Privacy and Cookie Policy

Privacy Policy Sections

• Who We Are
• Our Approach to Privacy
• Security
• What Data We Collect and Why
• How We Use Cookies
• Links To Other Websites
• Embedded Content From Other Websites
• Controlling Your Personal Information

Who We Are

Our website address is: https://www.ispreview.co.uk

We are a consumer news, comparison and information website that has been covering the United Kingdom's telecoms, broadband ISP and mobile network market since 1999. Please see further details on our 'About' page. ISPreview is a personal project by Mark Jackson and several friends - it is not a registered company.

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with us then you can contact us or our founder - Mark Jackson - here: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/contact.shtml.

NOTE: ISPreview.co.uk is currently using a third-party advertising management system from Venatus Media Limited, which includes an additional privacy policy. Please read that for details of data collection related to our advertising banners: www.ispreview.co.uk/privacy-venatus.php

Our Approach to Privacy

This privacy policy sets out how ISPreview.co.uk uses and protects any information that you share with us when using this website.

ISPreview.co.uk is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

We may send e-mails to users if you have registered with our Forum / Review system, although this is only for the purpose of account verification / changes. We commit to never sending out unsolicited e-mail or marketing messages.

We will also never share personal user data from our Forum / Review system (e.g. e-mail addresses) to/with any third parties for marketing purposes.

ISPreview.co.uk may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy is compliant with the new GDPR law and is effective from 25th May 2018.

NOTE: Disputes over privacy for this website are subject to this Privacy Statement and the laws of England.

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

For example, ISPreview.co.uk uses a secure (HTTPS) connection to ensure that any information / data requests transmitted between your computer and our server are encrypted in order to keep it safe. Any passwords used will also be encrypted inside our local SQL databases.

We will only ever ask for the minimum amount of data needed to operate the systems and services provided by ISPreview.co.uk. This site also has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our control (examples above).

The only person with the ability to access this information is the owner of the server (admin) and nobody else, your data is kept totally confidential.

We will always endeavour, to the best of our ability, to keep all of ISPreview.co.uk's software as up-to-date as reasonably possible in order to help avoid exposure to known security exploits. Many of our systems are licensed from third-party software developers and as such we, like most other websites, are largely dependent upon those companies keeping their code up-to-date. Where code becomes outdated then we will usually plan for replacement.

What Data We Collect and Why

As a news site ISPreview.co.uk does not require our readers to submit any personally identifiable information to our server, although some systems do request the optional submission of such data (after informed consent is given) and others may process anonymised data in order to perform basic tasks (e.g. managing login sessions or tracking visits to a page).

We will only ever collect the minimum required information in order for any relevant systems to function correctly. The following is a summary of how ISPreview.co.uk's systems collect data and what we use it for.

Poll (Front Page and News Articles)

This is a simple poll system that enables readers to vote on answers to a survey question. The system logs votes, enables you to view the results and prevents multiple voting abuse by setting a small cookie in your web browser and temporarily recording your IP (Internet Protocol) address. The latter is erased after a few minutes and the cookie expires after 30 days. The above data is only logged if you give your informed consent to submit a vote.

Discussion Forum

This is a public discussion forum that enables people to register on the website and discuss topics with other visitors. In order to use this visitors' must give their informed consent for the following data to be collected, which will be used to manage your account and the system's security.

• Username (this can be anything you want)
• Email address
• IP address
• Password (this can be anything you want)
• Current Internet Service Provider
• Your Time Zone (for the clock)

The forum will also set a cookie in your browser, which alongside the IP address is used to manage your login session or prevent abuse (spam robots etc.). You can easily remove the cookie by logging out of the forum.

All users can see, edit or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Reviews

UPDATE 22nd December 2020: Updated to clarify that the review system no longer shares its member database with the Discussion forum.

This system enables you to rate and give an opinion on internet providers in the UK market. The review system collects the same data as the Discussion Forum's member database above, as well as your web browser's user agent string. Please see directly above for more details.

The review system will also enable members of Twitter or Facebook to login and post reviews by sharing their account name and email address with our server, following the granting of informed consent.

Depending on your settings and the privacy policies for social media and messaging services like Facebook or Twitter, you might thus give us permission to access personal data about you from those third-party accounts or services.

News Comments

The news comment system enables visitors to post ANONYMOUS messages underneath news articles. The comment system will only enable a comment to be made once visitors have given their consent and it requests the following potentially personal data:

• Display name (this can be anything you want)
• Email address
• IP address
• Browser user agent string (Correction on 23rd Dec 2020 - This is in fact not collected by the news system)

Crucially visitors DO NOT have to enter a real name or working email address in order to make a comment and are free to input whatever fake details they desire (we only use the 'name' and 'email' fields to catch spammers, same for IP and the browser user agent string).

If you leave a comment on our site you may also optionally opt-in to saving your name and email address in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

In addition, an anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Advertising Banners (Google)

ISPreview.co.uk displays a number of image or video based advertising banners, which are remotely and automatically managed by Google's third-party Adsense / Adwords system. These ads may contain cookies designed to track advert views and clicks (statistical monitoring).

When you click on an advert (link or banner), you will be redirected to the advertiser's website. We do not share personal information you supply to us (e.g. e-mail address) with any advertisers, although in order to serve you an ad, your web browser may separately disclose information such as your IP address to advertisers when requesting an advert.

This is generally non-identifiable information and you can control the data collection settings of different ad networks through your browser, via Google directly (https://adssettings.google.com/u/0/authenticated) and/or via the advertising networks opt-out page (http://www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/your-ad-choices).

Sometimes adverts may wrongfully appear that are inappropriate or which attempt to launch a pop-up window (due to failings in Google's security / testing regime) and if this occurs then we ask readers to report it immediately below, which will enable us to block them (if possible please include a screenshot of the advert and its URL):

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/contact.shtml

We do not share any of your personal information with Google or make use of their personalised targeted advertising feature.

https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-GB&gl=uk

Advertising Banners (Venatus Media Limited)

ISPreview.co.uk displays a number of image, rich media and video based advertising banners, which are remotely and automatically managed by Ventus Media's third-party advertising system. These ads may contain cookies designed to track advert views and clicks (statistical monitoring).

When you click on an advert (link or banner), you will be redirected to the advertiser's website. We do not share personal information you supply to us (e.g. e-mail address) with any advertisers, although in order to serve you an ad, your web browser may separately disclose information such as your IP address, referral URL and ad data to advertisers when requesting an advert. But we will ask for your permission before we do so. We may do this using cookies or similar technologies.

The Consent Management Platform (CMP) we use is required to follow the latest Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF v2), as initiated by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Please see the additional privacy policy for full details on how Venatus Media Limited collect and manage data when showing ads on ISPreview: www.ispreview.co.uk/privacy-venatus.php

Advertising Links and Banners (Affiliate Window)

ISPreview.co.uk also displays some adverts and links from the third-party Affiliate Window network. As above these are non-personalised and banners may contain cookies designed to store pageviews and / or click counts, purely for statistical monitoring purposes.

We do not share any of your personal information with Affiliate Window.

http://ui2.awin.com/documents/legal/privacy.pdf

Website Statistics (Google Analytics)

Like most websites ISPreview.co.uk monitors basic visitor traffic in order to see which pages on our website are popular, which helps us to understand how visitors use the site and its growth over time. This is used to improve our future content.

We do not share any of your personal information with Google for this, although a cookie will be created in your browser in order to track the pages you view and for how long.

http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

Twitter Share Button (News Comments)

News comments contain a Twitter Share button, which enables members of Twitter's social network website to easily share article links from our website on the social network. This makes use of a simple cookie but that only works if you are logged in as a member of Twitter, otherwise it does nothing.

We do not share any of your personal information with Twitter for this.

Facebook Share Button (News Comments)

The same as Twitter above, only for Facebook's social network.

Skimlinks Advertising (Discussion Forum Affiliate Links)

ISPreview.co.uk uses the Skimlinks advertising system on our Discussion Forum to automatically convert some text into affiliate links (advertising). This may create a small cookie in your browser in order to track and record whether or not one of the links is clicked and which site it came from.

We do not share any of your personal information with Skimlinks for this.

https://skimlinks.com/privacy-policy

Broadband Speedtest

ISPreview.co.uk has an external relationship with Thinkbroadband.com for our broadband 'Speedtest' service. The Speedtest includes an option for users to enter a postcode (not required and it doesn't have to be yours) - this data is NOT shared with or sold on to third parties outside of ISPreview/Thinkbroadband and is instead processed to help build a geographic map of broadband performance/speed across the UK.

Cookies are used to help record the results, while your browser agent and IP address may be requested to identify the connection type for the test. None of this data will be shared with any third-party outside of ISPreview/Thinkbroadband or for marketing purposes.

Broadband Availability Checker

ISPreview.co.uk has an external relationship with Samknows.com for our 'Broadband Availability Checker'. The checker requests either a postcode or phone number in order to identify what local broadband services may be available; however neither is retained by the remote server past your initial query and the details do not have to be your own.

How We Use Cookies

Like all other websites ISPreview.co.uk uses cookies, which are small text files that ask permission to be stored on a user's computer by a web browser to assist with record-keeping and user responses. For example, we may use cookies to log your vote on a poll or to manage your login session with our discussion forum or review systems.

Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences. Many core services cannot function without them.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the source data is removed from our system daily.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

We have explained in more detail above how each system uses cookies ('What Data We Collect and Why') and below we have included a simple list of cookie identifiers, which you may spot on our website (* = wildcard). This helps to show which of the above systems they are associated with.

ISPreview.co.uk's Cookies (file identifiers)

Discussion Forum: bb_*

News Comments: comment_author, comment_author_email_*

Google Analytics / Adsense: __utm*, _ga, _gid, _gat*, SNID, NID, SSID, 1P_JAR, APISID, CONSENT, HSID, SAPISID, SID, SIDCC

Google also uses these domains for their cookies: googleads.g.doubleclick.net, tpc.googlesyndication.com, pagead2.googlesynidcation.com, accounts.google.com

Various ISPreview Systems: PHPSESSID (standard cookie used to manage PHP based website logins / basic processes)

Affiliate Window: aw*, awpv*, bld, AWSESS

Poll / Survey: cookieset

Broadband Speedtest (labs.thinkbroadband.com): optimizely*

Twitter (platform.twitter.com): guest_id, personalization_id

Facebook (staticxx.facebook.com, www.facebook.com): c_user, datr, dpr, fr, sb, wd, xs

Skimlinks (skimresources.com): SKIM*

Links To Other Websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Embedded Content From Other Websites

Articles on ISPreview.co.uk may, like almost all other websites, include some embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect limited data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Controlling Your Personal Information

You may choose to restrict the collection or use of your personal information in the following ways:

• Whenever you are asked to fill in a form on the website, look for the box that you can click to indicate that you understand what data will be gathered and or indicate if do not want the information to be used (you may not be able to use our Forum, News Comments or Review systems unless you agree to share some basic bits of personal data but the rest of the website will be unaffected).
• If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for one of our website systems, you may change your mind at any time by emailing the site admin at the link below in order to request removal of your data (please include any appropriate identification so that we can confirm you are the owner of the data).
  
  privacy.2018@ispreview.co.uk

We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your express permission or are required by law to do so.

You may request details of personal information which we hold about you under the Data Protection Act 1998, although this only applies to members of our Discussion Forum and Reader Review system as we do not retain a record of personal data for ordinary website visitors.

If you would like a copy of the information held on you then please contact the above email address with a verifiable request and allow up to 30 days for a response.

If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please email the site as soon as possible, at the above address. We will promptly correct any information found to be incorrect.

UPDATE 21/10/2022

UPDATE 30/04/2023