Privacy Policy

Includes: Cookie Policy – Subscriber Policy / other data processing

OUR APPROACH

With regards visitors and clients’ data:

• Business Biscuit wants visitors and clients to be confident their data is safe with us and that we keep tracking to a minimum. Any data tracked or shared with us is for Business Biscuit only to improve our site for our visitors and clients – we will not sell it.
• our priority is to write and share interesting news vital to the businesses in our area

ADVERTISING

The only way to advertise with Business Biscuit is to have a conversation with Business Biscuit.

All Business Biscuit adverts are local, relevant, trustworthy and add to the value of the site.

We don’t use third party applications to place adverts because they can be misleading, off-putting, slow up the site and rely on intrusive and persistent tracking. We prefer to have a business relationship with each advertising client, not with algorithms.

This means that Business Biscuit adverts are hosted by our server and will almost always be accepted by anti-tracking software, which means more visitors will see and trust the adverts.

Although we are confident that our advertising clients are genuine, useful and reliable, however, Business Biscuit is not ultimately responsible for the content of external sites to which we link.

Please also see our Terms & Conditions.

THIRD PARTY DATA PROCESSORS

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics to get an idea of how many visitors we have, how long we hold their interest, and the most popular pages.
We rely on aggregated data for general site statistics.
Here’s more information on how Google handles your data collected from us.

MailChimp

We use Mailchimp, a well-established emailing platform, to contact our subscribers.
To understand the data privacy relationship between Mailchimp, Business Biscuit (‘member’) and yourself (‘contact’) please visit their Privacy Rights page.
To find out more about how Mailchimp protects data, visit their Data Security and Privacy Page.
To find out Mailchimp lawfully processes data, visit their European Data Transfer page. (Please note that Mailchimp processes data in servers in the USA)

IN-HOUSE DATA PROCESSING

We keep computer-based records as any business would to maintain business relationships with our clients, such as names, phone numbers, business names, contract dates, email exchanges etc.
If you want to see what information we may hold about you, please make your request via email.

COOKIES

When visiting Business Biscuit, a cookie banner asks for your permission to place cookies on your device so Google Analytics can provide us with website data, as explained above. You are able to opt out of this using the banner. If you change your mind with regards your permission, you can access the cookie banner via a link at the footer of this website.

Google draws its permission from our cookie banner.

For cookies within emails sent to Business Biscuit subscribers, please see below.

SUBSCRIBERS

As explained above, Business Biscuit currently uses Mailchimp to manage a free opt-in Business Biscuit visitor email subscription list collecting names and their email addresses. We operate this on a ‘legitimate interest’ basis, using ‘soft-consent’ when people have engaged with Business Biscuit either as clients or as a source of news and content.

Please note that Mailchimp is a US company and so Business Biscuit data is processed in servers in the USA.

Tracking – to see how many subscribers opened their emails and the stories they read via the links clicked, we use Mailchimp ‘open tracking’. This places a ‘web beacon’ at the bottom of each HTML email. We took a decision to leave tracking turned on as email open rates – ie reader numbers/circulation in old money – is the bread and butter of publishing data.

Mailchimp does not give us the option to collect this data anonymously, so if you don’t want to be tracked in this detail you can either sign up for the plain text version or use the settings in your mail client to turn off images. You can use the links at the bottom of each email sent from the subscription list to unsubscribe, change your preference to plain text or amend your details.

How Subscribers join our email list

• self-subscription via this website
• consent given in person, via direct email or direct message.
• as an existing customer who bought (or negotiated to buy) a similar product or service from BusinessBiscuit in the past
• As a supplier of Business Biscuit content (eg PR)
• As a willing subject of Business Biscuit news (ie if a business or self-employed person wanted to be featured in a story, then we assume they would want to hear from us in the future)
• As a member of staff from a business (with a business email address) within our areas of Swindon, Wiltshire, Bristol, Bath and Berkshire who we think would benefit from the news and information offered by Business Biscuit.

Subscribers can unsubscribe by following the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of each subscriber email from Business Biscuit, or making a request via email.

To comply with UK GDPR, Business Biscuit retains a list of unsubscribers on Mailchimp, but if you wish to have all your data deleted, please make your request by email.

OUR CONTACT DETAILS

If you are unhappy with the way Business Biscuit has handled your data, or wish to bring our attention to any issues with data processing, please contact us via phone or email (as below) and we will do our best to resolve the issue.

What Business Biscuit is working on:

• streamlined tracking so we only collect anonymised analytics.
• Finding a suitable platform for our subscribers, based in the UK or EU and also collecting anonymised data to record email opens.
• a more relevant cookie banner

Date of this version of Privacy Policy: February 2024
Registered with ICO as ‘Secret Agent Marketing’.
Information manager: Louisa Davison

Name Business Biscuit
Registered address Digital Mansion, The Mansion House, Pickwick Road, Corsham, Wilts SN13 9BL
Phone ‭01249 900864‬