Why we collect your data | Categories of personal data | Legal basis for processing | Retention period* |
Marketing communications including newsletters, webinars, and direct marketing. | Name, title and contact details including email address and telephone number. | Consent – we obtain opt in consent before marketing to contacts. Legitimate interests of marketing to new and existing customers. | 5 years. |
Presales activities including provision of quotes, proposals, customer demos, producing contracts. | Name, title and contact details including email address and telephone number. | Legitimate interests of selling products and services to new and existing customers. | 5 years from expiration of customer agreement. |
Sale of goods and services | Name, title, contact details including email address and telephone number Financial information including bank account and credit card details | Legitimate interests of selling products and services to new and existing customers | 10 years. |
Customer services including complaint investigation and compliance activities. | Name, title and contact details including email address and telephone number. | Legitimate interests of supporting existing customers. | Service and support records are retained for 5 years post expiration of the customer agreement save for where specific Product Line retention periods apply – please refer to your Customer contract. |
Research and development (“R&Dâ€), quality assurance, product validation (product testing pre-sales). | Name, title and contact details including email address and telephone number. | Legitimate interests in testing, evaluating and improving Separation Methods Technologies products and services. | Records relating to R&D for new products are maintained until such time as they are no longer required for R&D purposes. Other records not relating to R&D are retained for 2 years from when they are created. |
Customer satisfaction and product feature surveys. | Name, title and contact details including email address and telephone number. IP Address. | Consent obtained when requesting customer to respond to survey. Legitimate interests of marketing to new and existing customers. | 6 years. |
To facilitate annual conferences for customers where Separation Methods Technologies advertises new features, updates, product road maps. | Name, title and contact details including email address and telephone number. Employment information related to where a conference attendee is currently employed. Financial information, including transaction and credit card details used to pay for conference attendance. | Legitimate interests of marketing to new and existing customers. | 3 years. Financial information is destroyed as soon as the registration transaction is complete. |
Customer mail list providing customers a forum/comments form to discuss the product. | Name, title and contact details including email address and telephone number. | Consent to participate in the mail list. Legitimate interests of processing forum data to sell products and services to new and existing customers. | User data is kept until opt out. |
*Individual retention periods may apply to specific product lines please refer to the terms and conditions of the product.
Right to deletion: In certain circumstances, you have the right to ask us to delete the personal data we hold about you.
- where you believe that it is no longer necessary for us to hold your personal data;
- where we are processing your personal data on the basis of legitimate interests and you object to such processing and we cannot demonstrate an overriding legitimate ground for the processing;
- where you have provided your personal data to us with your consent and you wish to withdraw your consent and there is no other ground under which we can process your personal data; or
- where you believe the personal data we hold about you is being unlawfully processed by us.
Restriction: In certain circumstances, you have the right to ask us to restrict (stop any active) processing of your personal data.
- where you believe the personal data we hold about you is inaccurate and while we verify accuracy;
- where we want to erase your personal data as the processing is unlawful but you want us to continue to store it;
- where we no longer need your personal data for the purposes of our processing but you require us to retain the data for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; or
- where you have objected to us processing your personal data based on our legitimate interests and we are considering your objection.
Types of Data Collected Through Cookies and Purposes of Cookies’ Use
SMT uses technologies, such as web-tracking tools designed for website session analysis and profiling of the users of our Website. Such technologies enable us to optimize our Website content and tailor it and other communications to you.
A cookie is text file containing small amounts of information stored on your computer’s hard drive when you visit a webpage. You can find more information about cookies and how to manage them at http://allaboutcookies.org/.
The main purpose of a cookie is to allow a web server to identify a user and serve up customized web pages and/or login information to the user’s web browser when revisiting a web page. These cookies help you avoid entering identification details each time you visit our Website or repeatedly type the same information you are looking for on our Website (search terms, key words, names of products, etc.).
Cookies also help us to promptly display the information you need and other information which we consider are of interest to you.
We will use session cookies (which are deleted after each session) and stored cookies (which remain on your hardware after your session has ended). Cookies will be set by a third party operating on our behalf (e.g. to help us analyze web traffic or to improve your web navigation experience).
Cookie. Clear Gif. Tag and Script Usage and Your Choices About Tracking Technologies
We use the following types of cookies on our Website to help us analyze web traffic, to improve your web experience and to better target our marketing of products and services:
- Strictly necessary cookies, which are essential in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features.
- Performance cookies, which collect information about how you use the website, for instance which pages you visit most often.
- Functionality cookies, which allow the website to remember choices you make (e.g. remembering your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features.
- Advertising cookies, which are used to deliver advertisements more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign.
To facilitate the analysis of web traffic, an ID is assigned to help us uniquely identify you each time you return to our Website.
By gathering and remembering information about your website preferences through cookies we can provide a better web and marketing experience. Specifically, cookies enable us to:
- Tailor our Website’s operation to your needs, likes and dislikes.
- Provide an automated log-in process as a convenience for previously registered customers, ensuring that you will be identified accurately and linked with your registration data.
- Ensure you are not surveyed multiple times during your visit(s) to an SMT website.
- Provide a better web experience by letting us monitor what is working and what is not.
We also partner with third party ad networks to either display advertising on our Website or to manage our advertising on other sites. Our ad network partner uses cookies and Web beacons to collect information about your activities on this and other websites to provide you targeted advertising based upon your interests. Our ad network partners also use cookies for re-targeting, therefore you may see an advertisement for our services on a third party site you visit after visiting our site. If you do not want your information used for the purpose of serving you targeted ads, you can opt out by clicking Please note this does not opt you out of being served advertising. You will continue to receive generic ads.
As a user you have the ability to accept or decline the use of cookies. Where required by law, SMT indicates its use of cookies through a prominent banner on our Website. Cookies can be removed explicitly using functionality built into most web browsers and you can refuse to accept cookies by activating this setting on your browser. You can also set up your web browser to notify you of cookie placement requests, to ask for permission to accept them, or to decline cookies completely. For information on how to adjust your browser regarding cookies, please visit:
Microsoft Internet Explorer: http://www.microsoft.com/info/cookies.htm
Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Protect-your-privacy/Enable-and-disable-cookies-that-websites-use-to-track-your/ta-p/2784
Chrome: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/?hl=en
Safari: http://www.apple.com/support/safari/
Opera: http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/security/
If you choose to decline cookies, parts of the Website will be unavailable to you.
Log Files
As is true of most web sites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information will include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data. We use this information to improve services we offer you, analytics and site functionality. We do not use this data for any other purpose.
Clear Gifs (Web Beacons/Web Bugs), Tags, and Scripts
Technologies such as: cookies (as detailed above), clear gifs, tags and scripts are used by us and our analytics companies Google Analytics and Eloqua. These technologies are used in analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We will receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis. We also will use Clear Gifs in our HTML-based emails to let us know which emails have been opened by recipients. This allows us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. For this reason, Clear Gifs will be tied to your personal information.
Website Tracking
We use Google Analytics and Eloqua, which are web analytics tools, to help us understand how users engage with our Website. Like many services, Google Analytics and Eloqua track your movement through our site (i.e. the pages you have seen and the links you have clicked on) and help us measure how you interact with the content that we provide. This information is used to compile reports and to help us improve our Website. The reports disclose website trends without identifying individual visitors. You can opt out of accepting cookies but this affect your personalised experience of separationmethods.com.
For further details about the data we collect through cookies, their purpose and your choices in relation to cookies, please see [here].