Our guiding privacy principles
The Institute of Directors (‘IoD’) is committed to upholding your privacy as a valued member, prospective member, customer or user of this or any other IoD website. The personal data about you that we collect, process or use (‘Data’) is held securely and treated in accordance with this Policy. Whenever you give us Data, you are consenting to its collection and use as explained at the time of collection and in this Policy, including our use of ‘cookies’ (see section 7).
We operate an integrated communications programme which means we use your Data to communicate with you through several different channels, including direct mail and email (see sections 4 and 5). Our aim is to keep you up-to-date with all the latest news from the IoD, however if you feel you no longer wish to receive direct mail or email communications from us, you are able to ‘opt out’ of them individually at any time (see section 6).
What personal data do we collect?
If you visit the IoD website, your Internet Protocol (‘IP’) address and other information relating to your visit will be tracked by a method called URL Rewriting where the link (URL) to any page on the site has a unique session ID appended to it (see section 7 for more details).
If you wish to interact with iod.com, you will need to become a registered user of the site. That process will involve you providing us with Data about you such as your name, address, email address and job title. Similar and other Data such as your number of years' business experience and previous companies may be requested if, either online through iod.com or by email, or by post, in person or telephone, you order IoD products or services or apply for IoD membership.
After you first request information from the IoD, book to attend an IoD event, provide us with your business card at an IoD event, purchase any other IoD goods or services, or become a registered user of iod.com or an IoD member, we will collect other Data such as when you request information or publications, sign up for conferences or other IoD events or surveys.
When you order certain goods and services from the IoD you will be asked for further Data such as your credit card details and expiry date and to verify the delivery address where relevant.
Disclosure of information
The IoD's use of your Data for any of the purposes disclosed in this Policy, or any other purposes disclosed in any separate communication, may involve the IoD sharing it with third party suppliers such as contractors, agents or professional advisers appointed by the IoD to assist the IoD in providing IoD services, facilities and products.
These may include entities located in countries outside the European Economic area (currently the European Union and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), who will be required to comply with our strict privacy requirements, and to demonstrate that they follow best practice guidelines for data protection.
In no other case, unless obliged to do so by law, will the IoD sell, rent, lease or otherwise share your Data with third parties, unless you have provided your specific, positive and unambiguous consent.
What we use your data for
Data about you provided to the IoD will be used for the purposes described at the time of collection. It may also be used for the other purposes described in this Policy. For instance, Data will be used by the IoD to record iod.com usage patterns and your use of the IoD's other services, goods and facilities, thus helping us to administer these effectively and provide the highest possible level of service. It also helps us better understand your needs and interests.
If you are an IoD member your Data may be used to send you, by post or by email, any IoD publications made available to IoD members including regular monthly newsletters and updates on regional events and activities. It will also be used for IoD administrative purposes such as membership renewal reminders. If you are not an IoD member your Data may be used to send you regular updates about the latest information and services available from the IoD, by post or email.
We will always require you to supply an email address when you complete a transaction on iod.com for email confirmation and administration purposes. However, when capturing your email address we may also offer you the chance to ‘opt in’ to receive other email communications. If you do not ask to be sent these communications, you will only receive email for administration purposes.
Data may also be used to send IoD members and non-members promotional communications as described in the ’Promotional Communications’ – section 6 below.
Photo and Video Disclaimer
Images may be captured during events organised and/or hosted by the Institute of Directors (IoD) using film photography, digital photography, video or other mediums. The IoD reserves the right to use the images captured in any brochures, booklets, videos, websites or other media and publicity material produced by the IoD.
The IoD informs all persons taking part in an IoD event that they may be photographed, filmed, videoed or otherwise captured in image form.
Where possible and practical to do so, the IoD will seek written consent to image capture. However, where this is not possible for practical reasons, unless express objections are received, individuals attending an event are deemed to have given their consent by attending or remaining at the event.
Data may also be used to send IoD members and non-members promotional communications as described in the ’Promotional Communications’ – section 6 below.
Any queries or complaints should be raised with the IoD in the first instance.
Thank you for your understanding and co-operation.
Promotional communications
Unless you have previously opted out of receiving such communications (see ‘Opting out’ - section 6), your Data will be used by the IoD for marketing, advertising and promotions (’Promotions’). These Promotions may advertise IoD events and other IoD services, goods and facilities, some of which are offered to you in partnership with specially selected partners of the IoD. Because of this, Data may be shared with them solely for the purpose of informing you of such IoD events, services, goods and facilities.
Other Promotional communications may also invite you to participate in surveys or prize events sponsored by third parties. These third parties will have been specially selected by the IoD and third party Promotions will not result in your Data coming into the third party's possession unless you give separate consent to this occurring, for example if you participate in a survey or prize draw or subsequently place an order with the third party. In that event please check notices supplied by that third party for information as to how they will make use of your Data.
Promotional communications may be made by post, facsimile, or email. In the case of email communications these will only be sent to you if you have opted into the IoD's use of email to communicate with you on these matters. For more details on how you can opt in or out of email communications please visit www.iod.com/email.
Opting out
You may at any time opt out of any future IoD communication, digital or non-digital, Promotional or non-Promotional. If you wish to opt out of receiving postal communications please contact the IoD Membership Department (contact details in section 1). If you wish to opt out of email communications please use the ‘Unsubscribe’ link provided and follow the instructions. Alternatively you can go to www.iod.com/email and change your email subscriptions or contact the IoD Membership department (contact details in section 1).
Cookies.
A cookie is a small piece of data that is sent from our web server to your browser when you visit iod.com. It is stored on your hard drive. There are several types of cookie that are used to keep track of information needed by a site user as they travel from page to page within a website. We use a method called URLRewriting where the link (URL) to any page on the site has a unique session identifier (session ID) appended to it. This allows iod.com to track a user's behaviour during each visit to the website (session) without the need to write a temporary cookie to their PC's hard drive.
Other types of cookie can be used to track internet activity after the user has left a website. These are normally facilitated by organisations external to the website being visited and are generally known as ‘third party’ cookies. These usually have a long lifetime with several months being quite common. They are "harvested" and "refreshed" whenever the user visits a page where the same or a similar cookie is being used. We currently have a third party cookie written from www.iod.com as follows:
We currently use Google Analytics to measure and analyse visitor information related to our web site. For that purpose, your IP address, Internet traffic data and data on your browser type and PC are collected. We will not use any of this data to identify you personally, it is used only to monitor and improve iod.com.
Internet browsers normally accept cookies by default, but it is possible to set a browser to reject cookies. If this is done it is important not to exclude the benign and useful cookies. Choose an option that rejects all third party and long-lived cookies.
You can see a full list of the third party cookies used on on this site in our cookies policy.
The IoD is actively seeking to enhance its cookie policy to comply with guidance recently issued by the Government’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). This will ensure you are able to prevent information about your visit to our website being collected, if you wish. This will ensure you are able to prevent information about your visit to our website being collected, if you wish. The ICO guidance can be accessed here: ICO new cookie guidance. Further information on cookies can be accessed here: allaboutcookies.org.
Supplementary information
We may supplement your personal data with other Data about you we have received from third parties, provided that they have obtained and shared that Data with us in a manner that is compliant with all relevant laws and codes. For instance a third party may be used to verify your payment details. We may also combine Data about your purchasing habits with similar Data about you to create a personalised user profile. We can then use this to send you communications which are more likely to be of interest to you.
Maintaining the information we hold about you
The IoD aims to keep the Data it holds about you accurate and up to date. If at any time you want to verify, update or amend any Data we hold about you or if you become aware of possible errors or inaccuracies in that Data, please visit www.iod.com/amend where you are able to view and amend your details online (you will need to be logged in using your username and password). alternatively contact the IoD Membership department (contact details are in section 1).
If you wish to opt out of further use of your Data for any purpose, please refer to Section 6 on ‘Opting Out.’
Links to third party sites
iod.com may contain links to other sites, provided as a convenience to you. You are under no obligation to use these sites, but if you choose to do so, please be aware that these sites have separate content, privacy and data collection policies. Please refer to these before interacting with the site. The IoD cannot accept responsibility for any use of your Data by these sites.
Surveys
The IoD may from time to time invite you to participate in surveys. This may occur online or using other communication channels. Anonymity of individual respondents and protection of personal details will be maintained except where you have expressly granted permission to the contrary. Information gathered through surveys will be researched and compiled on an aggregated basis and results may be published on iod.com or elsewhere. Such results will not identify you. The information will be used to help us formulate our policy positions and to monitor or improve iod.com and IoD products and services.
Security
The IoD places great importance on the security of all Data associated with our members, customers, registered users of iod.com and other contacts. We have security measures in place to protect against loss, misuse or alteration of Data under our control.
Unfortunately no transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal data, we cannot warrant the absolute security of any Data you transmit to us online or to any other persons providing products or services online through iod.com. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your passwords in your possession and/or any account information in your control.
Transactions
As part of our commitment to offering you a wide range of products and services, we enable you to make purchases from us or sometimes direct from a third party seller (‘Seller’). If you choose to make a transaction direct with a Seller, for instance online through iod.com or an IoD email, we will make it clear that you are being transferred to the Seller. Offline, it will be clear from the marketing communication if you are being asked to contact the Seller direct to place an order. This is important because when you choose to order direct from the Seller, you become their customer and use of your data is then the Seller's responsibility and subject to any Privacy Policy which they may have.
If you order products or services from the IoD, an outside delivery company where relevant and a credit card processing company may be used to fulfil the order and process payment. In these instances these companies do not retain, share, store or otherwise use personally identifiable information for any other purpose.
IoD Business Directory
If you subscribe to the IoD Business Directory then information you submit will be available to all iod.com users. Please exercise caution before disclosing any information in these circumstances, particularly personal information about you or anybody else. For instance you, or an identified third party, may receive unsolicited Promotional communications as a result, for which the IoD cannot be responsible.
The Institute of Directors (IoD) is registered with the Data Protection Registrar IoD: Reg. no. Z6940750 K0870020 Director Publications Ltd: Reg. no. Z5706863 C0232158