Mwankom Group Ltd Privacy Policy
Mwankom Group Ltd is a privately-owned company that publishes magazines – its own (Rolling Stone Africa) – plus content online and across social platforms various.
Data privacy and protection is important to us and to everyone who uses our products and services, and who trusts us with their information. We want you to understand how we collect data, what we do with it and how we look after it.
Opt in or out
People check privacy notices because a business is asking for permission to contact them for sales and marketing purposes. They want to be sure that, if they agree, it will be easy for them to withdraw permission in future. Our position is that you should be able to opt out as easily as you opt in. Any sales or marketing email we send you will always have an “unsubscribe” link that will take you off that relevant marketing list.
Please remember that you may have subscribed from another email address; you will only be able to use the link to “unsubscribe” from the address to which the marketing email has been sent. We make it easy for you to change your preferences for marketing and give you clear instructions for opting out.
If you want to change your preferences you can use the contact details shown at the end.
Personal information we collect
We collect information when you:
- buy any of our products or services;
- register to receive one of our newsletters;
- use any of our websites;
- attend our events;
- take part in any research;
- join one of our social media platforms;
- enter a competition; or
- contact us.
We collect the following types of information:
Contact details
When you use or subscribe to one of our services, such as buying a print or digital subscription, signing up to an email newsletter, entering a competition, joining one of our online communities or participating in any research, we will ask you to provide information such as your name, email and/or postal address so that we can provide you with the services requested.
General personal information
When conducting surveys or running competitions, in addition to contact information, we may collect other personal information such as your gender, date of birth, marital status and suchlike.
Payment details
When you purchase a product or service from us, such as subscribing to one of our magazines or attending one of our events, we will also ask you for your payment details in addition to your contact information, so as to secure payment and to authorise access to our products and services.
Online signatures
When you visit one of our websites, we collect information about your web visit, such as how long you visited, what sites you visited or pages you looked at, your IP address and where you were when you visited, what sort of device you were using when you visited (such as a mobile phone or type of desktop PC, Mac etc), and information identifying the language used by your Device.
Behaviour data
When you visit one of our websites, we collect data on your online behaviour (time on website, areas clicked on etc).
When you buy a product or service from us, such as magazine subscription or a ticket to an event, we will collect information about what products and services you have bought from us.
When you register for a newsletter or take part in research, we may collect data about your preferences, tastes and interests.
For some advertising campaigns we may also work with third party partners whose websites you visit or who have identified you as a customer or potential customer. We will combine this information with information we hold about you to market relevant products and services.
Other data
Sometimes, we may collect data in online surveys such as political opinions, religion, philosophical beliefs, health, sexual orientation etc. We will always make sure we have your consent to process this data. We will remind you at the time of why and how we are processing this data and what additional safeguards are in place for using, storing and ultimately either deleting or anonymising this data.
Your personal information
We collect different types of information to:
- provide personalised services unique to users;
- monitor and improve our services;
- sell advertising space (so our online content is free to access);
- market products and services we think are relevant;
- use content generated by you (for example, feedback on social media).
Newsletter sign-up
When you sign up to one of our newsletters you are giving consent for us to use the email address provided to send you relevant content for the publications you have signed up to. You can withdraw this consent for any newsletter by unsubscribing at any time.
Advertising
We advertise on our site and in our newsletters so our content remains free. We use cookies and similar technologies and work with trusted partners so that we can show you advertisements we believe might interest you, to control the number of times you see an ad and to measure the effectiveness of a campaign.
We also work with social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to show you interest-based marketing content from our brands and selected advertisers. Data collected by these social media networks may also be anonymised and used in aggregate to help improve the quality and effectiveness of our websites and marketing efforts.
You can limit this kind of tracking and profiling by going to your account settings of the social media platforms.
We may also participate in Facebook’s ‘Custom Audience’ service from time to time. This service enables us to display to you personalised advertisements when you visit Facebook’s social media platforms. It works by converting your email address to a unique number that Facebook uses to match to unique numbers that Facebook generates from email addresses of its users. Where we use Facebook Custom Audiences, we will only include you if you have consented to receive marketing from us. If you have given us your consent, you can change your mind at any time by unsubscribing.
Research
We send out research invitations to our readers and customers, to people who pay for our products and services and to people who have opted in to receive communications from us.
We may use the information we hold about your interests, gender and age range for building data models. This data is matched with our website visitors, subscribers and members. This allows us to provide relevant and targeted advertising. Again, you can always opt out.
Delivery and account management
We will use the information you provide for the provision of goods and/or services that you have requested and communicating with you about those products and services.
When you buy something from us – such as subscription or a ticket to an event – we may contact you about your registration details, to manage any account or subscription you have with us, or to provide customer service. This will be the case even if you have opted-out of, or declined to consent to, receiving sales and marketing emails.
Competitions
When you enter one of our competitions we will process your information for the purposes of picking a winner. If you have opted-in to receiving information from us about our products and services (eg receiving subscriptions offers, event invitations, signing up for editorial newsletters etc) then we will use the information you provide to make sure we offer you relevant products and services (based on where you live, your age, gender, tastes, preferences etc). If you have opted-in to receive news and offers from any competition sponsors, we will share your information with them.
Partners
We work with our partners so that we can present you with some outstanding offers and opportunities. You will only ever receive partner messages from us if you have given permission. We don’t disclose your personal information to anyone, the messages will always come from us and you can unsubscribe at any time from these messages.
Customer service
We process any information you provide when dealing with any complaints or enquiries made by you.
User-generated content
When you use certain hashtags or tags (such as @mwankomgram or @RollingStoneAfrica) on social media related to our brands, we may use, copy, and publish the content of your post for any purpose we consider appropriate, such as for marketing or promotional purposes, on our websites or our social media pages, except where restricted by law.
Legal basis for data processing
The law on data protection sets out several different reasons why a company may collect and process your personal data and it is one of our duties to make sure you understand which basis we are using to process your data.
Consent
In specific situations, we collect and process your data with your consent:
- When you sign up to any editorial newsletter;
- When you tick a box to receive email about news and offers;
- When you tick a box to consent to receive email on behalf of our partners;
- When you give us your details to enter a competition;
- When you participate in any research; and
- To use certain cookies and similar technologies to collect information from your device.
Legitimate interest
In specific situations, we require your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way which might reasonably be expected as part of running our business and which does not materially impact your rights, freedom or interests:
- We personalise the marketing content we provide you or, in some circumstances, use user-generated content as described above;
- If you have bought a product or service from us, we will use your details to send you direct marketing information, telling you about products and services that we think might interest you; and
- If you have bought a product or service from us we will send you direct marketing on behalf of our partners.
We will only use legitimate interest after we have properly evaluated the data processing. We will also give data subjects the right to object to the processing at any time.
Contractual obligations
In certain circumstances, we need your personal data to comply with our contractual obligations.
For example, when you purchase a print subscription to a magazine, we will keep your name and address to fulfil your subscription.
Legal compliance
If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data. For example, we can pass on details of people involved in fraud or other criminal activity affecting us to law enforcement.
Do we share your information with anyone else?
We may share your personal information:
- Between titles published by MWANKOM group companies; or
- If all or any of our assets (eg a title owned by us) were to be sold to another business, the personal data relating to that title (eg the subscriber list/newsletter list etc) would be transferred to the new business owner.
Service providers
We work with service providers to perform some tasks on our behalf. This might include analysis, payments, marketing, identity management, IT services and for fraud prevention purposes. This may include personal information and non-personal site usage information to provide aggregate demographics on our audiences. We may share your personal data with these providers to perform the necessary tasks. However, they are obliged not to disclose or use it for any other purposes. Any third-party processing of your data on our behalf will be subject to security and confidentiality obligations consistent with this privacy notice and applicable law.
Customer research
We may disclose de-personalised data (such as aggregated statistics) about the audience of our products and services and/or research participants to describe our sales, customers, traffic patterns and other information to current and prospective partners, advertisers, investors and other reputable third parties, and for other lawful purposes. These statistics will never include identifiable personal information.
Law enforcement organisations
Under certain circumstances we may occasionally be required by law, court order or governmental authority to disclose certain types of personal information and we reserve the right to comply with any such legally binding request.
Partners
Only with your permission, we may share your information with other companies we are working with, such as competition sponsors, for direct marketing purposes. Whenever we share your information with another company for these purposes, we will always ask for your permission, will name the company and will always be clear that your information will be shared with another organisation. In some instances, a product or service we provide may also require us to share your personal data with a partner we are working with. We may also share your personal data with third parties with whom we partner to advertise or provide goods or services to you. For example, we may share user identifiers collected through our use of cookies and similar technologies with advertisers in order to serve you with relevant promotional content. When we do share personal data we take steps to protect your privacy. “When you use our website and enter your email address on our website (either to log in, or to sign up for a newsletter, or similar), we may share with LiveRamp and its group companies information that we collect from you, such as your email (in hashed, pseudonymous form), IP address, or information about your browser or operating system, with any of the following, acting as “joint controllers” (as applicable and defined in the GDPR).
How long we keep data
We will retain your personal information for as long as necessary to provide the individual service/s you have requested, while taking into account any legal requirements and tax and accounting rules. Where you sign up to receive email marketing from us, we will retain your e-mail address after you ‘opt-out’ of receiving emails to ensure that we continue to honour and respect that request. To unsubscribe from sales and marketing emails at any time, click on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any marketing email. In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data. In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
Data profiling
We may sometimes use the data you share with us, and that we collect about you when browsing our websites and products, to personalise our services and to tailor sales and marketing content. For example, we may use information you have provided to send you, in accordance with your marketing preferences, information about products we think you may be interested in, or to display advertising content which we believe may be of interest to you.
Cross-border security
We make sure that we have appropriate security measures to protect your information and make sure that, when we ask another organisation to provide a service for us, they have appropriate security measures and follow the same high standards of security and data protection as we do.
Links to third-party websites
Our website may contain links to websites run by other organisations. This privacy notice applies only to our websites‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on any other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you have accessed them using links from our websites. We receive commission on some of the links to third party websites offering products and services that we feature on our websites. We work with a third party to help us attribute e-commerce traffic.
Your rights
As a consumer, when it comes to your date you have the right to:
Be informed – at every point where we are collecting your data, we will inform you of why it is being collected and how it is being processed.
Access – if you wish to see what information we hold on you, you may send us a Subject Access Request. We will require copies of two pieces of identification. We will respond within 30 days of receipt of your request. There is no cost to you in requesting to see your data, but please note that we reserve the right to charge you if you make subsequent requests. You can use the contact details below for a Subject Access Request.
Rectification – we offer the opportunity to amend your personal information by contacting us using the details below.
Erasure – if you wish to cancel all communications with us, we can anonymise or de-identify your data. Please contact us using the details below. Please make sure you inform us of all email accounts, profiles, names etc that you may have used with us that you wish to erase.
Restrict processing – you can opt-out or restrict the processing of your data by:
- Amending your cookie settings in your browser
- Unsubscribing from communications.
- Contacting admin@mwankom.com
If you are unhappy with the way we have collected and are using your data please use the contact details below.
You have the right to complain to a supervisory authority. In the UK this is the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Contact us
On any matter relating to your personal information then contact:
admin@mwankom.com (for the attention of The Data Controller); The Data Controller, MWANKOM Africa Limited, 4B Association Road, Off Lekki-Epe, Expressway, Lekki, Lagos, NIGERIA.
