Cookies & GDPR

What Are Cookies?

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the sites functionality.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

The Cookies We Set

If you create an account with us then we will use cookies for the management of the signup process and general administration. These cookies will usually be deleted when you log out however in some cases they may remain afterwards to remember your site preferences when logged out.

We use cookies when you are logged in so that we can remember this fact. This prevents you from having to log in every single time you visit a new page. These cookies are typically removed or cleared when you log out to ensure that you can only access restricted features and areas when logged in.

This site offers newsletter or email subscription services and cookies may be used to remember if you are already registered and whether to show certain notifications which might only be valid to subscribed/unsubscribed users.

This site offers e-commerce or payment facilities and some cookies are essential to ensure that your order is remembered between pages so that we can process it properly.

From time to time we offer user surveys and questionnaires to provide you with interesting insights, helpful tools, or to understand our user base more accurately. These surveys may use cookies to remember who has already taken part in a survey or to provide you with accurate results after you change pages.

When you submit data to through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

In order to provide you with a great experience on this site we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases, we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.

For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

Third party analytics are used to track and measure usage of this site so that we can continue to produce engaging content. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site or pages you visit which helps us to understand how we can improve the site for you.

From time to time we test new features and make subtle changes to the way that the site is delivered. When we are still testing new features these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on the site whilst ensuring we understand which optimisations our users appreciate the most.

As we sell products it’s important for us to understand statistics about how many of the visitors to our site actually make a purchase and as such this is the kind of data that these cookies will track. This is important to you as it means that we can accurately make business predictions that allow us to monitor our advertising and product costs to ensure the best possible price.

We use adverts to offset the costs of running this site and provide funding for further development. The behavioural advertising cookies used by this site are designed to ensure that we provide you with the most relevant adverts where possible by anonymously tracking your interests and presenting similar things that may be of interest.

In some cases, we may provide you with custom content based on what you tell us about yourself either directly or indirectly by linking a social media account. These types of cookies simply allow us to provide you with content that we feel may be of interest to you.

We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on this site that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work the following social media sites including; Facebook, Twitter, will set cookies through our site which may be used to enhance your profile on their site or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies.

More Information

Hopefully, that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren’t sure whether you need or not it’s usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site. However, if you are still looking for more information then you can contact us below.

GDPR

Overview

This page will outline some of the key GDPR principles and terms and present how they apply to your use of Freedom Engineering. Please review this carefully and share it with your privacy team with the legal documents listed below.

Disclaimer: This guide is not and should not be considered legal advice. Please consult a legal professional for details on how the GDPR may impact your business, and what you need for compliance.

General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”)

The GDPR is a unified regulation that supersedes and universalises previous privacy laws in Europe, offering citizens and residents of the European Union (EU) greater transparency and controls over how their personal data is used by others. The GDPR requires the compliance of businesses which transact in Europe, or which facilitate transaction in Europe.

Controllers and Processors

There are two key roles defined in the GDPR with respect to personal data: Controller and Processor. The Controller is the business -- you. As a customer of Mark Austin, you operate as the Controller when using our products and services. You have the responsibility for ensuring that the personal data you are collecting is being processed in a lawful manner pursuant to the GDPR and that you are using processors, such asMark Austin, that are committed to handling the data in a compliant manner.

Freedom Engineering is considered a Processor. We act on the instructions of the Controller, you. Like Controllers, Processors have an obligation to explain what they do with personal data. However, as a Processor, we rely on you, the Controller of the data and our customer, to ensure that there is a lawful basis for processing.

Processors may, in the performance of their service, use other third-parties in the processing of personal data. These entities are known as sub-processors.

Processing of Personal Data

In order to process personal data, you need a lawful basis for processing. There are several methods to establish a lawful basis for GDPR compliance, but the most likely mechanisms you will rely on when communicating with your customers and leads is one of the following:

1. Consent – Much of the GDPR revolves around the concept that your leads and customers have consented to you collecting their personal data, to you using (e.g. processing) their data, or to receiving communications. According to the ICO, the following criteria must be met to show valid consent:11.

A. Consent must be freely given. This means giving people genuine, ongoing choice and control over how you use their data.

B. Consent should be obvious and require positive action to opt in. Consent requests must be prominent, unbundled from other terms and conditions, concise, user-friendly, and easy to understand.

C. Consent must specifically cover the data Controller’s name, the purposes of the processing, and the types of processing activity.

D. Explicit consent must be expressly confirmed in words, rather than by any other positive action.

E. There is no set time limit for consent. How long it lasts will depend on the context. You should review and refresh consent as appropriate.

In short, under the GDPR (and it's a good idea in general), consent must be obtained by a “clear affirmative act”. In contrast to ‘clear affirmative acts’ pre-checked boxes or implicit consent are inadequate to establish consent.

If you are relying on consent as the lawful basis for processing data, the GDPR requires recorded evidence that consent has been given. You thus need in your business the ability to record proper consent for each customer and lead. When you enable the GDPR functionality in Freedom Engineering, you have the ability to obtain your lead's consent at the point of opt-in, and that consent will be registered as a tag associated with that lead.

Note: Mark Austin cannot control what you do with leads in an automated, API environment. You will need to ensure that, when Mark Austin is acting as a sub-processor, that you use your main processor's to ensure you are compliant with the GDPR. (If your main processor is not GDPR compliant, that could be difficult.)

2. Contract – In addition to consent, another lawful basis for processing data is if the processing of personal data is necessary for the performance of a contract. Password reset and billing notifications would likely fall under this lawful basis. In other words, if its a customer who transacts with you, there are certain processing tasks that must be undertaken for your to provide the service. Likewise, to keeps its commitments under its EULA and provide service to you, Mark Austin has to perform certain processing.

How Mark Austin Uses Personal Data

Freedom Engineering is committed to full transparency in the handling and processing of your customers’ personal data that you control.

Freedom Engineering tracks the following activities: transactions, emails, memberships, associated lists, and associated sequences.

Data is stored or deleted at the Controllers' request. When a Controller ceases to be an active Mark Austin customer, their accumulated data is retired and after an arbitrary period of time, the data is deleted.

Data Subject Rights

Under the GDPR, EU data subjects are certain rights regarding their data.

These include:

The Right to Data Portability and the Right to Access:

The Right to be Forgotten and The Right to Restriction of Processing

Unless otherwise required by law, in the event that Mark Austin receives any type of request from a data subject, we will engage the respective customer within seven days to respond to the data subject request.