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Sky Business Privacy & Cookie Notice

This privacy and cookies notice applies to the processing of personal data by Sky Business, in relation to broadband, voice and other communications products and services, including information we collect and store via cookies and other related technologies. Sky Business is the trading name of the division of Sky UK Limited which sells business-grade TV and communications products and services to business customers.

References in this policy to “Sky”, “we” “us” or “our” should be interpreted accordingly. The processing explained in this notice may be carried out by Sky or other data controllers within the Sky group of companies (including but not limited to Sky Subscribers Services Limited and The Cloud Networks Limited) that may from time to time act as Sky's agent to help Sky Business provide products and services to you.

If you access the products and services of other Sky companies and businesses, you should refer to their privacy notices. The Sky Business TV Privacy Notice can be found here.

Types of information we process and where it comes from

  • Information you've provided to us about your business, its employees or other contacts, including their names and contact details.
  • Information relating to products and services you've ordered or enquired about, via Sky Business' sales and marketing channels.
  • Information our data brokers Intelling, First Source, Integra and Experian, provide to Sky about your business. To manage how they use your personal data and share it with companies like Sky you should speak to them directly or refer to the privacy notice on their website.
  • Information about your and your business’ use of our products and services from equipment we supply or devices you use to receive the same (including where we collect this information via cookies and other related technologies) which may include the following:
  • Account information: including unique identification numbers, MAC addresses, online identifiers, passwords and other similar identifying information required to receive and use our products and services.
  • Usage Information: including call data records, IP addresses, browser information, and other relevant traffic data or network information Sky requires to provide and manage your use of our products and services.
  • IP addresses, MAC addresses, unique identification numbers, online identifiers (including device IDs and advertising IDs), browser information, logical network address, and other similar identifying information required for your devices to communicate with websites and applications on the internet.
  • Technical information from the devices you use to receive Sky products and services, for example, the collection of diagnostic and traffic or location information. Note that devices and applications have their own privacy settings and notices under which they collect your information, so please check and manage your device and application settings.
  • Information relating to your customer service interactions and other administrative information with us including personal data you provide when you exercise your rights under our contract with your business or any applicable data protection legislation.
  • Images recorded by cameras fitted to Sky’s engineer vans.

How we use your information

The main purpose for which we process your personal data is so that we can provide your business with our products and services in accordance with the contract your business has with Sky. This includes:

  • Managing your account (such as updating contact information, making changes to products or services and billing for services rendered).
  • Managing our products and services and traffic across our network. For example, Sky uses your information to facilitate the operation of its network by choosing the most efficient route to transmit signals received through the various parts of its network of equipment and systems. This information is held securely within restricted areas, is accessible only by authorised personnel and otherwise in accordance with our data retention, deletion and acceptable use policies.

Where you give us consent, we will process your data in a number of ways, including:

  • In order to send you direct marketing. This may include communications by post, telephone, SMS, email or other electronic means, using the contact details you have provided, about us and our content products and services, events and special offers, including, for a reasonable time after you have ceased to be a customer of ours (see further details below). We may also send you ‘abandoned basket’ marketing if you provided us your contact details (and given us consent to use them for marketing) during our online sales journey but didn’t complete your purchase. We will tailor the marketing based on what you added to your basket.
  • In order to process your data for online and digital advertising (see below at “How we share your information for online and digital advertising”) and;
  • In order to process special category data you’ve provided to us. This may include using data you have provided to us or to our business partners concerning your health to provide assistance and support on your account.
  • To assess your application for the Sky Media and Sky Business' small and medium sized enterprise support scheme (the SME 100). This may include special category data if you choose to provide this as part of your application. This special category data will be used to ensure that the chosen SMEs are aligned with Sky’s diversity and inclusion targets.

We may also use your information to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. This includes:

  • By complying with police and other security investigations; and

  • By complying with Ofcom information requests and regulatory

    investigations.

In some circumstances, we may process your personal data in reliance upon our legitimate interests, including to:

  • improve our products, services and customer experiences by monitoring

    your use of our products and services and working with our suppliers to improve the products and services we offer, and develop new products and services;

  • Monitor, record, store and use customer service communications we have with you. This helps us to improve the quality of our customer service, to confirm any instructions you give us and for training and development purposes and to meet our legal and regulatory responsibilities;

  • In some cases, we rely on legitimate interest to send you direct marketing – for example, if you’re a prospective customer. This may include communications by post, email or other electronic means (such as push notifications and in-product notifications), using the contact details you have provided, about us and our content, products and services, events and special offers, including, for a reasonable time after you have ceased to be a customer of ours (see further details below). This may also involve processing your data for online and digital advertising (see below at ''How we share your information for online and digital advertising''). We will confirm how we received your data and record any preferences you have about receiving further communications from Sky Business;

  • Where applicable, serve tailored advertising to you on your residential Sky TV services via Sky's AdSmart solution by sharing your Sky Business contact information and account details with other parts of the Sky group. Full details on AdSmart including how you can manage your preferences can be found on the Sky privacy notice here.

  • Use for market research;

  • Protect or enforce our rights or the rights of any third party such as by analyzing activity on our network to help block unauthorized or illegitimate content, publication of, or access to it; and

  • Help prevent and detect crime and for the purposes of public and road safety. We will also process your data where we need to in order to safeguard your vital interests or those of another person, for example to support crime prevention and protect the safety of members of the public and Sky employees.

How we share your information

We work with a number of suppliers and partners to process your personal data for the purposes described above. Where these suppliers and partners act on our behalf they must only process your personal data in accordance with our instructions. The categories of suppliers and partners that we use include:

  • Engineer services firms
  • Couriers (who may also (who may also process your contact data as a data controller when arranging or communicating with you about your delivery)
  • Payment service providers (including Worldpay, which processes data as a data controller (their privacy notice)
  • Information Technology and services companies
  • Customer service centres
  • Debt collection agencies
  • Marketing or reward companies that administer incentives and/or deliver our marketing and promotional communications (such as our referral schemes).

Sometimes we share personal data with suppliers and business partners who may process it outside of the European Economic Area. (for example, we use customer service centres in India and some IT services in USA). Most of the time the data we share will be with companies who supply services to us to enable us to supply our services to you. On occasion, we may share personal data with our parent company, Comcast Corporation, based in the US. We grant these companies access to personal data only where necessary and only where appropriate security measures and controls are in place to protect your personal data in accordance with applicable data protection laws, regulations and regulatory guidance. This means these transfers will take place on the basis of an approved data transfer mechanism, such as EU Standard Contractual Clauses and EU Commission Decisions on Adequacy (country details).

In the event that the structure of our business changes so that another company in the Sky group provides our products and services to you, we will pass your personal information to that company. This includes, for example, a merger between us and another company, where another company acquires us or some or all of our assets, or where we acquire another company or our holding company restructures our corporate group.

We may share your personal data with debt collection agencies where there is an outstanding debt owed on the account. We do this so that they can use the information, alongside other information that they hold, to attempt to contact you on our behalf so that we can recover the debt. In some cases, where we have been unable to recover the amount owed, we may sell the debt to a third-party debt management company. You will be informed when this takes place and following the sale of the debt, any questions you have about communications you receive should be directed to the company in question.

We share personal data with the courts, enforcement agencies (e.g. the police) and with regulatory authorities (e.g. OFCOM in the UK) where this is required, in order for us to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

Where Sky receives a request for the ownership of a vulnerable customer’s account to be transferred to a nominated individual, personal data of the existing account holder may be shared with the new account holder. The ownership of the account would only be transferred once Sky has received signed acceptance and authorisation of the transfer from both parties.

How we use your information for online and digital advertising

We work with a number of trusted partners to process your personal data for online and digital advertising purposes on Sky and third party websites and apps. For the purposes described in this section we use information collected through cookies or similar technologies on our websites, apps and devices (such as device IDs, mobile advertising IDs, and IP addresses). We may also share your phone number and email address with certain partners (particularly social media websites who offer audience matching services) but will never share your name and physical address. If we do share an email address or phone number, it will be in a hashed format (which means that it has been converted into a stream of numbers or letters to make it more secure), and our partner will only see that data if it is already used for an account on their site. Where we use cookies and similar technologies on our and third party websites, apps, and devices (which you will separately be asked to accept), the data may be used in conjunction with other information we hold about you, such as your browsing behaviour, product holding and account history so we can show you more relevant content or offers. We perform due diligence before a company becomes a partner to ensure they are able to handle your data in a secure and responsible manner.

If you don’t want your data to be matched with the social media sites you use, let us know using one of the methods in the “Managing Your Marketing and Digital Advertising Preferences” section below. You might still see Sky posts or adverts on those sites, but they won’t be personalised using your Sky account data. You can also change your settings on that social media site to control the promoted posts you see there. Where our partners are based outside of the European Economic Area, we work with these partners to make sure personal data is processed only if appropriate measures and controls are in place to protect your personal data in accordance with applicable data protection laws and regulations and regulatory guidance. Any data transfers will only take place on the basis of an approved data transfer mechanism as described in the section ‘How we share your information’ above.

Managing your marketing and Digital Advertising preferences

You can always choose to manage your preferences around direct marketing and online advertising in the following ways:

When you make a request not to receive marketing, it can take us up to one month to process that request. If you receive direct marketing from other Sky group companies or in relation to other Sky services (such as Sky TV, Sky Broadband, Sky Mobile, Sky WiFi or Now TV) you can choose not to by contacting them directly.

Cookies and online behavioural advertising

Please see the section on “Controlling my Cookies” on how to adjust cookie settings for your devices.

Keeping your data up to date and your rights

You also have the following rights:

  • To request access to, or erasure of, the personal data we hold about

    you (we explain more about this below);

  • To request us to restrict the processing of the personal data we hold about you;

  • To object to us processing personal data relating to you;

  • Where you have given us consent to process your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time; and

  • You have the right to obtain certain personal data from us in a format that can be transferred electronically to a third party (also called “data portability”).

Please note that some of these rights are not absolute. In some cases, for example, we may refuse a request to exercise particular rights if complying with it meant that we are no longer able to meet our contractual obligation to provide you with particular products and services, or if we had a legal obligation or right not to comply with the request. However, we will keep you informed as to the actions that we can take, when you make your request.

Finally, if you are unhappy about the way we have processed your personal data and wish to make a complaint please refer to the “Complaints” section of this notice for details of your rights and how to do so.

You can exercise these rights in the following ways:

How long we keep your information

In this section, we explain the categories of personal data that we may keep, the periods applied and our reasons for keeping them.

These categories of data include customer contact information, the addresses where we have provided services, account, account correspondence with notes and complaints, payment card and financial history. We keep this information for business, legal and regulatory purposes. Some of the legal reasons why we keep this data are: tax purposes, to enable us to defend potential legal claims under the statutory periods set out in the Limitation Act 1980 (for Sky UK Limited and other Sky companies based in England and Wales). We will also need to keep some information to demonstrate compliance with the Data Protection Act 2018, for example, where we need to evidence compliance with suppression requests. This information is also helpful if we receive customer enquiries or complaints, and to verify your identity when you contact Sky.

These records are retained securely for 7 years after your account is closed. After this time, they will either be securely deleted or anonymised.

Some categories of data are deleted sooner where the data is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected such as:

Where we have recorded calls, SMS or live chat communications, these are retained for 12 months.

Where you have registered for My Account, we retain this information for 12 months after the date your account is closed.

Where you have submitted personal data as part of an application to the SME 100 scheme. For successful applicants, your data will be retained for up to 6 months following the closure of the application process. For unsuccessful applicants, your data will be retained for up to 1 month following the closure of the application process.

Please read the ‘Keeping your data up to date and your rights’ above to understand how to get in touch to discuss a right to erasure request.

COOKIES NOTICE

Cookies are created when you visit a website or use an app. They are small files that are stored on your device and used to customise your experience. When you access the Sky Business website or other Sky websites and apps for the first time, you will be asked to set your cookie preferences for the site. To help you make your choices this notice explains how we use cookies and similar technologies to collect information when you access our services and how we use that information. We also explain when and how you can manage your cookie preferences. We use cookies to make your use of our sites and apps quicker, easier and more relevant to you. If you don’t turn these cookies on it may affect your browsing experience. To avoid impacting your browsing experience cookies need to be enabled in your browser settings

What do we use Cookies for?

Essential Cookies

These cookies are needed to provide the content, product or service you have asked for. We use essential cookies for the following purposes:

  • Keeping you logged in during your visit
  • Enabling you to stream content properly
  • Making sure that what you’ve added to your basket is still there when you get to the checkout and to personalise our ‘abandoned basket’ marketing (where we are permitted to send you marketing) described in our Privacy Notice above.
  • Make sure our website is working properly
  • Remembering if you've been to the site or app before
  • Making content recommendations based on other content you have watched
  • Enabling features of our service.

Performance cookies

We use cookies to help improve our products. For example:

  • To keep track of what pages, content and links are popular and which ones don't get used.

  • To see how users navigate through our sites and apps, when error messages appear and what caused them.

  • To see how effective our adverts are.

The information collected using these cookies is grouped with the information from everyone else so we can see overall patterns rather than individual activity. When given the option, we recommend you turn on cookies used for these purposes.

Advertising & marketing cookies

In addition, cookies are used for advertising and marketing purposes. These cookies are used to identify your interests by understanding how you interact with our sites and apps and your web browsing activity. We do this so that we and our trusted partners can:

  • Tailor the advertising you see on our and third party sites and apps to your interests (this is known as online behavioural advertising) whilst limiting the number of times you see the same advert.
  • Link to social networks who may use the information to target advertising to you on their platforms.
  • Tailor the advertising you see on our and third party sites and apps for our own Sky products.
  • Measure the effectiveness of adverts and content you’re shown, including where and how often they’re shown and any action you took in relation to them.

If you don’t turn these cookies on when given the option you will still see the same amount of advertising and marketing, but it is less likely to be of interest to you.

Affiliate cookies

We use 'affiliate' cookies. Some of our web-based information will contain promotional links to other companies’ sites. If you follow one of these links and then register with or buy something from that other site, a cookie is used to tell the other site that you came from one of our sites. That other site may then pay us a small amount for the successful referral. For more information, see the Internet Advertising Bureau's guide about how affiliate marketing works. Note that when you visit those other companies’ sites, they will have their own privacy notices which set out what personal data they collect and how they will use it.

How long do our cookies stay on your device?

When you set your cookie preferences on one of our sites or apps, we will remember those preferences. We will ask you again to confirm your preferences after 180 days, unless we add new cookies or use non-essential cookies for different purposes in the meantime, in which case we will ask you to confirm your preferences again when we make those changes.

Managing your cookie preferences

We don’t give you the option to turn off essential cookies when you manage your cookie preferences because these cookies are necessary to make our sites and apps function properly. For the other categories of cookies referred to above, you can control how they are used on that Sky site or app. After you have made your initial choice, you can change your preferences via the ‘Privacy options’ link in the footer of the site or the settings within the app.

Other ways to manage your cookie preferences

Most modern browsers allow you to see what cookies you have on your device and to clear them all or individually. To find out how to do this, go to aboutcookies.org, which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a variety of browsers.

Please remember that any settings you change will not just affect the cookies we use. The changes will apply to all websites you visit unless you choose to block cookies only from specific sites.

Deleting cookies means that settings you have made on a site or app will be lost. If you’ve set your preferences to opt out of cookies, this setting will be lost too if that information is stored in a cookie. Blocking all cookies means functionality on our sites and apps may be lost. Therefore, we don’t recommend turning all cookies off when using our sites and apps.

Complaints

If you wish to make a complaint about how we use your information, please contact us by email at customer.solutionsb2b@sky.uk or by writing to us at Sky Business, 29 Wellington Street, 4th Floor, Leeds, LS1 4DL.

We will try to resolve your complaint in accordance with Sky Business Customer Complaints Code of Practice and you can find details of the steps we will take, including when we aim to respond by. If you are not satisfied with our response then please let us know and we will take the further steps detailed in the aforementioned link.

If you are still unhappy you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office via their website.

Contacting Sky Business

If you have any queries or comments about this privacy and cookies notice, please contact Sky Business using any of the channels mentioned above or contact Sky’s Data Protection Officer via dp.department@sky.uk.

Changes to this notice

We will occasionally update our privacy and cookies notice. We will post a notice of any material changes on our website prior to implementing the changes, and, where appropriate, notify you using any of the contact details we hold for you for this purpose. This may include phone, SMS, e-mail, post or interactive social media. We encourage you to periodically review our notice to be informed of how we use your information.

This privacy and cookies notice was last updated 28 March 2023.

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