Privacy Policy

INTRODUCTION

Outsmart Insights Limited (and its community platform ‘Associates’) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your relationship with us, in accordance with the applicable data protection legislation.

As you will see in the Policy, we only use the information collected to improve our services for our users. If after reviewing the Policy you have any further questions, please contact us at associates@outsmartinsight.com.

Outsmart Insights Limited is a "data controller". This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. Under data protection legislation we are required to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

This notice applies to associates.outsmartinsight.com and all websites that we operate and all services we provide (“our websites and services”).

When we say ‘personal data’ we mean identifiable information about you, like your name, date of birth, nationality, email, address, telephone number, IP address, address, education, professional experience, curriculum vitae, support queries, community comments and so on. Special categories of personal data specifically include passport or National ID are processed to uniquely identify an individual as referred as ‘personal sensitive data’.

If you can’t be identified (for example, when personal data has been aggregated and anonymised) then this notice doesn’t apply.

We may need to update this notice from time to time. Where a change is significant, we’ll make sure we let you know – usually by sending you an email.

It is important that you read this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide 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.

Last updated: 24 May 2018

Here is a summary of some of the key changes we made on 24 May 2018:

Navigation: We split the privacy notice into clear and defined sections so that it’s more user-friendly and easier to navigate to the information you need.

Outsmart Insight: We clarified who Outsmart Insight is, and where we are headquartered.

Principles: We complied with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be kept secure, kept only as long as is necessary, is accurate and uptodate, is relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes, collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained and used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.

Collection and Use: We provided more information about the ways we collect personal data about you, who we collect that data from, and how we intend to use it.

Sharing: We are more prescriptive about who we share your personal data with, which includes third party service providers and partners, regulators, an actual or potential buyer or where required by law.

Security: We restated our commitment to protecting your personal data using appropriate technical and organisational measures.

Data Subject Rights: We set out in more detail all rights individuals have in relation to their personal data and how those rights can be exercised.

WHO ARE 'WE'?

When we refer to ‘we’ (or ‘our’ or ‘us’), that means Outsmart Insight Limited and all its wholly owned subsidiaries. Our headquarter is in London, UK. Address details for our offices are available on our Corporate page.

We provide a platform that brings together consultants from leading universities to help R&D companies keep pace with the latest developments in emerging technology sectors. If you want to find out more about what we do, see the What we do page.

OUR PRINCIPLES OF DATA PROTECTION

Our approach to data protection is built around four key principles. They’re at the heart of everything we do relating to personal data. The personal information we hold about you must be

  • Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
  • Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
  • Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
  • Accurate and kept up to date.
  • Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
  • Kept securely

HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA

When you visit our websites or use our services, we collect personal data. The ways we collect it can be broadly categorised into the following:

Information you provide to us directly: When you visit or use some parts of our websites and/or services we might ask you to provide personal data to us. For example, we ask for your contact information when you pre-register interest, respond to a job application or an email offer, participate in community forums, join us on social media, take part in training and events, contact us with questions or request support, and subscribe to our newsletter. If you don’t want to provide us with personal data, you don’t have to, but it might mean you can’t use some parts of our websites or services.

Information we collect automatically: We collect some information about you automatically when you visit our websites or use our services, like your IP address and device type. We also collect information when you navigate through our websites, including what pages you looked at and what links you clicked on. This information is useful for us as it helps us get a better understanding of how you’re using our websites and services so that we can continue to provide the best experience possible (for example, by personalising the content you see).

When you use our websites we and our Processors may use “cookies”, “web beacons”, and similar devices to track your activities. These small pieces of information are stored on your hard drive, not on our websites.

We use cookies to help you navigate our websites as easily as possible, and to remember information about your current session. We do not use this technology to spy on you or otherwise invade your privacy. You can disable cookies and tracking technologies through your web browser, however doing so may render some aspects of our websites unusable.

Information we get from third parties: The majority of information we collect, we collect directly from you. Sometimes we might collect personal data about you from other sources, such as publicly available materials or trusted third parties like LinkedIn or other publicly available profiles. We use this information to supplement the personal data we hold about you, in order to better match you to the right consulting opportunities, inform, personalise and improve our services, and to validate the personal data you provide.

Where we collect personal data, we’ll only process it:

  • to perform a contract with you, or
  • where we have legitimate interests to process the personal data and they’re not overridden by your rights, or
  • in accordance with a legal obligation, or
  • where we have your consent.

If we don’t collect your personal data, we may be unable to provide you with all our services, and some functions and features on our websites may not be available to you.

If you’re someone who doesn’t have a relationship with us, but believe that an Outsmart Insight Representative or Consultant has entered your personal data into our websites or services, you’ll need to contact that Representative or Consultant for any questions you have about your personal data (including where you want to access, correct, amend, or request that the user delete, your personal data).

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

First and foremost, we use your personal data to operate our websites and:

  • verify your identity in order to comply with UK Law
  • checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK
  • assessing qualifications for a particular task or activity
  • receiving your work
  • paying you
  • administering the contract, we have entered into with you
  • complying with health and safety obligations
  • to prevent fraud

We also use your personal data for other purposes, which may include the following:

To communicate with you. This may include:

  • providing you with information you’ve requested from us or information we are required to send to you
  • operational communications, like changes to our websites and services, security updates, or assistance with using our websites and services
  • communications another product or service we think you might be interested in, in accordance with your communication preferences
  • asking you for feedback or to take part in research we are conducting (which we may engage a third party to assist with).

To support you: This may include assisting with the resolution of technical support issues or other issues relating to our websites or services, whether by email, in-app support or otherwise.

To protect you: So that we can detect and prevent any fraudulent or malicious activity, and make sure that everyone is using the our websites and services fairly and in accordance with Consulting Agreement.

To enhance our websites and services and develop new ones: For example, by tracking and monitoring your use of our websites and services so we can keep improving, or by carrying out technical analysis of our websites and services so that we can optimise your user experience and provide you with more efficient tools.

To analyse, aggregate and report: We may use the personal data we collect about you and other users of our websites and services (whether obtained directly or from third parties) to produce aggregated and anonymised analytics and reports, which we may share publicly or with third parties.

HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL SENSITIVE DATA

"Special categories" of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:

  • in limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent
  • where we need to carry out our legal obligations in line with UK law and other international legal jurisdictions

Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else's interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL SENSITIVE DATA

We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:

  • checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK or other international jurisdictions
  • allowing you permission to access high security sites

We do not need your consent if we use special categories of your personal information in accordance with our written policy to carry out our legal obligations. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent from us.

HOW WE CAN SHARE YOUR DATA

There will be times when we need to share your personal data with third parties, including third-party service providers and other entities in the group. We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We may transfer your personal information outside the EU. If we do, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information. We will only disclose your personal data to:

  • third party service providers and partners who assist and enable us to use the personal data to, for example, support delivery of or provide functionality on our websites or services
  • regulators, law enforcement bodies, government agencies, courts or other third parties where we think it’s necessary to comply with applicable laws or regulations, or to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights. Where possible and appropriate, we will notify you of this type of disclosure
  • an actual or potential buyer (and its agents and advisers) in connection with an actual or proposed purchase, merger or acquisition of any part of our business
  • other people where we have your consent.

SECURITY

Security is a priority for us when it comes to your personal data. We’re committed to protecting your personal data and have appropriate technical and organisational measures in place to make sure that happens. We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.

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

We have put in place procedures 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.

RETENTION

The length of time we keep your personal data depends on what it is and whether we have an ongoing business need to retain it (for example, your request to provide us with your services or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).

We will retain your personal data for as long as we have a relationship with you and for a period of time afterwards where we have an ongoing business need to retain it. Following that period, we’ll make sure it’s deleted or anonymised.

YOUR RIGHTS

It’s your personal data and you have certain rights relating to it. When it comes to marketing communications, you can ask us not to send you these at any time – just follow the unsubscribe instructions contained in the marketing communication, or send your request to associates@outsmartinsight.com.

You also have rights to:

  • know what personal data we hold about you, and to make sure it’s correct and up to date
  • request a copy of your personal data, or ask us to restrict processing your personal data or delete it
  • object to our continued processing of your personal data

You can exercise these rights at any time by sending an email to associates@outsmartinsight.com.

If you’re not happy with how we are processing your personal data, please let us know by sending an email to associates@outsmartinsight.com. We will review and investigate your complaint, and try to get back to you within a reasonable time frame. You can also complain to your local data protection authority. They will be able to advise you how to submit a complaint.

HOW TO CONTACT US

We’re always keen to hear from you. If you’re curious about what personal data we hold about you or you have a question or feedback for us on this notice or our websites or services, please get in touch.

As a technology company, we prefer to communicate with you by email – this ensures that you’re put in contact with the right person, in the right location, and in accordance with any regulatory time frames.

Our email is associates@outsmartinsight.com.