Privacy Policy

Privacy notice

4iforum.com (or www.4iforum.com) is provided by Metis Corporate Education Limited, Penuel House, 239 Swanwick Lane, Lower Swanwick SO31 7GT.
Company Registration number: 08391550

How we use your information

This privacy policy tells you what to expect when 4iforum collects personal information.

It applies to information we collect about people who use our services, for example: 4iforum disruptors, patrons, sponsors and members (members are defined as individuals who take part in 4iforum dialogic forums) as well as individuals or organisations who visit www.4iforum.com

The way we use information

We use the information you provide about yourself or provided by your organisation only to support your access to our services. We do not share this information with outside parties except to the extent necessary to complete the delivery of add on services which have been requested by an individual or organisation.

Information provided to us to create a record is only used for that purpose, and it is only disclosed to the person attending the forum, the disruptor and, where necessary/agreed, the corporate patron or organisation. Records are visible to disruptors and 4iforum support staff in order to provide technical support if necessary.

We use return email addresses to answer the email we receive. Such addresses are not used for any other purpose and are not shared with outside parties.

We never use or share the personally identifiable information provided to us online in ways unrelated to the ones described above without also providing you an opportunity to opt-out or otherwise prohibit such unrelated uses.

People who use 4iforum services

We have to hold the details of the people who have requested our service in order to provide it. However, we only use these details to provide the service the person has requested. This applies to 4iforums disruptors, sponsors, members and patrons.

4iforum passwords are issued to people who have requested them or to employees of organisations who have requested them to be provided for their employees. In most cases this requires some personal information in order for the process to be successful.

Process:

An individual will enter their name and email address (and other information) into our automated system which is used to create a sponsorship account
The individual uses their account and/or register for a forum.
This data can be seen by a 4iforum disruptor (and 4iforum support staff)
Notifications about upcoming events and information about events an individual has booked onto will be sent by email.
How and how often notifications are controlled by the individual and can be turned off at any time
After attending an event a sponsor will be automatically added to a peer discussion forum on our sponsorship site relating to the forum event you attended. You can opt out at any time.

The information you provide will only be used for the purpose of maintaining your sponsorship at 4iforum.

We will not share any of the information you provide with any third parties for marketing purposes or store any of your information outside of the United Kingdom. The information you provide will be held securely by us and/or our data processors (4iforums support staff).

We will use the contact details you provide to us to send you information relevant to your 4iforum sponsorship or patronage.

Informed consent

If you are sharing personal information on behalf of someone else e.g. if you are booking a forum for someone else. Please make sure that the individual is aware of 4iforum’s terms and conditions and our privacy policy.

What information do we ask for and why?

We collect information we need to fulfil our stated purposes and will not retain it for longer than is necessary.

We ask you for your personal details including name, email address, gender (can choose ‘prefer not to say’) – organisation and department. There are some other fields which are voluntary and can help us create useful statistics and tailor our service offering for you.

All personal data will be anonymised

Comments

When users leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service Privacy Policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Withdrawal of consent

If you wish to withdraw your consent for 4iforum to store your personal information please email [email protected].

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

This privacy notice does not cover the links within this site linking to other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit.

Individual rights

You have rights as an individual which you can exercise in relation to the information, we hold about you.

You can read more about these rights here

Complaints or queries

4iforum tries to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate. We would also welcome any suggestions for improving our procedures. If you want to make a complaint about the way we have processed your personal information, you can contact us at [email protected].

People who make a complaint to us

If we receive a complaint, we will make up a file containing the details of the complaint. This could contain the identity of the complainant and any other individuals involved in the complaint. We will only use the personal information we collect to process the complaint and to check on the level of service we provide. It is likely we will have to disclose the complainant’s identity to whoever the complaint is about. If a complainant doesn’t want information identifying him or her to be disclosed, we will try to respect that. However, it may not be possible to handle a complaint on an anonymous basis.

We will keep personal information contained in complaint files in line with our retention policy. This means that information relating to a complaint will be retained for two years from closure. It will be retained in a secure environment and access to it will be restricted according to the ‘need to know’ principle. Similarly, where enquiries are submitted to us, we will only use the information supplied to us to deal with the enquiry and any subsequent issues and to check on the level of service we provide.

Access to personal information

4iforum tries to be as open as it can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Individuals can find out if we hold any personal information by putting the request in writing by email to [email protected].. We require 14 days to respond to this request.

If we do hold information about you we will:

give you a description of it;
tell you why we are holding it;
tell you who it could be disclosed to; and
let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

To make a request to 4iforum for any personal information we may hold you need to put the request in writing by email to [email protected]. We use this procedure to better safeguard your information. We require 14 days to respond to this request. We may first advise you to contact 4iforum member support or your organisation.

If you agree, we will try to deal with your request informally, for example by providing you with the specific information you need over the telephone or by email.

If we do hold information about you, you can ask us to correct any mistakes by, once again, contacting [email protected]. We require 14 days to respond to this request. We may first advise you to contact 4iforum member support or your organisation.

You can correct factual errors in your personally identifiable information by sending us a request that credibly shows error. We may first advise you to contact your 4iforum sponsor support or your organisation.

To protect your privacy and security, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections.

Disclosure of personal information

In most circumstances we will not disclose personal data without consent. However, there are some circumstances where we can pass on personal data without consent for example, to prevent and detect crime and to produce anonymised statistics; our instructions to staff on how to collect, use and delete personal data; and how we check that the information we hold is accurate and up to date.

Visitors to our websites

When someone visits 4iforum.com we use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. If we do want to collect personally identifiable information through our website, we will be up front about this. We will make it clear when we collect personal information and will explain what we intend to do with it.

Use of cookies by 4iforum.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files containing a string of characters that can be placed on your computer or mobile device that uniquely identify your browser or device.

What are cookies used for?

Cookies allow a site or services to know if your computer or device has visited that site or service before. Cookies can then be used to help understand how the site or service is being used, help you navigate between pages efficiently, help remember your preferences, and generally improve your browsing experience. Cookies can also help ensure marketing you see online is more relevant to you and your interests.

What types of cookies exist?

There are generally four categories of cookies: “Strictly Necessary,” “Performance,” “Functionality,” and “Targeting.” You can find out more about each cookie category below.

Strictly Necessary Cookies. These cookies are essential, as they enable you to move around the Service and use its features, such as accessing logged in or secure areas.
Performance Cookies. These cookies collect information about how you have used the Service, for example, information related to the unique username you have provided, so that less strain is placed on backend infrastructure. These cookies may also be used to allow a website to know that you have logged in so that it can serve you fresher content than a user who has never logged in.
Functionality Cookies. These cookies allow for a website to remember how you’re logged in, whether you chose to no longer see advertisements, whether you made an edit to an article on the Service while logged out, when you logged in or out, the state or history of Service tools you’ve used. These cookies also allow for the Service to be tailored to provide enhanced features and content for you and to remember how you’ve customized the Service in other ways. The information these cookies collect may be anonymous, and they are not used to track your browsing activity on other sites or services.
Targeting Cookies. Third party partners may use these types of cookies to deliver advertising that is relevant to your interests. These cookies can remember that your device has visited a site or service and may also be able to track your device’s browsing activity on other sites or services. This information may be shared with any other organizations, such as advertisers and/or advertising networks to deliver the advertising, and to help measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, or other business partners for the purpose of providing aggregate Service usage statistics and aggregate Service testing.

What types of cookies does 4iforums use?

4iforum uses “Strictly Necessary”, “Performance” and “Functionality” cookies, however as a non-logged in user you will only ever receive a “Strictly Necessary” cookie.

How long will cookies stay on my device?

The length of time a cookie will stay on your computer or mobile device depends on whether it is a “persistent” or “session” cookie. Session cookies will only stay on your device until you stop browsing. Persistent cookies stay on your computer or mobile device until they expire or are deleted. 4iforum will only create session cookies, unless otherwise stated.

First and third-party cookies

First-party cookies are cookies that belong to 4iforums, third-party cookies are cookies that another party places on your device through our Service. You will only ever receive first-party cookies when browsing the 4iforums website.

Website security

Our admin website and access portals all have SSL/TLS certificates. You can confirm this with the padlock icon in your browser.

Our websites are hosted on DigitalOcean, from a data centre located in the EU. DigitalOcean maintains a state-of-the-art facility with appropriate levels of physical, technical and environmental security.

IT support

4iforum has completed ‘due diligence’ on their IT support – an appropriate contract is in place and evidence provided of suitable professional indemnity.