Privacy Policy

This privacy policy describes how we may collect, process, use and store personal information about you when using this website and other relevant personal data processing activities in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

About Validis

Validis UK Limited (the “company”, “we”, “our”, “us”) is registered in the UK with the ICO: registration number is ZA771577 and our principal place of business is at 71-73 Carter Ln, London, EC4V 5EQ.

Validis is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we collect, process, use and store personal information about anyone who expressly consented and willingly provide their personal information through our website. We are required under the UK GDPR to notify you of the information contained in this privacy policy.

Validis 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, it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

Your Obligation

It is important that you read this policy, together with the consent we may require on specific occasions, when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information. We do update this policy from time to time so please do review this policy when using our website.

Information we collect

We may collect certain user information, including personal information in the following ways:

Information You Provide to Us: To provide you with the required services through this website, we may collect personal information that you provide voluntarily to us when you visit our website, for example, when you fill out the contact form, consent form, Data Subject Access Request Form, participate in any interactive features on our website, participate in a survey, promotion, activity or event, apply for a job, request support, or communicate with us via third-party social media sites or direct marketing. It may include information you provide when you register to use our services or other activities commonly carried out in connection with DataShare.

The types of information you provide on our website typically include your name, email address, phone number, industry, company name as well as any contact or other information you choose to provide.

Information we collect automatically when you use our website

When you access or use the Validis website or services, we may automatically collect information about you, including:

Usage Information: We record website activity such as resources you accessed or pages you viewed, any actions taken in connection with the access including how long you spent on the page, number of mouse clicks, response time by our website for analytics purposes.

Log Information: We log information about you when you access and use the Validis website including your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, access times, browser type and language, Internet Service Provider (“ISP”), the Web pages that you visit, the Content you use and the URL of the Web page you visited before navigating to the Validis website.

Information we receive from other sources including third parties

We will receive personal data about you from various third parties. Identity and contact data from our Clients who subscribe to DataShare in order to provide services to you who may be based in the UK. We will process this personal data in our capacity as a data processor for our Clients.

Device Information:

Information collected by Cookies and other tracking technologies: We (including service providers who are working on our behalf) use various technologies to collect information, which may include saving cookies to your computer or mobile device. Cookies are small data files stored on your hard drive or in device memory that help us to improve the website and your experience, customize your experience and preferences, understand which areas and features of the website are most popular and count visits. We may also collect information using web beacons (also known as “tracking pixels”). Web beacons are electronic images (also called “gifs”) that may be used in the website or in emails that help us to deliver cookies, count visits, understand usage and campaign effectiveness and determine whether an email has been opened and acted upon. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, please see “Your Choices” below.

Third party cookies: The use of cookies by third parties and/or third-party applications, is not covered by our Privacy Notice. We do not have access or control over such cookies.

Third Party Clear Gifs: Our third-party partners employ clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs), images, and scripts that help them better manage content on our website. We do not tie the information gathered to our Customers’ or Users’ personal information.

Local Shared Objects (“LSO”):

 We use LSOs such as HTML 5 to collect and store information in order to provide certain features on our website. Third parties with whom we partner may also use LSOs in order to provide certain features on our website or to display advertising based upon your Web browsing activity. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing HTML5 LSOs.

Advertising Cookies: 

We partner with third parties to manage our advertising on other websites. Our third parties may use tracking technologies such as cookies to gather information about your activities on this website and other websites you visit in order to provide you advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests.

Information We Collect from other Sources: We may also obtain information from third parties and combine that with information we collect through the website. For example, we may have access to certain information from a third-party social media service if you provide us with access to such information through the website. Any access that we may have to such information from a third-party social media service is in accordance with the privacy notice and authorization procedures determined by the social media service.

Information use

We may use the information collected through the website for the limited purpose of providing the required services and related functionality for which Validis has been engaged.  Most commonly, we will use your Personal Data for the following lawful bases.  

Here we need to perform the contract, we are about to enter into or have entered into with you or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract for the relevant service, including:

• To engage with you to send and agree initial terms
• Enter into a contract and manage that contract
• To update your records
• For the performance of a contract with a third-party client
•  

Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests, including for the following purposes:

• Provide, operate, maintain and improve the Validis website.
• Provide and deliver the services and features you request, process and complete transactions, and send you related information
• Respond to your comments, questions, and requests and provide customer service and support.
• Communicate with you about services, features, surveys, newsletters, offers, promotions, contests and events, and provide other news or information about Validis and its services.
• Personalize and improve the website, and provide content, features, and/or functionality that match your interests and preferences or otherwise customize your experience on our website.
• Send you technical notices, updates, security alerts and support and administrative messages.
• Monitor and analyse trends, usage, and activities in connection with the website and for marketing or advertising purposes.
• For other purposes about which we notify you where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message in circumstances where we must obtain your consent (Opt-In consent).  In such circumstances where you do give consent, you have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by privacy@validis.com.

 Automated decision making

We do not undertake any fully automated decision-making processes.

How long will you use my information?

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the collection purposes, including for the purposes of satisfying any marketing, sales, legal, contractual, accounting, or reporting requirements.

Data security and data retention

While no service is completely secure, we take reasonable measures to help protect your information loss, theft, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.  We also take reasonable measures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances we may anonymize your personal information to make it not associable with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.

International transfers

We may share your personal data within the Validis Group. Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data. These includes all countries within the EEA. Details of approved countries can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-approach-to-international-data-transfers/international-data-transfers-building-trust-delivering-growth-and-firing-up-innovation

• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in UK. For further details, see International data transfer agreement and guidance | ICO

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.

Data security

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. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information supplied in this website for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for any other reasons and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Sharing and disclosure of information

 We will not share personal information about you or any content with any third parties except as described in this Privacy Policy or in connection with the services we provide to you. For example, we may share personal information about you including as follows:

Internal third parties: Other companies in the Validis Group acting as processors and who are based in United States of America and provide IT and system administration services, sales services and undertake leadership reporting.

External third parties: Clients of Validis who use DataShare and you have selected to provide services to you, such as your accountant or bank, or your accounting software solution provider. Microsoft Azure acting as processors based in the Countries in we host our services.

Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based in the UK, EEA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada or the United States of America who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.

HM Revenue and Customs, regulators and other authorities based in the UK, EEA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada or the United States of America who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.

Compliance with Laws: We may disclose your information to a third party if

(a) we believe that disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request,

(b) to enforce our agreements, policies and Terms of Service,

(c) to protect the security or integrity of our services,

(d) to protect Validis, our customers or the public from harm or illegal activities,

(e) to respond to an emergency which we believe in the good faith requires us to disclose information to assist in preventing the death or serious bodily injury of any person

(f) where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so e.g. for marketing or performance of contract or

(g) to any other third party with your prior consent.

Business Transfers:

 We may share or transfer your information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business to another company. We will notify you of any such deal and outline your choices in that event.

Aggregated or Anonymized Data: We may also share aggregated or anonymized information with third parties that does not directly identify you.

Third party services

Validis may provide links to third party sites through this website. Validis assumes no responsibility for the information practices of sites a visitor accesses through our site, and we encourage visitors to review each site’s privacy policy before disclosing any personal details as their own terms and policies will govern the use of those services security and data protection.

Your choices

You may update, correct or delete information about you at any time by emailing privacy@validis.com. In particular, you can also request for the following:

• Request access to your personal information(commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• To request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes that you don’t want.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

Upon request, Validis will provide you with information about whether we hold, or process on behalf of a third party, any of your personal information that we are aware of. To request this information, contact us at privacy@Validis.com. We will endeavour to respond to your access request within 30 days.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly excessive, repetitive, or when you request for multiple copies or when your request is unfounded. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such unusual or strange circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

Right to withdraw consent

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please send us email at privacy@validis.com or complete a consent withdrawal form in the UK GDPR section of our website. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

Our policy toward children

Our website and services are not directed to individuals under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you become aware that a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us at privacy@validis.com. If we become aware that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, we will take steps to delete such information.

Promotional and Newsletter Communications 

You may opt out of receiving promotional and newsletter emails from Validis by following the opt-out instructions provided in those emails. You may also opt-out of receiving promotional emails and other promotional communications from us at any time by emailing privacy@Validis.com with your specific request. If you opt out, we may still send you non-promotional communications, such as security alerts and notices related to your access to or use of the Validis services or our ongoing business relations.

Testimonials

We display personal testimonials of satisfied customers on our website in addition to other endorsements. With your consent we may post your testimonial along with your name.

Data Protection / Compliance Team

We have a Compliance Department which oversees compliance with this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact us at privacy@validis.com.

How to make a complaint

We endeavour to maintain best practice.  However, we recognise that we may not always get it right and where you are not satisfied in the way we handle data or you wish to discuss our processes then we would be grateful to hear from you.

If there is something which we have not done correctly with your data then we would appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) so please contact us in the first instance at privacy@validis.com.

However, you have the right to make a complaint at any time to the ICO, the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk).

Changes to this privacy policy

We reserve the right to update this privacy policy at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy policy when we make any substantial updates on our website.  We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.   This Privacy Policy was last updated on 8th August 2023.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please contact us at privacy@validis.com.