Privacy Notice | Stephen Davis

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Thank you for requesting this privacy and cookie notice and for trusting us with some information about you. We take that trust seriously and want you to know how we use that information and why we need it.

Who is holding your information?

Stephen Davis has been writing about business since 1980 and historical fiction since 2014 and the registered office is 16 Peakes Place, Granville Road, St Albans, AL1 5 AY. Stephen Davis is the principal.

If you are reading this you found one of our website somehow or have received an email and have asked to know more about how we handle any information we hold about you. Our service is really for businesses and people who read Stephen Davis’ books and published articles and want to receive or access more articles and books.
We do what any business owner does; figure out what works and what doesn’t and in order to keep improving what we do. To do this we monitor the volume of visitors to our website, how you found us and which pages you view when visiting our website. At this stage we do not know who you are, just that some people arrive at a specific page on the website and move to there. We do not harvest or collect email addresses from website visitors and if you don’t contact us and give us your email, we don’t have your contact details.

We use cookies to enable us to use things like google analytics and, if you wish, you can disable cookies in your browser if you don’t want us to collect that information. Sometimes we use Facebook or YouTube pixels to figure out what type of person visits our sites, views the videos and who likes us. This allows us to create advertising and further articles, books and videos that appeal to our readers and potential customers.
None of this results in us monitoring you in any personal or individual way nor will it result in us contacting you – we just like to know who our typical customer is and what they like and to do this we use anonymised data about you from time to time to target advertising campaigns based on profiling the sort of person who wants to receive information from us.

Downloads and services

If you contact us and ask us to send you information, download or purchase a product or book we will put your details into our sales and marketing database and send you what you asked for.

We do not currently send any automated email but if this should change then before we send an automated mail to you we will have sent you a double opt-in request and it will have an unsubscribe option that can be triggered at any time.

We are not a hard sell or cold calling based organisation and prefer to build long-term relationships with satisfied and relaxed clients. From time to time we ask our own sales and marketing people (both internal and external) to contact potential readers and clients. This is normally because you have emailed or contacted us to request updated information, a book or article to be sent to you or because we are actively trying to let you know about something that may benefit you.

Where do we get data about you from?

Most of our information about you comes from contact details you will have supplied to us. If you have a business web page we will add that information to our contact record for you. Sometimes our contact management systems inform us that you have a LinkedIin profile, Facebook page, YouTube or Twitter account. If we are in contact via those mediums we may add that information to your customer record so we remember to check in those places for messages from you. If your account details are private we will not see them.

Data Sharing

We do not sell or exchange the data we hold with organisations who may want to sell you something or use your data for research purposes, nor are we planning to do so. If at any point we decided to exchange lists with another organisation, we would ask you to ‘opt-in’ to such a system.

We have an outsourced support team for our business, including Virtual Assistants, Web Designers, IT support, Accounting and more. They have limited access to your data, where the service they provide to us necessitates that; For example, you want to set up a meeting, our diary VA needs to know your email address in order to sort out a date. If we invoice you, our Accountant needs that information in order to sort out the books.

Our outsourced team only use the data they need to fulfil their work for us and on your behalf. We do not permit copying or sharing of that information with other parties and actively monitor for any potential breaches. Your information/advice is held in the strictest confidence. Our associates are all contracted to strict confidentiality clauses and we monitor and restrict their data usage.

Financial and credit card details

The only way to pay us online is via a secure processor.
If you pay us by cheque, BACS or direct transfer, we know only what the bank identify – usually the name of the person who paid us, how much they paid and the reference number. We do not keep credit scores.

Where is your data located?

In common with most small businesses, we do not have any tailor-made software – we use mainstream packages for everything from our customer records, to email, to accounting. This means that much of our data is held in services in the USA. We have picked mainstream suppliers with appropriate security standards.

Special category data (about your health, orientation, beliefs etc) is not held by us and we do not routinely collect this data about anyone.

Retention periods

We have a long-term and discreet relationship with most of our clients and contacts. For that reason, we retain information for six years from the last point of contact. This allows us to have financial records going back far enough to satisfy HMRC and to satisfy insurers.

If you have contacted us but never purchased from us, you will remain on the list you joined until you unsubscribe from that list. But in order to avoid adding you again by mistake, unsubscribes are transferred an unsubscribe list.

Want to see what we hold on you?

If you want to know what information we have about you (if any) email stephen@assimilating-talent.com and give us your name, email address(es) and we will happily do a search and send you screenshots of what we have. If you want to be removed from our customer records, please let us know.

Your rights

You have the right to know what information we are collecting on you and to amend it. If you purchase from us you will have your own customer account and you can see the information you shared with us. Most of our information is not based on individual consent but needing the information to run the business, but you can withdraw your consent to being on an email list at any time by simply unsubscribing.

We don’t want to collect any information that is not necessary to running our business and making you a happy customer. 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.

You also have a right to be forgotten, and if you want us to remove information about you, let us know.

Complaints

If you have a complaint about the way we handle your information or how we have responded to a request for information or removal, you can take this up in the first instance with us. If we can’t sort it out, we are covered by the Information Commissioner for the UK.