1. Overview
Scope. This privacy policy sets out the ways the Good Food Network processes personal data. This privacy policy only relates to personal data collected by the Good Food Network via this website. When you click on links on the Good Food Network you may leave our website. We are not responsible for the practices of other websites, and we encourage you to read their privacy policies before use.
Defined terms. In this policy any references to “we” or “us” or “our” are references to the Good Food Network.
No information from children under age 13. If you are under age 13, please do not attempt to register on the Good Food Network or provide any personal information about yourself to us. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from a child under age 13, please contact us to let us know.
Data protection act 1998. The Good Food Network makes every effort to comply with the principles of the Data Protection Act 1998.
Agreement. By using or accessing the Good Food Network, you agree to this privacy policy, our terms & conditions, community guidelines and to having your personal data held, transferred to and processed in the United Kingdom.
Change. The Good Food Network reserves the right to update and change this privacy policy at any time. Unless stated otherwise, the privacy policy published on our website is our current privacy policy and applies to all information that we have about you and your account.
2. Information we receive
This section describes what information we receive from your interactions with the Good Food Network. You should always consider whether you are happy for us to receive this information before you use or access the website.
Information about yourself. When you sign up for the Good Food Network you provide us with your name, email, a password and a postcode, around which we will localise your experience of the website. We also ask that you provide your date of birth so that we can confirm that you are over 13 years old (in order to create an account) and determine whether you are over 18 years old (in order to have access to pages on the Good Food Network that may be promoting alcoholic drinks). During the registration process we give you the opportunity to personalise your profile by selecting your gender, adding a picture of yourself and providing further information on your food preferences. In some cases we may ask for additional information for security reasons or to provide specific services to you. Once you register you can provide other information about yourself, for example, by connecting with good food businesses and events, uploading photos, contributing reviews or commenting on discussion boards and forums. If you do not want us to store metadata associated with content you share on the Good Food Network, please remove the metadata before uploading the content.
Information on your transactions. We may retain the details of transactions or payments you make on the Good Food Network.
Information about your activity. We keep track of some of the actions you take on the Good Food Network, such as adding connections, uploading content, creating photo albums, indicating you have found a review useful or intend to attend an event. We may also collect information about you from other Good Food Network users, for example when you are tagged in a photo.
Information about your browser. When you access the Good Food Network from a computer, mobile phone, or other device, we may collect information from that device about your browser type, location, and IP address, as well as the pages you visit.
Information stored on cookies. We love "cookies" (and not just chocolate ones, but small pieces of data store for an extended period of time on your computer, mobile phone, or other device) and use them to make the Good Food Network easier to use, to make our advertising better, and to protect both you and the Good Food Network. For example, we use them to store your login ID (but not your email address or password) to make it easier for you to login whenever you come back to the Good Food Network. We use cookies to store location data (but not your full postcode or exact location) to enable us to, for example, set your county without you signing in. We use cookies to store whether you have confirmed that you are over 18 (but not your date of birth) to allow continued access to age restricted material and avoid repeatedly asking for this confirmation. We also use cookies to confirm that you are logged into Good Food Network, and to know when you are interacting with the Good Food Network. You can remove or block cookies using the settings in your browser, but in some cases that may impact your ability to use the Good Food Network.
3. Sharing information on the Good Food Network
This section describes how your information is shared on the Good Food Network. You should always consider what information will be shown publicly on the Good Food Network before sharing it.
Your name and profile picture. The Good Food Network is designed to make it easy for you to connect with your good food community. For this reason, your name and profile picture do not have privacy settings. If you are uncomfortable with sharing your profile picture, you should delete it (or not provide one).
Your email address. We require you to provide an email address during the registration process. Because we use this as your login to gain access to your account on the Good Food Network you cannot delete it, but you can change it subject to verification procedures. Your email address is not shared or made publicly available through to the Good Food Network.
Your location. In addition to your name and email address we require you to provide a postcode during the registration process. You can provide either a full postcode or just the first part. Because we use this to localise your experience of the Good Food Network (for example to set your county) you cannot delete it. After registration you can add your full address from within your account should you wish to provide it, however neither your address nor your postcode are shared or made publicly available through the Good Food Network. We use this information to show your county on your profile pages. Should you not wish to show your county on your profile you can opt to hide this in your privacy preferences.
Your date of birth. In addition to your name, email address and postcode we require you to provide date of birth during the registration process. Because your date of birth is required, you cannot delete it. However your date of birth is not shared or made publicly available through the Good Food Network. If you would like us not to show your age on your profile page you can opt to hide this in your privacy preferences.
Additional personal information. If you have chosen to personalise your profile by providing additional personal information such as your gender or food preferences these will be publicly visible on the Good Food Network. If you are uncomfortable about sharing this information, you should delete it (or not provide it in the first instance).
Who you are following. If you have chosen to follow businesses and events on the Good Food Network the list of who you are following will made publicly available.
4. How we use your information
We use the information we collect to try to provide a safe, efficient, and customised experience. Here are some of the details on how we do that:
To manage the service. We use the information we collect to provide our services and features to you, to measure and improve those services and features, and to provide you with customer support. We also use a variety of technological systems to detect and address anomalous activity and screen content to prevent abuse. These efforts may on occasion result in a temporary or permanent suspension or termination of some functions for some users.
To contact you. From time to time the Good Food Network, and businesses that are members of the Good Food Network, may contact you with service-related announcements or suggestions that we think may be of interest to you. This contact may be based on personal information you have provided, such as your food preferences or who you are following. You may opt out of all communications except essential updates in your contact preferences.
To serve personalised advertising to you. We do not share your information with advertisers without your consent. However when you click on or otherwise interact with an advertisement there is a possibility that the advertiser may place a cookie in your browser and note that it meets the criteria they selected. We allow advertisers to choose the characteristics of users who will see their advertisements and we may use any of the non-personally identifiable attributes we have collected (including information you may have decided not to show to other users, such as your date of birth or food preferences) to select the appropriate audience for those advertisements.
To supplement your profile. We may use information about you that we collect from other Good Food Network users to supplement your profile (such as when you are tagged in a photo or mentioned in a status update). In such cases we generally give you the ability to remove the content (such as allowing you to remove a photo tag of you) or limit its visibility on your profile.
5. How we share information
The Good Food Network may share your information with third parties when we believe the sharing is permitted by you, reasonably necessary to offer our services, or when legally required to do so. For example:
When you make a payment. When you enter into transactions with others or make payments on the Good Food Network, we will share transaction information with only those third parties necessary to complete the transaction. We will require those third parties to agree to respect the privacy of your information.
When you choose to share your information with marketers. You may choose to share information with businesses that are not associated with the Good Food Network through promotions, advertisements and special offers. This is entirely at your discretion and we will not provide your information to these businesses without your consent.
To give search engines access to publicly available information. We do not limit access to the Good Food Network from search engines which allows them to access any information you have submitted that you have made publicly available (such as a review) along with your name and profile picture.
To provide you with services. We may provide information to service providers that help us bring you the services we offer. For example, we may use third parties to help host our website, send out email updates about the Good Food Network, remove repetitive information from lists, process payments, or provide search results or links (including sponsored links). These service providers may have access to your personal information for use for a limited time, but when this occurs we implement reasonable contractual and technical protections to limit their use of that information to helping us provide the service.
To help improve or promote services. From time to time we may share aggregated information with other carefully selected companies (for example, businesses that are members of the Good Food Network) to help improve or promote the services offered to you. Where we do this, we only do so in such a way that no individual user can be identified or linked to any specific action or information.
To respond to legal requests and prevent harm. We may disclose information pursuant to court orders, or other requests (including criminal and civil matters) if we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law. This may include respecting requests from jurisdictions outside of the United Kingdom where we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law under the local laws in that jurisdiction, applies to users from that jurisdiction, and are consistent with generally accepted international standards. We may also share information when we have a good faith belief it is necessary to prevent fraud or other illegal activity. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, courts or other government entities.
Transfer in the event of sale or change of control. If the ownership of the Good Food Network changes substantially it may be necessary to transfer your information to the new owner so that the service can continue to operate. In such a case, your information would remain subject to the promises made in any preexisting privacy policy.
6. How you can change or remove information
We try to ensure that you can change and remove any information you have provided to the Good Food Network as quickly and efficiently as possible. Here are some of the ways in which you can do that and some limitations that you need to be aware of:
Editing your profile. You may change or remove personal information you have provided to the Good Food Network at any time from within your account. This information will be updated immediately.
Deactivating or deleting your account. If you want to stop using your account you may deactivate it or delete it. When you deactivate an account, no user will be able to see it, but it will not be deleted. We save your profile information (connections, photos, etc.) in case you later decide to reactivate your account. Many users deactivate their accounts for temporary reasons and in doing so are asking us to maintain their information until they return to the Good Food Network. You will still have the ability to reactivate your account and restore your profile in its entirety. When you delete an account, it is permanently deleted from the Good Food Network. You should only delete your account if you are certain you never want to reactivate it. To deactivate or delete your account please contact us.
Limitations on removal. Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been already distributed, shared with others, copied or stored by other users. Additionally, we may retain certain information to prevent identity theft or other misconduct even if deletion has been requested. Removed and deleted information may persist in backup copies for a limited period, but will not be available to others.
7. How we protect information
We do our best to protect and keep your information secure at all times. Here are the steps we take to do this and some of the risks that you need to be aware of:
Steps we take to keep your information secure. We keep your account information on a secured server behind a firewall. When you enter sensitive information (such as credit card numbers and passwords), we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). We also use automated and social measures to enhance security, for example to analyse account activity for fraudulent or otherwise anomalous behaviour, to remove inappropriate content or links. We may limit use of website features, suspend or disable accounts in response to possible signs of abuse. Should you become aware of any abuse, security violations or potential weaknesses in our security systems please contact us immediately.
Risks inherent in sharing information. Although we allow you to set privacy options that limit access to your information, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. We cannot control the actions of other users with whom you share your information. We cannot guarantee that only authorised persons will view your information. We cannot ensure that information you share on the Good Food Network will not become publicly available. We are not responsible for third party circumvention of privacy settings or security measures on the Good Food Network. You can reduce these risks by using common sense security practices such as choosing a strong password, using different passwords for different services, and using up to date antivirus software.
We hope that you've found our privacy policy clear and easy to understand. However, just to clarify, the cookies we refer to above are not to be confused with the soft, crumbly ones pictured. If you have any questions about this or anything else to do with our privacy policy please contact us.
01 September 2011