Privacy statement

About this policy

This privacy policy sets out how the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) uses and protects any information that you provide when you use the PLS, PLSe and Knowledge Base websites. If you provide any information by which you can be identified, it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

PLS is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected and endorses and adheres to the principles of data protection, as set out in the Data Protection Act 1998. Under this Act, we have a legal duty to make sure the information we hold about you is kept secure, and is accurate, adequate, relevant and not excessive.  You can find out more about the Data Protection Act on the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) website.

This privacy policy does not create any contractual or other legal rights.

We may occasionally change our privacy policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes made to it.

Information we collect

We may collect the following information:

• Name, job title and organisation you work for.
• Contact information including postal and email address.
• Demographic information such as postcode, preferences and interests.
• If you are a mandating publisher and have a PLSe account – information relevant to maintaining and updating that account.

What do we do with this information

We require this information to understand your needs and provide you with a better service, and in particular for the following reasons:

Sharing your information with third parties

We will not share your personal information with third parties unless we have your express permission or are required by law to do so.

Links to external websites

Our website may contain links to other websites. Once you have used these links to leave our site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy and security of any information which you provide to the site you are visiting. Such sites are not governed by this privacy statement and you should look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online both by our internal staff and our external web developers.

Restricting or controlling use of your personal information

We may contact you from time to time to tell you about new services we provide or about PLS events. You have the right to ask us not to contact you in this way. and we will aim to provide a clear method for you to opt out of receiving this information.

If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by writing to The Operations Team, 55-56 Russell Square, London WC!B 4HP or emailing us at pls@pls.org.uk

Your legal right to request details of information we hold about you

You may request details of personal information which we hold about you under the Data Protection Act 1998. An administration fee of £15 will be payable. If you would like a copy of the information held on you please write to:

The Data Controller
55-56 Russell Square
London WC!B 4HP

We will endeavour to send you this information as soon as we can, and within the legal maximum of 40 days.

If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please write to or email us as soon as possible at the above address.

Cookies

This website and related websites use cookies to track usage and to allow mandating publishers to log in and update their details in their PLSe account.

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer's hard drive.

Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. This helps us to provide you with a better website by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie does not us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

More information about cookies can be found at the AboutCookies.org website.

The cookies we use on this site are as follows:

Third party cookie used for Google Analytics

These cookies collect information on how visitors use the main PLS website and Knowledge Base.
 
The identity of the user is kept anonymous and we use this information to help improve the websites.

Cookies used are:
Persistent Cookie: _utmz –  expires 1 year from connection
Persistent Cookie: _utmb –  expires 1 hour from connection
Session Cookie: _utmc – expires at the end of the session
Persistent Cookie: _utmz – expires 6 months from connection

Further information on how Google uses cookie information is available  from the Google Analytics website.

When logging on to your PLSe account

1. Session Cookie: PLSAuth -  expires at the end of session
When a user accesses a page on a site protected by forms authentication, the server looks for a valid authentication cookie. If no cookie is found, or if the cookie is not valid, the server redirects the browser to the log on page by using an HTTP 302 status code. At this page, the user is allowed to authenticate by using his or her credentials. After the credentials are validated, the server creates a valid authentication cookie and sends it back to the browser, with the originally requested page. The browser keeps the cookie in memory and sends it back to the server with every subsequent request to that Web server. With each request, the server checks the validity of the cookie to ensure that it is good (that it has not expired or been tampered with), and then processes the request.

The cookie is retained only as long as the browser is open. When the browser is closed the cookie is destroyed with everything else in memory that the browser was using.

2. Persistent Cookie: PLS account discovery - expires 1 month after connection
This cookie is a HTTP discovery cookie which discovers Windows SharePoint Services web service on the hosting server and returns the default page. Once authenticated, this will allow the user via the website, to update or contribute towards the site. Without this authentication you cannot log in to you PLSe account.

3. Blocking cookies
You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to block cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website or logging or updating details on PLSe.