclosing, or deleting it.
“special category data” this is personal data that reveals racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, sex life or sexual orientation, health, genetic or biometric data.
Our general approach to personal data
We’re committed to protecting your privacy, and honouring your legal rights to control how we use your personal data.
We only collect and use personal data when we need to
because you have asked us to do something (for example, send you newsletters);
so that we can reply to queries or complaints;
to develop and manage our business relationships;
to help grow our business and fulfil our contracts;
to meet our legal obligations.
We try to make sure the information we hold is accurate and up to date, and is no more than we need to have.
You can check the information we hold about you by emailing us and asking, and if you find anything wrong we will delete it or correct it promptly.
If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your information, or how we have responded to any request about your personal data, please take it up in the first instance by emailing us hello@bizee.co
If we can’t sort it out, the official authority here in the UK is the Information Commissioner, and you can raise your concerns with them here.
Cookies on our website
If you visit our website, we use cookies and similar technologies to
analyse our website traffic
measure the effectiveness of our campaigns
Our cookies do not identify you personally to us.
If you click through a link on our website to a different website, then the cookie policy for that website will then apply to your session, and we have no control over those.
To learn more about cookies, including how to disable them, view http://www.allaboutcookies.org/or https://www.aboutcookies.org/.
By using our website, you agree to our use of cookies unless you have disabled them yourself. Please note that by deleting or disabling future cookies, your user experience may be affected and you might not be able to take advantage of certain functions of our site.
Email Newsletter Sign Up
If you sign up for our newsletter, you will have to supply us with some information so that we can deliver it. We also ask you for details that we think will be helpful in tailoring our offers. We will also use the information you provide to tune the information we send you to what we think will be most useful or interesting for you.
When you sign up, you will have to confirm your email address so that we are sure that you really do want to get our newsletter.
You can stop receiving newsletters and email marketing from us at any time of the day or night by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of our emails.
We hold your information for our newsletter list in a program called MailChimp. We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our e-newsletter. For more information, please see MailChimp’s privacy notice here. MailChimp holds data in the USA - they comply with the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework, protecting your data.
We monitor who opens what in our newsletter lists, and in the pre-set sequences of information we send you. We do this so we can see if content is popular and generate more of it, or if it is not read.
There may be sub-routines that trigger if you click on links or articles. These are designed to offer you more information about things you are interested in.
You can unsubscribe from these sequences at any time.
From time to time, we contact individual email newsletter subscribers but it is extremely rare. This would normally be if something odd were going on and we wanted to check you could see and use the content or find out what was causing a problem.
Social media
We have an active presence on social media, including Facebook and LinkedIn. Click the name of the platform for a link to their privacy policy.
If you ‘like’ any of our posts or ‘follow’ us, we can make ourselves aware of who you are from the information that you publish in your profile on the relevant platform. Your information is held by the platform and is subject to their data policy – we don’t control those. You can find a link to the privacy policy for each of the social media platforms by clicking on their name above.
Your replies to us, messages you send us, and your other activity linked to our posts may be seen by members of our staff. Our contract with them holds them to high standards of protecting your information.
Who can see or use your data?
We do not sell or exchange your personal data with organisations who may want to sell you something or use your data for research or other purposes.
Data location and platforms
Like many businesses, we do not have any tailor-made software – we use mainstream packages for everything from our client records, to email, to accounting.
This means that some of your data may be held in the EEA, and some may be held in services in the USA (with suitable data privacy shields) or elsewhere. We have picked reputable suppliers with appropriate security standards.
People
As well as our own employees, we also have an outsourced support team for our own business. This may include Virtual Assistants, Web Designers, IT support, Sales and Marketing, Accounting and more. Those support services have limited access to your data - only where the service they provide to us means they need it.
For example, if our IT support wants to check the functionality of a laptop or back up, they may need temporary access to information that may include something about you.
Our services to clients are principally provided by freelance virtual assistants in Serbia. They are typically working remotely on client’s own systems, but their work may also involve downloading data onto their own computers. We have implemented binding contractual and enforceable arrangements with them that they will work to English data protection standards.
Your information is held in the strictest confidence. We contract our employees and our external service providers to strict confidentiality clauses, and require them to comply with current data protection laws.
How long do we keep your data for?
If you unsubscribe from our newsletter list, the record of your unsubscribe is kept, but apart from that your record is gone.
Clients and suppliers
We need to keep client information long enough to satisfy HMRC, our accounting and reporting obligations, and our insurers. We keep information on prospective clients long enough to make our sales enquiry system effective.
What are your rights?
You have the right to know what information we are collecting on you, and to amend it if it is inaccurate.
If you feel for some reason we have information we should not be keeping, or it is out of date or otherwise wrong, please let us know and we will take appropriate action.
Our basis of processing: Signing onto our newsletter list is by your consent – and when you withdraw your consent we stop that processing of your data.
Apart from that, the information we hold and use is mostly based on our needing the information to run our business and provide our products and services – either so we can perform our contract with you, or because we have a legitimate business interest in processing your data.
In a few situations we are processing personal data because we are under a legal obligation to do so. This principally relates to our business, accounting and tax records.
What we hold: If you want to know what information (if any) we have about you, email us at the email address set out above and give us your name and email address(es). We will happily do a search and let you know what information we hold on you and how we are using it/have used it.
You have a “right to be forgotten” - but that does have some legal limits to it. If you want us to remove information about you, let us know. If you have been a client, we may not be able to remove all data as we will have to ensure that we can continue to comply with legal, accounting, taxation and our insurer’s requirements.
Other rights relating to your data: For a detailed description of your rights relating to our processing your data, please see the Information Commissioner’s guidance here.
SECTION B: Prospects
Most of the information we process comes from you. We process it so we can reply to you, and when you contact us again we know what you asked before, what you were sent, and what you told us.
Typically, we are collecting name, contact details, how we came across you, and background information from you or published by you on social media or freely accessible on the internet. See the general notes above, about what happens if you sign up to our newsletter, or engage with us on social media.
If we email you individually using our own email system, or respond to an email sent to us at any of our business email addresses, a copy of that email will also be stored. We use Zoho email, and our emails are held on their servers. Their data privacy policy is here. Zoho complies with the EU-U.S Privacy Standards for protecting your data and is certified for industry standards such as ISO27001:2013 and SOC 2 Type II.
We currently keep individual emails from and to you indefinitely, so we have a record of our interactions.
We do not normally keep special category data. If we have any, you gave it to us or made it publicly available by you.
SECTION C: Client
Once you start to use our services, we will collect further information from you at the time of our entering into a contract.
This will include the information we collect from Prospects (above). We collect your email address, phone number and postal address so we can provide what we have contracted to, invoice you and keep proper records of our business relationship.
You provide other data to us so that we can effectively provide and support the services you require, and we process your data to support the delivery of services to you.
We keep records of the services provided to you, and information you give us, so we can support you when needed and advise you of any additional products or services you may need or may be appropriate for you.
As described above, our services to you are performed by freelance virtual assistants in Serbia, working under enforceable contracts to apply English data protection standards. We contract with you under our Terms of Business which contain contractual obligations on us about the handling of your data.
Financial and credit details
We do not receive or store your credit card details. Credit card payments are handled by an external secure processor. We receive limited information from them so that we can reconcile your payment with your invoice.
If you pay us by BACS or direct transfer, we know only what the bank tells us, which is usually the name of the person who paid us and how much and the reference number.
We do not routinely keep credit scores nor use credit reference agencies.
Processing personal data on your behalf: When you require us to process third party personal data for you as part of our services, we act as your ‘data processor’ and you are the ‘data controller’. You will complete Data Processing Instructions that direct us how to handle your third-party data. In this context we will be operating under the banner of your data privacy policy. We will refer any enquiries from third parties about your use of their data to you, but we will support you by providing relevant information to you, and by taking the action you require with respect to those enquiries.
SECTION D: Suppliers and Associates
We collect information on potential and actual suppliers and associates. This is mostly provided by you, but we do add to it the same kind of data we use for Prospects (see above).
If you become a supplier or associate we keep a copy of the contract between us and your bank details so we can pay you. We also keep a record of invoices/payments for accounting purposes.
We keep a record of the work you undertook for us along with any comments, reviews or suggestions about that work including complaints (if any) and their resolution.
This information is all needed to manage the contract between us, support our client relationships, and manage our supply chain.