Sky Privacy and Cookies Notice

• Information you've provided to us, including through our websites, applications or products, or when you access our services through applications on websites operated by other organisations.

• Information about our content, products and services you've ordered or enquired about, including as collected on call recordings or via live chat, as further described below.

• Information which we acquire from other organisations, such as address verification services (e.g. Royal Mail in the UK), data brokers who supply us with contact information and modelled (i.e. predicted) household profile information such as affluence and household composition (e.g. Experian), property and lifestyle companies and credit reference agencies including personal data that is publicly available. We acquire data from several organisations including Dunnhumby, CACI, 20ci, TransUnion, Mastercard, Emma’s Diary, and Game that we use to enhance the household profiles we use within AdSmart (as described further below). If you want to manage how these organisations use your personal data and share it with companies like Sky, you should get in touch with them directly. In the case of Experian, you can access their Consumer Information Portal here.

• Information, uploads, user generated content, and comments you make about, or generate, in accessing the shows, channels, programmes, advertisements, products and services you use, for example, how you or your household access, view, share, contribute to, communicate with, record or fast forward, download or interact with them.

• Information about you and your household’s use of Sky, and/or third-party content products and services (such as third party apps) including the content you watch, how long you watch it and where you have paused a piece of content (we call this viewing activity) as well as content you add to your Playlist (if using Sky Glass).

• Information from the devices you use to receive Sky content, products and services, about your household's use of Sky, and/or third party content, products and services (we call this data, product analytics). This includes information about your:

  • device, machine or browser

  • How you use our products and services (e.g. time spent watching content or within apps, how you navigate the user interface); and

  • other devices you use or have connected to your Sky devices.

• Voice data captured when you use the voice command feature on your remote control or, if you’re a Sky Glass customer, when you say ‘Hello Sky’ (which can be turned off using the switch on your device, via voice command or in the Voice Mics setting in the privacy section of the settings menu). All voice data captured is processed by Comcast to provide this functionality, Comcast retain this data for seven days. Sky selects, stores and analyses certain pieces of the voice data strictly to help understand errors and improve the voice functionality and not for any other purpose. This voice data is deleted by Sky after approximately 120 days.

• IP addresses, MAC addresses, unique identification numbers, online identifiers (including device IDs and advertising IDs), browser information, location data port 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 content, products and services, for example, the collection of diagnostic (e.g. errors and system statuses) 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 with us. This includes your image from CCTV footage recorded when you visit a Sky Retail Store or other Sky locations.

• Images recorded by cameras fitted to Sky’s engineer vans.

The main purpose for which we process your personal data is so that we can provide you with content, products and services, in accordance with the contract you have with us (this includes where you have agreed to be part of a trial of our products and/or services). This includes providing you with account management functionality (such as to update your contact information), processing and collecting payments, customer support (including diagnostics and trouble-shooting), call screening and blocking, and tailored and personalised experience whilst using our products and services such as recommendations for the content you subscribe to (including by sending you newsletters about your service, content and relevant products.)

We also process your data to deliver services to you under our contract in the following ways:

• To enter into loan agreements with you, we obtain personal data about you from credit reference agencies. We then take automated decisions using that personal data about whether or not to enter into the loan agreement with you. This decision is influenced by your credit history and, depending on the outcome of this automated decision-making process, we may not enter into the loan agreement with you. If you would like us to review decisions taken about you as part of this process, please contact us as set out below.

• To manage 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 your requests for a communications service through the various parts of its network of equipment and systems. This information is held securely within restricted areas, accessible only by authorised personnel and in accordance with our data retention, deletion and acceptable use policies;

• To send newsletters to you about your service, content and relevant products.

• To determine your eligibility and then enable your ability to access special rewards, perks and experiences within our Sky VIP Programme. Should you choose to enter into the terms and conditions for our Sky VIP Programme (a contract which is separate from the contract you have with us for subscription products and services) we will send you direct marketing in accordance with the terms of that contract and;

• To check that you are using our products and services in accordance with the terms of the contract you have with us.

If you’re a Sky customer, where you give us consent, we will process your data in a number of ways, including:

• In order to send or target you with direct marketing. This may include communications by post, telephone, SMS, 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). 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; and using biometric data in some scenarios as part of consumer credit agreement authorisations.

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

• by enabling Sky to support customers whose circumstances might make them vulnerable in order to comply with Ofcom’s consumer protection conditions; and
• by complying with police and other security investigations.

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

• Improve our content, products, services and customer experiences by using product analytics and voice data and working with our suppliers to improve the products and services we offer, and develop new content, 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, to create a customer profile to have better conversations and/or for training, development and to meet our legal and regulatory responsibilities.
• Evaluate and fix problems with our products and services using technical information collected from your device and to help us to develop future products and services.
• Provide tailored and personalised recommendations based on your viewing activity which would require an additional purchase or transaction by you (such as content available on Sky Store).
• Confirm the personal data we hold about you (for example, your address);
• Determine the country you are located in so we can provide you with the correct information (for example, product and pricing information on our websites).
• Determine what offers for our products and services you are eligible for and how those offers will be made available to you. To do this, we create a profile about your time as a Sky customer (for example, what products and services you have purchased, how you have used them, your offer and payment history, and your interactions with our customer service agents) and supplement this with information provided to us by other organisations as described in this notice. We use these profiles to target our offers at particular groups of customers and personalise the messages.
• In some cases, we rely on legitimate interest to send or target you with 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, to inform you 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'').

• Enable and deliver AdSmart and PromoSmart. With AdSmart we show adverts within your TV services (including on Sky+, Sky Q and Sky Go) to the people most likely to be interested in the products and services being promoted. Sky can show different adverts to different households (in groups of 5,000 or more) watching the same programme or service. To do this we create a profile about a household comprising factors like interests, age and location using the information you have provided to us, information about your use of our products and services, and information we have acquired from other organisations (as detailed in the section above ‘Types of information we process and where it comes from’), and which we may combine with information received from brands wishing to target their advertising to a particular audience. We use this profile information to define groups of audiences to whom we send adverts. As part of showing these adverts, we also carry out quality and frequency checks, such as whether adverts were displayed correctly and how often particular adverts have been shown. More information about how AdSmart can be used by advertisers can be found here. To the extent any special category data (for example, data concerning health) is processed within AdSmart, Sky relies on your consent for such processing. PromoSmart uses the same process described above to deliver tailored promotions (e.g. for upcoming content) within your TV services.

• Enable and deliver AdVance. With AdVance, we tailor the digital adverts that you see on Sky or third party websites and apps based on information we know about you or to reinforce or extend the reach of TV adverts you may have seen (or based on content you may have watched). To do this, we process your viewing activity so we know what programmes you like and adverts you may have seen. Subject to your SkyiD and cookie preferences, this is combined with device information and information about websites you have visited and other information we hold about you, including information you have provided to us and information about your use of our products and services (as detailed in the section above ‘Types of information we process and where it comes from’) to define groups of audiences to whom we deliver digital adverts. More information about how AdVance can be used by advertisers can be found here and in the 'How we use your information for online and digital advertising' section below.
• For market research.
• Protect or enforce our rights or the rights of any third party and prevent and detect fraud, including by analysing activity on our network to help block unauthorised or illegitimate content, publication of, or access to it.
• 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.

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 process your contact data as a data controller when arranging or communicating with you about your delivery);

• Payment service providers (including Worldpay, who processes data as a data controller and whose privacy notice can be found here)

• IT and information technology and services companies

• Customer service centres

• Debt Collection agencies

• Other Sky Group companies (Information can be found here); and other companies in the Comcast group. This includes:

  • Comcast, with whom we share data in relation to the development, operation, infrastructure and performance of our products and services

  • NBCU companies, such as Peacock), with whom we may share data showing how many customers have watched NBCU or Peacock content on Sky.

• Credit reference agencies (see further below);

• Data Ireland, to validate the addresses we hold for our customers who live in the Republic of Ireland;

• Warranty companies (see further below);

• Data brokers. This includes Experian who we use to match Sky’s own data with data provided by brands in order to identify households to target for specific advertising campaigns (for example, using AdSmart).

  • For example, this data matching process could be performed on behalf of a supermarket that wants to target its television advertising to its existing customers who live near one of its stores.
  • The brand will receive back a report showing how successful the advertising campaign was (e.g. how many times their adverts were viewed), but will not receive information or data about specific households that have seen their adverts;

• Nectar, in order for Nectar to send information about Sky offers to their customers where their permissions allow and for Sky to understand which households have taken up those offers; and

• Marketing companies that deliver our communications.

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. 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 mechanisms, such as EU Standard Contractual Clauses and EU Commission Decisions on Adequacy (country details here).

One of Sky’s data processors (Domestic & General Insurance PLC and Domestic & General Services Limited) may contact you to ensure you are satisfied with your service experience and to let you know about the warranties that apply to your Sky equipment and the options for extended cover.

In the event 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, where we acquire another company or where our holding company restructures our corporate group.

We share your personal data with credit reference (e.g, Equifax), and fraud prevention agencies (e.g. CIFAS) for use in automated credit decisions, for the detection and protection against crimes such as fraud and money laundering, and for debt recovery purposes, as further explained below. Where we carry out a credit check with a credit reference agency, the information that we give them (including details of your credit application and financial details) and the details of the search itself will be recorded by that credit reference agency. We also exchange information with credit reference agencies on payment performance under your credit agreement on an ongoing basis and this information could be used by us and third parties to make future credit assessment decisions. As part of your credit check, the credit reference agency may also review information in relation to individuals who are financially linked to the primary applicant. If we, or a fraud prevention agency, determine that you pose a fraud or money laundering risk, we may refuse to provide the services or financing you have requested, or we may stop providing existing services to you. A record of any fraud or money laundering risk will be retained by the fraud prevention agencies, and may result in others refusing to provide services, financing or employment to you. Whenever fraud prevention agencies transfer your personal data outside of the European Economic Area, they impose contractual obligations on the recipients of that data to protect your personal data to the standard required in the European Economic Area. They may also require the recipient to subscribe to "international frameworks" intended to enable secure data sharing. CIFAS has published more information about data transfers. Where appropriate, we may also share your data with other organisations to assist with the prevention and detection of fraud.

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 certain personal data with third-party app and content providers (such as Netflix and Disney+) when you choose to pay and/or access those third-party services via Sky. We do this solely to enable and/or verify your ability to access the relevant third-party service via Sky and with certain third party providers this personal data is held on a joint controller basis (meaning we use and share the data for the joint purpose of ensuring your access to the service). The way those third parties use any other personal data you have provided to them (which is separate from the personal data we share with them should have been explained when you signed up to their service and in any event can be found by visiting the relevant third party app or website and locating their privacy policy.

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.

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. This is to enable Sky AdVance (as described above) and Sky’s own advertising on websites, apps and social media platforms. This is different to our AdSmart service (described above) and 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 use your phone number and email address. We will never share your name and physical address with any of our partners, and where we share an email address or phone number, it will be in a hashed format (which means that it has been converted into a string 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 process your personal data for online and digital advertising purposes use cookies and similar technologies on our and third party websites, apps, and devices (including through cookies and similar technologies, 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 behaviours, viewing activity, product holding, account history and Sky ID preferences 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 processed for Sky AdVance or matched with the social media sites you use, let us know using one of the methods in the “Managing Your Marketing 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, and you can find more information on how that social media site uses your personal data in its privacy policy.

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.

You can contact us via the My Details page when you log into Sky.com or on 03442 414 141 (in the UK) or 0818 719 819 (in ROI), or by emailing boxofficesupport@sky.uk for Sky Box Office to update, amend or correct your information. 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.
• 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.

Direct marketing and tailored advertising

You can always choose not to receive direct marketing or tailored advertising (including AdSmart) from us in the following ways:

• via the My Details page when you log into Sky.com
• on the "unsubscribe" link or replying STOP in any electronic marketing information from us
• by calling Sky on 03442 414 141 (in the UK) or 0818 719 819 (in ROI) for Sky TV, Sky Broadband & Talk and Sky Mobile
• Emailing: boxofficesupport@sky.uk for Sky Box Office

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 Now TV, Sky Connect, Sky WiFi) you can choose not to by contacting them directly.

Should you wish to terminate your membership of the Sky VIP Direct Marketing Programme and therefore stop receiving the solicited direct marketing about Sky VIP and provided by being a member of that programme you can do so by clicking on the "unsubscribe" link in any Sky VIP Programme specific email.

Use of product analytics and viewing activity

You can always choose to opt out of us processing product analytics and viewing activity data by calling Sky using the number above and asking to opt out of profiling.

By opting out of this, you will no longer receive certain features on your Sky products (such as tailored and personalised recommendations or resume options for programmes you have started watching) and we won’t be able to use your data to make improvements to our products and services.

Cookies and online behavioural advertising

Please refer to our Cookies notice for information on how to adjust cookie settings for your devices.

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.

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.

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.