Privacy policy

The personal information we hold about you will be:

• Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way;
• Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you, and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes;
• Relevant to the purposes we have told you about, and limited to those purposes;
• Accurate and kept up to date;
• Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about;
• Kept securely.

We will use your information only where:

• We need to perform the contract we have entered into with you;
• We need to comply with a legal obligation;
• It is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests;
• We need to protect your interests (or someone else’s);
• It is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.

When you create a Wonkhe account we ask for your name, work email address, and your role and organisation. We use these to operate your account, check your entitlements under your organisation’s subscription, and understand our audience.

• Passwordless sign-in. We sign you in with one-time codes sent to your email address – we do not store a password for you.
• What your account stores. Your saved articles, briefing preferences, event registrations and comments are stored against your account so the service works across your devices.
• Subscription reporting. Paid-for services operate under a contract between Wonkhe and a subscribing organisation. We share relevant usage information with the subscribing organisation on request – such as subscriber numbers, names and engagement – so it can understand the value of its subscription.

When you subscribe to one of our email briefings, we ask for your name, email address, job title, organisation, role level and professional area – so we can send you the briefing and understand our audience, which informs our content.

We use a third-party provider, Campaign Monitor, to deliver our briefings, and gather statistics around email opening and clicks to improve the service. From time to time we will contact briefing subscribers about subscription services, events, products or services offered or endorsed by Wonkhe, or for research purposes. We won’t allow third parties to email subscribers using our list.

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of any email from us, or by contacting briefing@wonkhe.com.

When someone visits wonkhe.com we collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns – to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is processed in a way which does not identify anyone, and we do not attempt, or allow our analytics providers to attempt, to find out the identities of those visiting our website.

If we ever want to collect personally identifiable information through our website, we will be upfront about it – we will make it clear when we collect personal information and explain what we intend to do with it.

Our website uses a small number of cookies and similar technologies:

• Signing in. When you sign in we set a strictly necessary session cookie that keeps you signed in, plus a non-identifying hint that tells your browser a session exists. These carry no personal information beyond operating your session.
• Preferences. Choices like dark mode are stored in your browser’s own local storage – they stay on your device and are never sent to us.
• Analytics. Analytics cookies help us understand how people use the site, in a way that does not identify individual users. They are only set once you accept them, and you can change your choice at any time from the “Cookie settings” link in the footer.

Most web browsers let you refuse or delete cookies. Choosing not to accept them will not affect your access to the majority of the site, though you will not be able to stay signed in.

Comments are posted from your Wonkhe account and appear under your name and affiliation, as described in our moderation policy. Your email address is never displayed publicly and is never passed to a third party, but may be used to contact you if there is a problem with your comment. We retain moderation records for as long as the discussion remains on the site.

We use Groove to collate emails sent to our generic wonkhe.com inboxes (events, briefing, team, finance, press), so the team can respond quickly and efficiently, and Gmail to process our email correspondence. After responding to emails we keep the correspondence for reference so we have context when responding to our subscribers. We do not add any of this data to our lists unless specifically requested, and we do not collate the content of these emails in any way.

When you sign up to attend one of our events, we ask for the information we need for that specific event – typically your name, email address, job title and organisation, and sometimes dietary and accessibility requirements, session selections or a pre-event survey. We only ever ask for the information we need to deliver a successful event, and we may use it to share information about the event with you before or after it takes place, such as joining instructions or a programme.

We use Campaign Monitor to send delegate communications, Ticket Tailor to take event bookings, Stripe to process card payments, Xero to process invoice payments, and Typeform to collect event feedback. Data collected by Ticket Tailor, Stripe and Xero is stored at a destination outside the European Economic Area. We do not allow our third-party providers to use your personal data for their own purposes – only to process it for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Beyond the providers named above, we may share your personal data with:

• Service providers acting as processors in the UK who provide IT and system administration services;
• Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers – lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers in the UK providing consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services;
• HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances;
• Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets – if a change happens to our business, the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this policy.

We do not sell or share any subscriber data to third parties for their use, and we require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

Where sharing your personal data involves transferring it outside the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it, such as by using the EU Commission’s standard contractual clauses. Contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed, and we limit access to those with a business need to know. We have procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach, and will notify you and any applicable regulator where we are legally required to do so.

Under data protection law you have the right, in certain circumstances, to:

• Request access to your personal data (a “data subject access request”);
• Request correction of incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you;
• Request erasure of your personal data where there is no good reason for us to continue processing it;
• Object to processing based on legitimate interests, or for direct marketing;
• Request restriction of processing while a question about the data is resolved;
• Request transfer of your data to you or a third party in a structured, machine-readable format;
• Withdraw consent at any time where we rely on consent to process your data.

To exercise any of these rights, email team@wonkhe.com. You will not normally have to pay a fee, though we may need to verify your identity, and we try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month.

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including satisfying any contractual, accounting, tax or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use, the purposes of processing, and the applicable legal requirements. In some circumstances we may anonymise your information so that it can no longer be associated with you.

Wonkhe is published by Thesis House Ltd, registered in England and Wales (company number 08784934), the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. We are registered with the Information Commissioner (ZA296124) and have appointed a data protection officer to oversee compliance with this notice.

Questions, comments and requests regarding this policy are welcome: email team@wonkhe.com, call 0203 633 5564, or write to Wonkhe, 31-35 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TE.

Any future changes to this policy will be published here, and subscribers will be notified of material changes by email.