Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Introduction

This policy tells you:

  • Who we are
  • What information we might collect about you
  • How we might use your information
  • How we store your information
  • Our policy on international data transfers
  • Information relating to under 18s
  • Your rights about the personal information you give us

Who are we?

Captivate.fm is a website (the “Site”) owned by Captivate Audio Ltd (“Captivate” or “us”, “we” or “our”), a registered company in England and Wales with a registered address of 30 Leicester Square, London, WC2H 7LA and company number 11840222.

At Captivate, we respect the privacy rights of our podcasters and online visitors and recognise the importance of protecting the information we collect about you. Our Privacy Policy is designed to help you understand how we collect, hold, use and disclose personally identifiable information about you.

This policy (together with our Terms and Conditions, and any other document referred to on it) sets out the basis on which we Captivate will process any personal data we collect from you, or which  you provide to us, in the course of using our Site. For the purpose of UK Data Protection laws we are the data controller.

Your Information 

When you use our Site, there are a number of ways in which you provide information and other data to us. When you use this site, we process your information for the purposes set out below in this policy.  Our legal basis for processing your personal information will usually be that the processing is necessary to fulfill our legitimate business interests or in some cases we may ask for your consent to the processing of your information on the terms and for the reasons which are explained below in the section headed ‘How your information is being used’.

Information we may collect about you 

  1. Your first and last name, email and/or postal address, telephone number or other information you provide when you fill out a contact form on the Site
  2. Your IP addresses
  3. Your Internet Service provider (“ISP”)
  4. Any referring or exit pages taking you to or from our Site
  5. Your login information
  6. Your web browser type and version
  7. Your time zone & location
  8. Date/time stamp
  9. Photographs
  10. Professional affiliations
  11. Click stream data
  12. Any browser plug-ins and versions used on your browser
  13. Your operating system
  14. Your platform/device details

Information we collect when you interact with our content on the Site or on third-party sites or platforms, such as social networking sites. This may include information such as “Likes”, profile information gathered from social networking sites or the fact that you viewed or interacted with our content.

To enhance your user experience or help us improve and measure our effectiveness, Captivate may embed code from third parties on the Site. Examples of such parties may include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, YouTube, Howcast, VideoJug, AOL, Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity and others. These third parties may collect information about you including IP address, in ways Captivate does not control

When you use the website, we may employ clear gifs (also known as web beacons) and other tracking and data analytics technologies which are used to anonymously track the online usage patterns of our users.

We may also use clear gifs in HTML-based emails sent to our users to track which emails are opened and which links are clicked by recipients.

How your information is being used and the lawful basis of our processing

We will use your personal information:

(a) where we have a legitimate business interest to:

(i) Provide you with our service and send you service updates.

(ii) Ensure that content from our Site is presented in the most optimised and effective manner for you and for your computer.

(iii) To diagnose or fix technology problems.

(iv) To control unauthorised use or abuse of the Site and our products and services, or otherwise detect, investigate or prevent activities that may violate our policies or be illegal.

(v) Allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so.

(vi) Notify you about changes to our service.

(vii) To deliver customer service and respond to your inquiries.

(viii) Administer our Site including data analysis, testing, traffic monitoring, research, statistical and survey purposes.

(ix) Captivate.fm may provide general statistical information to third parties but such information will not allow anyone to be personally identified.

(x) Administer our Site including data analysis, testing, traffic monitoring, research, statistical and survey purposes.

(b ) to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us; and

(c) where you provide your consent for us to do so, to provide you with information, products or services that you request from us or that we feel may interest you.

Please note that if you click on, or follow, any links from our Site to external websites, our privacy policy will no longer apply. Please check the privacy policies of any such external site before submitting any personal data, as we cannot accept any responsibility or liability in relation to them.

The RSS feed relating to your podcast(s) will contain your email address, for validation and ownership purposes. This means that your email address will be publicly accessible. However, we do not condone your email address being used by third parties, including sending you email marketing where they have not obtained your prior consent.

Analytic Data

We do not share with our podcasters any personal data of our listeners. We do, however, perform analytic analysis of listeners’ IP Addresses and User Agents and share the results of such analysis with the relevant podcaster. Please refer to our Privacy Policy for Listeners for additional information regarding the information we collect from listeners and how we use and share that information. 

Payment Processing

Payments for our podcast hosting services are made securely via Stripe, our payment gateway provider. Stripe encrypts data via SSL and takes payment via its Tier-1 PCI compliant systems.

We also provide a tipping functionality via Stripe Connect (“Tipping Functionality”), which allows podcasters to receive money (“Tips”) directly from listeners and subscribers (“Tippers”).

Tipping Functionality gives podcasters access to a dashboard which enables them to view the Tips they have received from Tippers, and, unless they have Tipped anonymously, their names and messages. To set up Tipping Functionality podcasters will need to create an account with Stripe.

To find out more about how Stripe processes personal data, see Stripe’s privacy policy.

Security and Legal Purposes

We use your information to help improve the safety and reliability of our Site. This includes detecting, preventing, and responding to fraud, abuse, security risks, and technical issues that could harm Captivate, our users, or the public. Information may also be used in connection for legal reasons and purposes, such as to comply with applicable law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request; to enforce our Terms of Use , including investigation of potential violations; and to detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues; and to protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Captivate, our users, or the public as required or permitted by law.

We may also use personal data to:

  • Carry out our legal and contractual obligations, and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection.
  • To respond to law enforcement requests, court orders, and subpoenas and to carry out our legal and contractual obligations.
  • Authenticate use, detect fraudulent use, and otherwise maintain the security of our Site and the safety of others.
  • To administer surveys and questionnaires.
  • To provide you information about products and services that may be of interest to you, including through newsletters.
  • Any other purpose with your consent.

Other Technologies

From time to time we will send you service updates by email. These email updates will contain a web beacon in the form of a small, transparent image embedded in each email. The web beacon will be used to send information such as your IP address, when each email was viewed, from what device and which geo-location. We use information about email usage to compile reports and to help us improve our communications.

Advertising

Where advertising placements are available in podcasts, adverts are placed automatically.

Personalized and targeted advertising.   We partner with third party advertising networks that collect IP addresses, unique device identifiers, browser type, operating system, time zone, country, referring pages, and other information through the use of cookies, pixel tags, and server logs on our Site. They use this information to provide you with interest-based advertisements that are customized to your particular preferences, including for companies that are not affiliated with us. You may see these interest-based advertisements on our Site, as well as on third party websites and apps, and across different devices you use. We may use this process to help us manage and improve the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. It also allows to display ads to our users about Captivate after they leave our Site, and to track users after they see or click on an advertisement, keep track of users who access our Site or advertisements from different devices, and better provide advertisements to our target audiences. The data collected through these tracking technologies is also saved and processed by our advertising and marketing service provider partners.

How and why we share your information

We share personal data with third parties under certain circumstances and for certain purposes described throughout this Policy, including:

  • Service providers and other to operate our Site and Services. We share your personal data with our affiliates, vendors, service providers, and business partners, including providers and vendors we use for operating and maintaining our Site, and its features, functionality and Services.  These third parties include data hosting and data storage partners, analytics, ad network, advertising (including interest-based advertising), technology services and support, and data security.
  • Our business purposes. We may share your personal data with our affiliates, vendors, service providers, and business partners, including providers and vendors we use for our business activities and operations generally, such as data hosting and data storage partners, analytics, ad network, advertising, technology services and support, and data security. We may also share your personal data with professional advisors, such as auditors, law firms, and accounting firms.
  • With your consent. We may share your personal data if you request or direct us to do so.
  • Compliance with law. We may share your personal data to comply with applicable law or any obligations thereunder, including cooperation with law enforcement, judicial orders, and regulatory inquiries.
  • Business transfers. We may share your personal data to a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of our assets, whether as a going concern or as part of a bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal data held by us about our users are among the assets transferred.
  • To enforce our rights. We may share your personal data to enforce our Terms of Use  and any other agreement, terms and conditions relating to your use of the Site. We also may share information as needed to ensure the safety and security of our Site and our users, and to detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical issues
  • De-identified information. We may also de-identified information, so that it cannot be reasonably used to identify any individual, with third parties for marketing, advertising, research, or similar purposes.

Your choices for how we collect, use and share your information

We offer you choices on how you can opt out of our certain uses and sharing of your personal data. As a general rule, you cannot opt out of our collection, use and sharing of personal data to the extent it is necessary to provide the Site or related Services, features and functionality to you.

You can change the cookie settings that will be placed when you use our Site by changing the settings on your Internet browser. You can also block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. Please note that internet browsers allow you to change your cookie settings. These settings are usually found in the ‘options’ or ‘preferences’ menu of your internet browser. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including strictly necessary cookies), you may not be able to access or use all or areas and aspects of our Site.

You can generally opt out of receiving interest-based advertisements

If you do not wish to have your email address used by Captivate to send you advertising messages and content, you can opt out at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any marketing emails you receive from us. You may have other options with respect to marketing and communication preferences through our Site.

Do Not Track signals.  Some web browsers have a “Do Not Track” feature. This feature lets you tell websites you visit that you do not want to have your online activity tracked. These features are not yet uniform across browsers. Our Site is not currently set up to respond to those signals.

Sale of data

We do not sell data to any third-parties.

Data Storage

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure encrypted server infrastructure based around the world, in countries including the UK, United States, Canada and countries located in the European Union.

Our partners providing our server infrastructure include the following:

Please follow the links to see their relevant Privacy Policies.

We hold your personally identifiable information in a combination of hard copy and electronic files for the period necessary to support the Site, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, or otherwise fulfil the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy.

We use commercially acceptable means of security, such as firewalls, password-protected databases with limited physical or electronic access, and encryption to protect your personally identifiable information against unauthorised use, disclosure or modification.

We delete your information immediately upon request or upon termination or non payment of your account by you. However, some information may be retained by us for a number of reasons including circumstances in which:

  • you have shared information with social media or other services;
  • we hold backup information on our servers for fraud detection or to comply with applicable law or our internal security policies;
  • there are technical and/or systems constraints; and
  • we are subject to contractual, financial or legal requirements.

We ask that you not send us, and you not disclose, any sensitive personally identifiable information (such as information related to racial or ethnic origin, religion or other beliefs, health, criminal background or trade union membership) on or through the Site or otherwise.  If, contrary to this request, you do provide any sensitive information, in doing so you consent to us collecting and handling that information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Additional Privacy Rights and Disclosure Under U.S. State Laws

Depending on the circumstances, you may have additional rights under one or more state laws in the United States. The following supplemental disclosures and rights apply on if, and to the extent, U.S. state law applies to your personal data. For example, please see other sections of this Policy for information regarding collection of personal data, categories of sources from which we collect personal data, use of personal data, sale of personal data, and sharing of personal data.

Access Request Rights.

You may have the right to request that Captivate disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your personal data over the past 12 months for the above business and commercial purposes. To submit an access request, see Contact Us. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will disclose to you:

  • The categories of personal data we collected about you.
  • The categories of sources for the personal data we collected about you.
  • Our business or commercial purpose for collecting that personal data.
  • The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal data.
  • The specific pieces of personal data we collected about you.
  • If we sold or disclosed your personal data for a business purpose, two separate lists disclosing:
    • sales, identifying the personal data categories that each category of recipient purchased; and
    • disclosures for a business purpose, identifying the personal data categories that each category of recipient obtained.

Deletion Request Rights.

Site visitors and users may have the right to request that Captivate delete your personal data that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will delete (and direct our service providers to delete) your personal data from our records, unless certain exceptions apply.

Exercising Access and Deletion Rights.

To exercise the access and deletion rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by sending us an email to [email protected]. Only you or your authorized designee may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal data. You may also make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your minor child. You may only make a verifiable consumer request for access twice within a 12-month period. The verifiable consumer request must:

  • Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal data or an authorized representative.
  • Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

Non-Discrimination.

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your legal rights. We will not:

  • Deny you products or services.
  • Charge you different prices or rates for products or services, including through granting discounts and other benefits, or imposing penalties.
  • Provide you a different level or quality of products or services.
  • Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for products or services or different level or quality of products or services.

State law may permit users of our Site and/or the Services who provide personal data in obtaining products and services for personal, family, or household use to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal data to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes. If applicable, this information would include the categories of personal data and the names and addresses of those businesses with which we shared your personal data with for the immediately prior calendar year (e.g. requests made in 2022 will receive information regarding such activities in 2021). You may request this information once per calendar year. To make such a request, please Contact Us using the information below.

International Transfers of Personal Information from the UK and EEA

Personal information which you supply to us is generally stored and kept inside the UK.

For any transfers of data from the EEA to the UK, please be aware that the UK is subject to an adequacy decision located here.

Due to the nature of our business and the technologies required, we may transfer your personal information to certain third-party service providers in countries outside of the UK and the EEA. These countries (including the United States) may not have the same data protection laws and may offer a lower level of protection.

If we do need to transfer your personal information in this way, we take steps to ensure your level of privacy including data minimisation, anonymising data, pseudonymising data (a technique that removes or replaces certain information in a data set that could identify people), encryption (a security measure to protect data), undertaking due diligence on the recipients of data and putting in place contractual obligations on them to take care of your data, for example by using approved Model Contractual Clauses (as published by the European Commission). Please contact us for further information on international data transfers.

Children under 18

This Site is not intended for use by anyone under the age of 18 nor does Captivate knowingly collect or solicit personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18. If you are under 18, you may not attempt to send any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, or email address.  In the event that we confirm that we have collected personally identifiable information from someone under the age of 18 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information promptly. If you are a parent or legal guardian of a child under 18 and believe that we might have any information from or about such child, please contact us at the email or mailing address provided at the end of this Privacy Policy.

Your rights in relation to how we use your personal information.

Data Protection laws give you certain rights in respect of your personal information. Please contact us using the contact details below if you wish to exercise any of your data rights.

You have the following rights:

  • Right to be Informed

You have the right to be provided with clear, transparent and easily understandable information about how we use your information and your rights. This is why we’re providing you with the information in this Privacy Policy.

  • Right to rectification

You have the right to have your personal information corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete. You can also correct personal information yourself if you have registered with us via an account on one or more of our websites.

  • Right of access

You have the right to obtain a copy of your personal information and certain other information about the processing we undertake (similar to the information set out in this Privacy Policy). This is referred to as a data subject access request. In addition to any data access capabilities available through the Site, please

  • Right of erasure

You have the right of erasure (also known as the ‘right to be forgotten’) which allows you to request the deletion or removal of your personal information where there is no compelling reason for us to continue processing it. This right is not absolute, and there are circumstances where we may need to continue processing your data despite a request for erasure.

  • Right to object and opt-out of marketing

You have the right to object to certain types of processing of your personal information. This includes the right to object to direct marketing. You can exercise your right to opt-out of further direct marketing when you receive such communications from us (via the ‘unsubscribe’ option we include in each email or you can contact us directly.

  • Right to portability

You have the right to receive certain personal information from us in a commonly used electronic format (such as a Microsoft Excel file) so that this personal information can be used in a different service.

  • Right to restrict processing

You have the right to restrict or ‘block’ the use of your information in certain circumstances such as when you think your data rights outweigh our legitimate interests in the processing of your data. When you exercise this right, we can still store your information but cannot undertake further processing.

  • The right to withdraw consent

If you have given your consent to anything we do with your personal information, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time (although if you do so, it does not mean that anything we have done with your personal information with your consent up to that point is unlawful).

If you wish to submit a request in relation to any of your rights above, please contact us at: [email protected].

Please note you may be asked to supply us with proof of identity and other additional information before we will be able to provide you with a response. We aim to respond within one month of receiving your request or identifying information (if required), and we will let you know if we anticipate your request taking any longer.

While we usually act on requests, we can refuse to do so (or may charge a reasonable fee to cover our administrative expenses) where you make baseless, excessive or repeated requests or ask us for further copies of information we have already provided.

Contact Us and Complaints

If you do have any concerns, we would like you to give us the opportunity to know about them so we would encourage you to contact us first so we can help you. For a query or complaint, please email [email protected].

If you do not think we are handling your personal information adequately, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant supervisory authority in your country. In the UK this is the Information Commissioner’s Office, which may be contacted here, and in Ireland it is the Irish Data Protection Commission, which may be contacted here.

If you are based in a country in the EU or EEA and would like to make a data privacy related query, please contact our nominated representative in the EU, Exterion Media (Netherlands) B.V. Karspeldreef 8, 1101 CJ Amsterdam, 33207193 by emailing [email protected] and stating the country you are situated in.

Changes to Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy will be amended from time to time if we make any changes in the way that we collect, store and use personal information. Where these changes are significant or we think you need to be aware of them, we will take steps to notify you of the changes.