Forest Carbon Ltd Data Privacy Notice
This document provides you with information about how we are handling, or are intending to handle, your personal information.
If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian’s permission before you provide any personal information to us.
About us
Forest Carbon is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and complying with the principles of applicable data protection laws. This notice sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. The data controller of the personal data referred to in this policy is Forest Carbon Ltd, Abbey Road Business Centre, Durham, DH1 5JZ.
Collection of personal data
Forest Carbon may collect and/or create or otherwise obtain and process the following data about you:
- Information about you that you provide by filling in forms while registering for any newsletters or making purchases on our website;
- Information about you that you provide where we are entering into a contract together;
- We may also ask you for information when you report a problem or make a complaint and, if you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence;
- Details of when you digitally interact with Forest Carbon via our website and other digital channels and the resources that you access which may include the use of cookies (subject to our Cookie policy);
- Information about emails and other communications we have sent to you and your interaction with them.
Types of information we may collect
- Your full name, and your contact details, including for instance your email address, home and mobile telephone numbers;
- Your home address or correspondence address;
- Records of how you have contacted us and, if you get in touch with us online, details such as your IP address;
- Relevant financial data where we are entering into a contract together.
Uses made of your information and the basis of processing
Forest Carbon will use your personal information to:
- Ensure that content from our websites is presented in the most effective manner;
- Authenticate you when you register or make purchases;
- Carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and Forest Carbon;
- Provide you with information, products or services that you request from Forest Carbon or which we feel may interest you, where we are legally entitled to do so;
- Notify you about changes to our service.
Forest Carbon will not use any of the personal information we collect from you to make automated business decisions.
The legal basis on which we collect and process the personal data described above depends on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it. However, we will only use your personal information where we:
- Have your consent to do so;
- Need the personal data to perform a contract with you;
- Need to process your personal information for our legitimate interests and only where our legitimate interests are not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms.
Information security
Forest Carbon will take all steps reasonably necessary including policies, procedures and security features to ensure that your data is treated securely and protected from unauthorised and unlawful access and/or use, and in accordance with this notice. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure and, although we will do our best to protect your personal data transmitted to us via the internet, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our website from your device. Any transmission is at your own risk.
Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of the website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share such a password with anyone.
Where any payments are being collected on our behalf, we require our payment providers to be compliant with the Payment Card Industry’s Data Security standards (PCI-DSS).
Recipients of personal data
We will share information about you with some of our suppliers who process data on our behalf to help us to provide services to you. We undertake this data sharing on the basis of our legitimate interests. These may include:
- Database hosting companies - to host Forest Carbon’s operational database and associated customer databases to enable customers to log in and interact with the website;
- Email broadcasting companies - to send emails to our customers;
- Social media companies (e.g. Facebook/Twitter) - to verify your identify when you register on our web site using 'register with' functions and to provide you with relevant social media posts.
International transfer of personal data
We do not envisage transferring any information about or relating to individuals to anyone who is located outside of the European Economic Area.
However, on some occasions, the information we collect may be transferred to organisations who may store and use such data at premises in other countries. Where we allow an organisation to process your personal information outside of the European Economic Area, we will ensure that we create and maintain appropriate safeguards with those organisations so that your personal information is subject to the same standards and protections as when we are processing your personal information inside the European Economic Area.
Data retention period
We will hold information about you in our data systems only for as long as we need it for the purpose for which we collected it, which is as follows:
- As long as you continue to log into our website or use our services (including engaging with emails, making purchases or receiving newslatters) we will retain and process information about you. In such cases, you will be considered to be an ‘active’ customer. If you have not been ‘active’ as a customer for a period of three years, Forest Carbon will deactivate your customer account and delete any personal data relating to you;
- To continue to perform our obligations in any contract we have entered into together.
IP addresses and cookies
We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to report aggregate information to our advertisers. This is statistical data about our users' browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.
For the same reason, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer's hard drive.
You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of the Site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to the Site. You can see a full list of cookies used on our websites here.
Please note that our advertisers may also use cookies, over which we have no control.
In addition to cookies, Forest Carbon records the activity of users signed in to our website in order to help us improve your customer experience and provide you with support.
The data subject’s rights
Data protection laws grant you, as a Data Subject, certain ‘information rights’, which are summarised below:
- Right of access - You have the right to obtain a copy of information we hold about you
- Right of rectification or erasure - If you feel that any data that we hold about you is inaccurate, you have the right to ask us to correct or rectify it. You also have a right to ask us to erase information about you where you can demonstrate that the data we hold is no longer needed by us, or if you withdraw the consent upon which our processing is based, or if you feel that we are unlawfully processing your data. Please note that we may be entitled to retain your personal data despite your request, for example if we are under a separate legal obligation to retain it. Your right of rectification and erasure extends to anyone we have disclosed your personal information to and we will take all reasonable steps to inform those with whom we have shared their data about your request for erasure.
- Right to restriction of processing - You have a right to request that we refrain from processing your data where you contest its accuracy, or the processing is unlawful and you have opposed its erasure, or where we do not need to hold your data any longer but you need us to in order to establish, exercise or defend any legal claims, or we are in dispute about the legality of our processing your personal data.
- Right to Portability - You have a right to receive any personal data that you have provided to us in order to transfer it onto another data controller where the processing is based on consent and is carried out by automated means. This is called a data portability request.
- Right to Object - You have a right to object to our processing your personal data where the basis of the processing is our legitimate interests including but not limited to direct marketing and profiling.
- Right to Withdraw Consent - You have the right to withdraw your consent for the processing of your personal data where the processing is based on consent.
- Right of Complaint - You also have the right to lodge a complaint about any aspect of how we are handling your data with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, which can be contacted at www.ico.org.uk.
- Right to Opt-out of Marketing Communications - You have the right to opt-out of marketing communications we send to you at any time. You can exercise this right by clicking on the “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” link in the marketing emails we send you. To opt out of other forms of marketing (such as postal marketing or telemarketing), then please contact us using the contact details provided below.
Changes to our privacy policy
Any changes we may make to our Privacy Notice in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by date-stamped communication.
How to contact us
If you wish to contact us about your personal data or exercise any of the rights described above please contact: info@forestcarbon.co.uk.
